V G Baleanu



    THE ENEMY WITHIN: THE ROMANIAN INTELLIGENCE 

               SERVICE IN TRANSITION 



                    January 1995





          Conflict Studies Research Centre

        The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst

             Camberley, Surrey GU15 4PQ





                     DISCLAIMER



The views expressed are those of the author and not 

necessarily those of the UK Ministry of Defence





THE ENEMY WITHIN:THE ROMANIAN INTELLIGENCE SERVICE IN

TRANSITION





INTRODUCTION



At least nine intelligence services are known to operate

currently in Romania.  Both the exact number and

functions of these units, about which the authorities 

have made contradictory statements, have become the

object of widespread speculations in the media.  Most

analysts tend to see these agencies as successor

organisations of the Securitate, the notorious political

police of the communist era.  Official denials of any

connection between the new agencies and their infamous

predecessor have not been able to dispel the suspicion

that they are splinter organisations of the former

Securitate, resuscitated under new names and with

specialized functions.



Although the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) - the

country's main security structure - has attracted a great

deal of public attention over the past five years, the

activity of smaller security services has repeatedly

provoked heated debates in the media, especially since it

appears to be even less subject to parliamentary or other

forms of public controls than that of the SRI.  Moreover,

the modus operandi of these parallel services, which

often have overlapping areas of competence, lacks any

transparency.



Among the security units operating under the umbrella of

various ministries and other central institutions are the

Protection and Guard Service of the Presidency; the

Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Internal
Affairs (also known under the code name of Military Unit

0215 - UM 0215); the newly established Operative

Surveillance and Intelligence Directorate of the General

Police Inspectorate (subordinated to the Ministry of

Internal Affairs); the Foreign Intelligence Service

(attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs); the

Counter-intelligence Directorate  and the Intelligence

Directorate of the Army (the Ministry of National

Defence); an intelligence structure within the General

Directorate of the Penitentiaries (the Ministry of

Justice); and a Special Telecommunications Service, which

claims to be a military body, although it is not

subordinated to the Defence Ministry.



Following the creation of these agencies, allegations and

rumours about the continuing role and influence of the

notorious Securitate, Ceausescu's secret police, have

been a staple of post-December 1989 Romanian political

life.  Although the Securitate was officially disbanded

and replaced by the Romanian Intelligence Service and the

other intelligence services in 1990, the newly formed

organisations are operating under the shadow of their

predecessor and this represents one of the main internal

sources of conflict and dangers that could impel Romania

away from a possible liberal and democratic future. 

Thus, these institutions have become the enemy within, a

tool in the hands of the neo-communist government which

came to power during the still unclarified events of

December 1989.   



Since 1990, waves of changes have been taking place in

the leadership of the Romanian Intelligence 

establishment.  Although the real reasons for these

changes remain unclear, there are indications that an

internal struggle for power is taking place.  Virgil

Magureanu, the head of the SRI - a former intelligence

officer and then a professor of Marxism - spoke of a

process of transition and rejuvenation that was likely to

continue for some time and suggested that it was

affecting primarily former Securitate officers who had

failed to adjust to the new political environment.





THE ROMANIAN INTELLIGENCE SERVICE - A HISTORY OF DISSENT

AND PURGES



>From the very beginning, SRI was depicted as President

Ion Iliescu's "personal security service".  Indeed, the

SRI's "birth certificate", the un-published Decree no 181

of 26 March 1990, stipulated that the new service was to

be directly subordinated to the president, while the

Provisional Council of National Unity, Romania's

surrogate parliament at the time, would have some control

over it.  The history of SRI, plagued by dissent and

purges, appears to be rooted in what was described as the

organisation's "original sin", that of being a

continuation under a new name of the communist-era secret

service.



The presence of a considerable number of former

Securitate officers within the SRI ranks is perceived as

the main obstacle to a complete overhaul of the Romanian

intelligence system.  Although no official figures are

available and estimates differ widely, in March 1994

Magureanu claimed that "only one-third of the

approximately 15,000 Securitate officers had been offered

employment in the new organisation".  But as the real

number of Securitate officers during Ceausescu regime was

estimated in the region of 50,000, it is hard to believe

that the new SRI and the new intelligence services are

not mentally and methodically descended from  the old

organisation.



Some younger and more open-minded Securitate officers

hired by the SRI after the first wave of purges added

their voices to those denouncing the continuity in

personnel, material resources, methods, and mentality

between the two institutions.  The first major breach in

the secrecy surrounding the new intelligence service was

made by Adrian Ionescu, a former Securitate captain

placed on reserve on 15 October 1990 on Magureanu's

order.  Among other things, Ionescu accused Magureanu of

having turned the organisation into a tool of the then

ruling party (the National Salvation Front), despite

pledges that the SRI was an apolitical organization.



