Kerry is, indubitably, the Left's most "useful idiot" (as V.I. Lenin famously labeled Western apologists for socialist propaganda) in contemporary politics. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to defect from the Soviet bloc, said of Kerry's anti-American activities during the Vietnam War, "KGB priority number one at that time was to damage American power, judgment and credibility. ... As a spy chief and a general in the former Soviet satellite of Romania, I produced the very same vitriol Kerry repeated to the U.S. Congress almost word for word and planted it in leftist movements."