Authorities in Bulgaria recently unveiled an official committee to help secure the top spot at the United Nations for Bulgarian communist operative Irina Bokova, and the devil is in more than just the details — it is embedded in the whole sordid affair. Among other concerns, the official campaign team is dominated by known communist agents who worked for the ruthless Bulgarian “security” service known as the “little KGB.” The team is even led by a prominent former spy for the murderous Soviet-backed regime that once enslaved the Eastern European nation. Top establishment media outlets have called Bokova the “frontrunner” to lead the UN, with sources saying it was part of an expensive PR campaign. But critics are speaking out.
The former New York-based communist spy leading Bokova’s UN election campaign, Rajko Rajchev, was described by his brutal superiors in declassified regime files as “very well prepared ideologically.” Despite the growing outrage by survivors of the regime’s brutality, another seven members of Bokova’s UN election committee, at least, are also reported to be ex-spies for the communist regime’s savage “state security” apparatus. As the United Nations becomes increasingly powerful, the implications of the new revelations should alarm the entire world.
There are a number of other scandals swirling around Bokova’s candidacy. Most recently, unanswered corruption questions have been raised about a number of luxury properties she owns, including a Manhattan apartment worth more than $3 million. She also reportedly owns properties worth more than $1 million each in London and in Paris, according to an investigation by Bulgarian watchdog Bivol. Media investigators examined her publicly acknowledged bloated salary and noted that, even with that and her former communist agent husband’s tax-funded income, the math does not come close to adding up.
In her post as secretary-general of UNESCO, there have also been multiple red flags raised, including allegations of major procedural violations, conflicts of interest, and more in her appointment of a crony with fake qualifications to a top job. Bokova then tried to quash an internal report outlining the scandal to avoid impeachment.
The communist operative, who was trained at an elite Soviet academy in Moscow, was also caught falsifying information about her own qualifications, which she downplayed as a mere oversight.
But all those scandals pale in comparison to what has been reported in Bulgarian media about her nomination process to become the next secretary-general of the entire UN, and the communist operatives behind the machinations. So far, the international media has not even mentioned the latest scandal. In Bulgaria, though, the revelations have already sparked a public outcry. Victims of the “former” communist regime, known as the People’s Republic of Bulgaria, have denounced the effort to push Bokova, who has strong ties to that regime. Critics have also slammed the domination of the official Bulgarian UN selection committee by well-known operatives of the mass-murdering regime.
To get an idea of the atrocities committed by the Soviet puppet regime, a brief look at the number of murders it perpetrated might help. In Statistics of Democide: Democide and Mass Murder since 1900, political science Professor Emeritus R.J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii estimated the body count racked up by the Bulgarian communists at around 222,000 — an especially high number considering that Bulgaria’s population is just over 7 million today. Other estaimates suggest the figure is even higher. Many more victims were ruthlessly tortured and persecuted. Yet most of the criminals responsible escaped punishment.
Indeed, today, the same cabal and its descendants continue to run much of Bulgaria after some name changes and “rehabilitation.” Consider the most recent revelations. Bokova’s election campaign to lead the UN, organized by the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry, is literally packed from top to bottom with “former” communist “security” agents. Leading the operation is Director General of “Global Issues” at the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Rajko Rajchev, with variations of the name spelled Raicho, Raiko, and Raichev, or Raychev, in the Roman alphabet.
He was among a number of Bulgarian officials recalled from his foreign post about five years ago after declassified files exposed his background as a spy for the mass-murdering communist regime’s “Committee for State Security.” At the time, he was serving as the Bulgarian government’s permanent representative in New York in the administration of then-President Georgi Parvanov. Like Bokova and Rajchev, Parvanov was a member of the Bulgarian Communist Party and its successor, the Socialist Party. Parvanov was also a collaborator with the communist regime’s “security service,” declassified documents show, and he played a key role in advancing Bokova to her current status.