A second wave of personnel changes took place in the

secret service between June and August 1991, following

the scandal in May of that year over several tons of

Securitate and SRI secret documents found in a ravine at

Berevoiesti (Prahova County).  Dubbed in retrospect  "the

big purge", this wave was reported by Magureanu to have

affected some 30% of the SRI's personnel.  The purge's

most prominent victim was Magureanu's first deputy

director at the time, Major General Mihai Stan.



Interesting details about the purge were revealed in a

letter addressed to the parliament in April 1992 by a

group of unidentified SRI officers demanding Magureanu's

removal for what they said was a systematic interference

in the country's political life.  According to the

authors of the letter, most of the "nearly 1,500

officers" dismissed during this second wave were

professionals who had no connection with the communist

nomenklatura.  They added that former party activists in

the Securitate, who held leading positions in the SRI,

had not been affected by the purge.  Magureanu responded

angrily to these reactions, speaking of a "demolition

mania" with "incalculable consequences" for the SRI.  His

reaction raised the suspicion that the letter contained

reliable information on the service.



In January 1992 another former SRI officer, Colonel Marin

Iancu, decided to speak out against the SRI leadership. 

He criticized the similarities of style, methods, and

structure between the SRI and its predecessor and warned

that the former might become another "state within the

state" if the parliament failed to impose a strict

control over it.



Hints about the third wave of changes in the SRI

leadership appeared in the Romanian media at the end of

1993.  In January 1994 some of the heads of SRI branches

in the territory were removed.  In February, Magureanu

toured the counties of Dolj, Valcea and Gorj to inspect

the SRI branches there and make more personnel changes. 

During his visit in Gorj County, where the Jiu Valley -

home of the thousands of miners who ran riot in Bucharest

on two occasions in 1990 and 1991 - is located, Magureanu

appeared with the controversial leader of the miners,

Miron Cosma, at a rally.  The director of the SRI urged

thousands of striking miners through a loudspeaker to

remain calm and to renounce the idea of descending again

on Bucharest.



The move was widely attacked in the media as inadmissible

interference by the secret service in public life. 

Magureanu was summoned to the joint parliamentary

commission in charge of monitoring the SRI's activities,

which concluded that he had overstepped his authority. 

The commission's chairman, Senator Vasile Vacaru of the

ruling Party of Social Democracy in Romania (PDSR), tried

to play down the incident and exonerate Magureanu.  After

this incident, the question raised by the democratic

opposition was "who controls who in the parliament?"



In early March 1994, the heads of the SRI's Protection

Division (known as Division E, in charge of protecting 

and monitoring SRI cadres and safeguarding state

secrets), were dismissed for having allegedly leaked

confidential information to the ultranationalist weekly

Romania Mare (Greater Romania).  In January, Romania Mare

had accused several Romanian officials of working for

foreign intelligence agencies.  A few days later, the

head of the SRI counter-intelligence division, Major

General Gheorghe Diaconescu, was also dismissed amid

speculations that he had failed to unmask a spy ring

reported to include Lieutenant General Marin Pancea, the

secretary of the Supreme Council for the Defence of the

Country and an adviser to Iliescu; Pancea also had to

quit his job.  All accusations against Pancea, especially

the claim that he had been spying for France, were

dismissed by the Presidency as "pure invention", while

the SRI said more cautiously that it had no evidence

supporting such allegations.



Some journalists later claimed that the true reason for

Diaconescu's dismissal was no doubt related to his rather

imprudent decision to keep tabs on his own chief,

Magureanu.  The former counter-intelligence chief, the

press wrote, had thus been able to uncover some illegal

transactions with foreign firms involving Magureanu and

his first deputy director, Major General Victor Marcu. 

Diaconescu was replaced by Colonel Mihai Lupu, who had

worked with the Securitate's Foreign Intelligence

Directorate; from 1983; he was the deputy chief of the

special unit UM 0110 responsible for counter-intelligence

operations in connection with the Soviet Union and other

communist countries.



Also in March 1994, one of the SRI's deputy directors and

the head of the organisation's training school, Major

General Dumitru Cristea, was asked to resign for an

alleged love affair with one of his female students. 

Cristea, who denied the charge and put the blame for the

campaign against him on senior PDSR officials, refused to

resign.  He was subsequently suspended from duty and sent

on vacation pending an examination of his case.  Despite

the fact that, as director of the Bucharest-based Higher

Institute of Information, which had been set up in 1992,

Cristea was responsible for the training of SRI officers

and his position was very influential in both the ruling

party and the opposition, he was removed from his post

without a follow-up inquiry.



