“Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion and Promoting Terrorism”

Professor Rychlak will speak on his new book, Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism. In this book, Rychlak and his co-author Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest ranking Soviet officer ever to defect to the West, explain how the Soviet intelligence machine was used to advance communism by tearing down Western values and attacking religious leaders, including Pope Pius XII and Cardinals Mindszenty, Stepinac, and  Wyszynski. Unfortunately, that deception continues to reverberate today. At this talk, Rychlak will both explore the great work done by the Church during WWII and reveal the Soviet hand in distorting the historical truth.

Professor Ronald J. Rychlak is the Butler Snow Professor of Law at the University of Mississippi, where he has been on the law school faculty since 1987. He has performed diplomatic work for both the United States and the Holy See and he has served as an advisor to the Vatican’s delegation at the United Nations since 2000.

Ron is on advisory boards for the Catholic League, Ave Maria School of Law, the Bellarmine Forum, Angelico Press, and the Society of Catholic Social Scientists (SCSS). In 2013, the SCSS presented Ron with the Pope Pius XI Award for Social Scholarship; in 2008 the Archdiocese of Zagreb presented him with a Blessed Cardinal Stepinac medal; and in 2012 the Ole Miss Chapter of the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame recognized his lifetime contribution to amateur football.

Ron is the author or co-author of eight books, including Hitler, the War, and the Pope, which the Congregation for the Causes of Saints called “definitive” in its final report on Pope Pius XII. The Catholic League called that book “the definitive popular history of the papacy of Pope Pius XII in the shadow of Nazism.” Ron’s most recent book, Disinformation, is co-authored by the highest ranking Soviet bloc intelligence officer ever to defect to the West. Former CIA director James Woolsey said: “this remarkable book will change the way you look at intelligence, foreign affairs, the press, and much else besides.”

Ron and his wife Claire have been married for 28 years, have six children, and live in Oxford, Mississippi.