According to media reports and declassified files on Bokova’s UN campaign chief Rajchev, the communist agent joined the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1982. Three years later, he was recruited by the First Chief Directorate of State Security, the Soviet-backed Bulgarian dictatorship’s version of the KGB, to work as an espionage agent for the murderous regime. Then he was deployed to the United States to work. His code name was “Velin” and his cover job was serving as an attaché at the Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria to the UN in New York City, the files revealed. In that job, he gathered intelligence on foreign diplomats, American citizens, and even on journalists, his declassified files show.
As already indicated, Rajchev’s file with the regime notes that his record shows him to be “very well prepared ideologically.” In other words, Bokova’s campaign chief was a committed communist — often described among the upper echelons of the criminal conspiracy that is communism as a “useful idiot,” or a person who really believes the murderous ideological nonsense that passes for communist “ideology.” According to his file, when he met with his handler and was informed of his overseas assignment in New York, Rajchev said he had “long been expecting this moment, but did not know when or who would have the conversation.”
But Rajchev will hardly be the only “former” communist security operative to run “former” communist Bokova’s campaign to lead the UN, often ridiculed by critics as the dictators club. Another prominent agent for the regime who is serving on the campaign is Alexandar Savov, who also worked for the communist dictatorship’s barbaric “security” apparatus before running Bokova’s campaign to take over UNESCO.
Savov first exploded on to the international diplomatic scene after becoming a senior diplomat for the murderous dictatorship in New York in 1983. That took place as communist governments scrambled at the UN after the Soviet Union shot down flight KAL-007 carrying 269 people, including U.S. Congressman Larry McDonald (D-Ga.), who at the time was also serving as the chairman of the anti-Communist John Birch Society, an affiliate of this magazine.
Savov is the son of hardcore Stalinist Stoyan Savov, a top official in the dictatorship who reportedly committed suicide before facing trial for his crimes, including helping to destroy key regime documents offering evidence of various crimes. The younger Savov was sent on a crucial espionage mission to New York by his father involving nuclear secrets, but the operation was reportedly foiled by the FBI.
At the center of it all is former Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev, who as head of the re-branded Bulgarian Communist Party put Bokova and Rajchev in power. He now leads the Party of European Socialists, the second largest political party in the European Union’s pseudo-Parliament. Similarly, many other “former” communists from Eastern Europe have moved over to Brussels, where they occupy leading positions in the EU’s increasingly powerful and autocratic bureaucracy.
A total of 16 diplomats and bureaucrats are running Bokova’s campaign, and about half of those are directly linked to the communist regime’s “security” service, according to Bulgarian media reports. Bulgarian news service Faktor.bg reviewed the names of those working on the team. It named Gancho Ganev, Chavdar Zhechev, Angel Orbetsov, Petar Iliev, and Krasimir Kostov as known former agents for the communist oppression bureaucracy.
The New American first reported on the controversial candidacy of Bokova about a year ago, when the current UNESCO chief was declared by establishment propaganda outlets to be the “frontrunner” to lead the UN amid an expensive PR campaign to that effect. Both the Obama administration and the Kremlin reportedly support her candidacy. They also helped her secure her current post as head of UNESCO, which is openly working to standardize “education” policy around the world. “UNESCO was founded to promote the principles of humanism,” boasted Bokova, who regularly touts UNESCO’s work changing children’s “values” so they can become what she calls good “global citizens.”
But her previous connections and activities may be even more troubling than her ongoing efforts to indoctrinate children around the world. Bokova is what is known as a “red-diaper baby” — a child born to devoted communist parents. In fact, her father, aside from being a communist politician and leading party hack, was also editor-in-chief of the Bulgarian Communist Party’s official propaganda organ known as Rabotnichesko Delo. In addition to the father’s loyal service to the murderous dictatorship, he is widely reported to have personally murdered a Bulgarian dissident and bragged about it to others.
Despite those atrocities, and the hundreds of thousands of dead bodies, Bokova herself was an enthusiastic youth member of the Bulgarian Communist Party. She later became an adult member and even served in various capacities within the brutal dictatorship. Like many communists, Bokova remained within the party after it rebranded itself the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) following the apparent collapse of the communist terror regime.