According to the media, the removal of Diaconescu and

Cristea was accompanied by more changes in the SRI

leadership.  Thus, Colonel Constantin Pista, the head of

Division C (responsible for the protection of the

national wealth), had been dismissed for incompetence,

while Colonel Traian Ciceu, the head of Division A

(responsible for the protection of the constitutional

order), handed in his resignation in connection with the

loss of strictly confidential documents on Romania's

political parties and extremist groups.

 

At the same time, in the spring of 1994, Bucharest was

hit by other security scandals.  Thus, a well organised

campaign of innuendos and slander against Gen Spiroiu,

the Minister of Defence, forced his replacement with a

civilian.  But soon after the reshuffle, several

newspapers and the opposition demanded an official

investigation into allegations that the new defence

minister, Gheorghe Tinca, had ties with the Securitate. 

While these demands were refused, it was acknowledged

that army officers are now aware that they will remain

under strict control by the military counter-intelligence

department of the SRI, introduced in the Army through the

back door.



Another scandal was connected with reports that appeared

in the media alleging that the secret service through its

unit UM 0215 had revived old-style surveillance and

harassment actions against political parties, trade

unions and journalists.  Adrian Severin, the

vice-president of the opposition Democratic Party led by

the former prime minister, Petre Roman, claimed that his

party knew about this unit, and he has urged parliament's

defence and security commissions to investigate its

activity and the reports that Gheorghe Tinca had ties

with Ceausescu's Securitate.  These scandals have done

little to bolster confidence in the SRI or in the quality

of political debate, which - whether in pro-government or

pro-opposition circles - tends to be suffused wit

h sensationalist rumour and scandal-mongering.



In spite of these scandals, it was said that all the

changes that occurred during the spring of 1994 had

affected no more than 25% of the organisation's staff. 

These changes in the leadership of the SRI appear to be

part of a long-term personnel policy whose rationale is

at least hazy if we take into consideration the fact that

Magureanu dismissed allegations that the purge was

directed at the pro-Western wing of the SRI as

"hallucinations".



But those who suspect Magureanu of anti-Western feelings

seem to believe that he had close links to the KGB in the

1980s and was involved in a Soviet-backed conspiracy

against Ceausescu.  Magureanu is also criticized for

cultivating special intelligence relations with Russia

and for paying frequent visits to Moscow.  He has

repeatedly rejected such criticism, claiming that

cooperation between the SRI and the Russian secret

service currently focused on combating international

organized crime.  In what appears to be an overreaction

to the charges made against him, Magureanu publicly

stated that the KGB had played a role in Ceausescu's

overthrow in December 1989; and he also suggested that

the KGB was the most active foreign intelligence service

in modern-day Romania.



However, the current purges within the SRI do not

necessarily signal that the uncompromised, new generation

of officers have scored a victory over the old Securitate

guard.  Most new commanders of SRI divisions have

Securitate credentials, just like their predecessors. 

Thus, it is possible that Magureanu's main concern was to

get rid of those former Securitate officers who might

have posed a threat to his own position.  Both Diaconescu

and Cristea had long been tipped as possible successors

to the former professor of political science at the

Stefan Gheorghiu Academy, the Romanian Communist Party's

cadre school.  Irrespective of the reasons for the

personnel changes, the Romanian Intelligence service will

probably continue to experience "the enemy within"

syndrome for some time, while the mood in the service

will remain "extremely tense".



UM 0215 - THE RE-BIRTH OF A POLITICAL SECRET SERVICE



One of the most controversial intelligence services

currently operating in Romania is known by the code name

UM 0215.  This service, subordinated to the Ministry of

Internal Affairs, was set up as a haven for officers from

the notorious political police of the communist era. 

Independent media have repeatedly charged the service

with meddling in Romania's political life.  Despite

strong official denials, doubt continues to surround the

service's activities, with some critics suggesting that

it might take the role of a new political force by doing

some of the "dirty tricks" for the Romanian Intelligence

Service, the country's main security structure.



UM 0215 took shape in January 1990 as the brain-child of

Gelu Voican Voiculescu, one of the most enigmatic

characters involved in the events surrounding the

overthrow of Ceausescu.  During the turmoil, Voican

Voiculescu was involved in Ceausescu's trial, execution,

and secret burial as acting head, for a few days, of the

Department of State Security (DSS), which formally ceased

to exist shortly after the dictator's ouster.  On 26

December 1989, Ion Iliescu, then president of the

National Salvation Front Council, ordered the transfer of

the DSS and Security Troops Command from the Internal

Affairs Ministry to the Defence Ministry, and on 30

December signed a decree stipulating the dissolution of

the DSS.