As The New American‘s William F. Jasper recently explained, however, the name change of the Communist Party was primarily so “the communists could not only continue running Bulgaria as newly branded ‘socialists,’ but also benefit from the aid, loans, and investments being handed out by the United States and the European Union.” They are still in charge today. Bokova continues her involvement in the re-branded Communist Party, which is now part of the powerful global-tyranny-promoting Socialist International network.
Despite trying to downplay her communist “past” and her links to one of the most savage tyrannies of the last century, Bokova is as red as they come, analysts say. “Beneath her unassuming exterior, she was a tough and loyal Communist apparatchik,” said Rossen Vassilev, who served at the Bulgarian Mission to the UN in New York from January 1980 until his defection to the West in July 1988. “But her stay in New York was cut short after the State Department rejected for nearly two years the accreditation of her journalist-husband, Liubomir Kolarov, most likely because of his known association with Communist Bulgaria’s spy agency, the DS.” She might have also been recalled due to an extramarital affair she was having, Vassilev added. The affair was with her current husband, also a communist spy then working with the State Security agency, who now works at a globalist bureaucracy.
After apparently serving the establishment well in her job at the UN’s would-be global education ministry, which is pushing what it calls the “World Core Curriculum” for use around the world, Bokova is getting ready for her next promotion. However, as more details continue to emerge about her radical background, her ties to the mass-murdering regime, and her shadowy climb to power, the decision may backfire on the globalists and communists pushing her nomination, which includes many top media outlets in the West. Already, The New American‘s previous articles exposing what is common knowledge in Bulgaria have made headlines across the Eastern European nation. But there are likely even more skeletons hiding in Bokova’s closet — along with the closets of leading figures across Bulgaria’s political class.
Critics from Bulgaria have expressed outrage over the developments surrounding Bokova’s campaign. “Irina Bokova, the Bulgarian candidate, has demonstrated that not only in [the] past but currently she has been serving the ideology of the outrageous communism from pre-1989,” explained International Institute of Anthropology Research Professor Lolita Nikolova, a U.S.-based Bulgarian who is working to oppose Bokova’s candidacy. “After the nomination, she continues the propaganda of the anti-humanistic communism by organizing a campaign in Bulgaria lead [sic] by a former secret agent from the communist regime, Rajko Rajchev, who has a solid biography of a corrupted politician. Accordingly, this candidacy endangers the world and has been trying to return the human history in 1950s — in the period of the Cold War.”
In a post headlined “Outrageous! Seven team members working for Bokova — State Security agents,” Bulgarian media outlet Faktor.bg also slammed developments. “The metastasis of the communist secret services in the Foreign Ministry is intact, casting a dark stain on Bulgaria,” it said. The whole team orchestrating Bokova’s candidacy is “full of Chekists — the faithful guardians of the totalitarian communist regime in Bulgaria,” the report added.
Bulgarian American Vassil Mladjov, who was involved in the anti-communist student and army movements at the apparent fall of communism in 1989, is also hoping to stop and expose Bokova. “The fact that the Bulgarian government is backing her up is outrageous, but we are not surprised, since most politicians in Bulgaria are ex-communist or kids of ex-communist party leaders or corrupt businessmen,” he explained. “Everyone views her as Putin’s puppet and a person who will favor Russia.” Indeed, Bokova has been a strong Putin ally, even joining communist dictators from around the world to celebrate the Soviet-themed “Victory Day” celebration in Moscow last year as communist flags waved in the breeze and the Soviet anthem filled the air.
A petition against Bokova’s candidacy aimed at the UN Security Council is also being circulated by Bulgarians, noting that authorities in the capital Sofia had nominated her despite the opposition of most of the public. “Irina Bokova is supported by profoundly anti-democratic political forces in Bulgaria,” it reads. “Her nomination comes as a result of their threats to bring down the government of Bulgaria…. We are appalled by her association with the brutal and corrupt Communist system to which she owes her entire career.”
A Bulgarian foreign correspondent based in Washington, D.C., who asked not to be named because of the nature of the industry, highlighted the important implications of what is happening. “Away from the international attention, Bulgaria had become a battleground between the darkest leftist and pro-Russian forces, and the pro-Western pro-democracy oriented political powers,” said the correspondent, who has followed the scandals closely. “It could be said that because of the transition to democracy that was never fully completed, Bulgaria now could be Russia’s gateway to Europe and to top international posts, especially through someone like Moscow-trained Irina Bokova. Even though she claims ‘Harvard education’ she barely spent a month at Harvard, but she spent 1971-76 in Moscow.”
“There are implications for the USA in this candidacy,” the foreign correspondent warned. “The next Secretary-General of UN will be instrumental in perhaps the deepest reforms at the bureaucracy-ridden organization since its creation in 1945. What form will these reforms take would depend, to a greatest degree, on who is the UN Secretary-General. At the same time the organization would be facing unprecedented global challenges.”
Concluding, the Bulgarian journalist urged Americans and others to pay attention. “While looking to reform itself, the UN will be under pressure to allow for ‘multilateralism’ in its decision-making process,” the correspondent said. “For example, it will face the question of enlarging the number of the permanent members of the Security Council, thus weakening the power of countries such as the United States. Judging from Mrs. Bokova’s UNESCO agenda, she would be a conduit for such changes. And it should never be forgotten that the UN Secretary-General would be in a position to share intelligence and confidential information with any party he or she feels loyal to. This is not in the USA’s national interests.”
It may be even worse than it seems on the surface. Despite the ostensible collapse of communist slavery in Eastern Europe almost three decades ago, the criminals and mass murderers, in many cases, remain at large and in some cases, in positions of power. None of this should be surprising to longtime readers of this magazine. Among those who foretold precisely such a result was Soviet KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn, who worked in communist disinformation and deception operations. After defecting to the West, Golitsyn warned of a long-range strategy being pursued by the international communist conspiracy involving supposed “liberalization” in Eastern Europe and apparent collapse of the Soviet Union. Arguably the most important defector ever, virtually all of his predictions have come to pass, according to experts who have analyzed his track record.
In his 1984 book New Lies for Old, Golitsyn argued that the partial communist “suppression” of Eastern European anti-communist movements in the early 1980s was in fact part of the deception — an effort to dupe the West into believing that they represented genuine opposition. Eventually, according to Golitsyn, those same communists would return to power, sometimes in coalitions with the infiltrated opposition that was guided from Moscow. On the creation of coalition governments with those components and much more, Golitsyn’s prediction proved exactly correct.
Later developments also seem to have vindicated much of Golitsyn’s warning. And indeed, numerous Soviet-era communist criminals and murderers, who were never punished after the ostensible collapse of communism, are firmly embedded all throughout Eastern European governments and the EU’s architecture to this day. Former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev, speaking in London in 2001, approvingly referred to the EU as the “new European Soviet.”
While many of the Bulgarian regime’s operatives have been exposed thanks to declassified files, much remains to be discovered. Consider that the Committee for State Security did its best to destroy as much evidence as possible. Just one official, former Interior Minister Gen. Atanas Semerdzhiev, for example, was found guilty of destroying close to 150,000 incriminating files. Like in multiple former Soviet states, the brutal Bulgarian regime’s “security” service is also known to have deployed its operatives to infiltrate anti-communist and opposition movements. How extensive that infiltration may have been remains the subject of debate.
Legislation sitting in the U.S. Congress’ House Foreign Affairs Committee, the American Sovereignty Restoration Act, would withdraw the U.S. government from the UN and evict its spy-infested headquarters from American soil. As top communist “security” operatives scramble to install their agent at the head of the UN with apparent support from the globalist establishment, it is time for Americans to ditch the dictators club once and for all. The future of liberty and self-government around the world may well depend on an awakening by the American people. Perhaps Bokova’s candidacy can help.
Alex Newman is co-author of Crimes of the Educators, a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. Alex is also a Bear Witness Central Director in the NE of Florida.
His article was also posted in The New American.