In order to reorganize the country's intelligence system,

the new authorities decided to give three months' notice

to the Securitate employees, during which period they

were expected to carry on their activities under the new

military umbrella.  Voican Voiculescu, as newly appointed

deputy prime-minister, launched a campaign to

rehabilitate Securitate personnel in early 1990, which

later became an open glorification of that  institution

in nationalist-communist publications such as Romania

Mare and Europa.  According to some analysts, this

campaign was aimed at reactivating some segments of the

former Securitate in order to place them at the service

of a group within the nascent, postcommunist power

structures gravitating around Petre Roman, Romania's

prime minister from December 1989 to September 1991.



The first new secret service to be built on the ruins of

the Securitate seems to have been the Foreign

Intelligence Service, set up on 18 January 1990 under the

command of Major General Mihai Caraman, one of Roman's

friends and a former deputy-director, from 1972 to 1978,

of the Foreign Counter-intelligence Service.  He was

later replaced in April 1992 by Ioan Talpes, a former

adviser to President Iliescu.



Also in January 1990 Voican Voiculescu began preparations

to create UM 0215 by gathering some 400 employees of the

Securitate's Directorate IV (responsible for military

counter-intelligence) and the powerful Bucharest branch

of the former securitate service.  From the start, the

unit had the reputation of a political police force using

Securitate-style methods, including strict rules for

undercover operations and using code names and multiple

identities in addressing one another.  Even its very

designation recalled the Securitate's practice of giving

code names for its special departments consisting of the

letters "UM" followed by four figures.  Most of these

details became public only after Voican fell from grace

and was placed in diplomatic quarantine, as ambassador to

Tunis, in 1992, for allegedly knowing too much about

Romania's recent history and its protagonists.



It is said that none of all the secret services currently

operating in Romania has changed its command as often as

UM 0215.  Its first head was Colonel Ion Moldoveanu, a

Securitate officer who had allegedly been in charge of

the surveillance of the Romanian dissidents.  From

February 1990 to February 1993 another three former

Securitate officers were appointed and dismissed as the

head of UM 0215.  Since 1993 the unit's commander has

been Major General Dan Gheorghe, who prior to 1989 was in

charge of the surveillance of foreign students living in

Bucharest.  The service is currently said to employ some

1,000 officers in Bucharest and some twenty in each of

Romania's forty counties.  It is reportedly made up of

two divisions.  One is for counter-intelligence, which in

official jargon is termed "protection of the cadre of the

Internal Affairs Ministry".  The other one is for

intelligence, which is divided into three sections:

combating hooliganism; delinquency and "parasitism" (a

term reminiscent of the Ceausescu era, largely misused

for persecuting political opponents); and economic

crimes.





THE ENEMY WITHIN: THE SECRET SERVICES' INTERFERENCE IN

POLITICS



The accusation most frequently levelled against SRI and

UM 0215 is that they have involved themselves in

political life to such a degree that they have become a

political police force.  Some of these apprehensions are

rooted in the highly politicized circumstances under

which the new Romanian secret service was created. 

Critics maintain that UM 0215 was set up and functioned

for more than two years as a secret service loyal to

Petre Roman's faction within the National Salvation Front

(NSF), while the SRI emerged as a kind of "personal

security service" for President Iliescu.  In December

1991, in a letter attributed to a group of officers from

the Foreign Intelligence Service, UM 0215 was depicted as

Voican Voiculescu's "fiefdom" and was charged with having

continued to provide information to Roman, even after he

had ceased to be prime minister.



Growing frictions within the NSF and the party's split in

March 1992 led to the conclusion that a "true war" was

going on between the SRI and UM 0215.  In the end, forces

loyal to Iliescu and the head of the SRI, Virgil

Magureanu, prevailed.  As a result, Gheorghe's subsequent

appointment as head of UM 0215 was attributed by some

sources to Magureanu's personal intervention.  During the

critical phase of the conflict in 1992, the SRI

repeatedly denied that there was any tension between

itself and UM 0215.  But it apparently orchestrated a

series of media "revelations" about the unit's

activities, in an attempt to make the unit shoulder the

blame for most of the dark episodes in Romania's

political life in the first half of 1990.



The interference of UM 0215 in politics was by no means

limited to taking sides in the conflict between opposing

wings of the ruling party.  The service proved far more

active in undermining Romania's democratic opposition,

especially in the first months after the fall of the

Ceausescu regime.  Among the known actions attributed to

it are the infiltration by agents provocateurs of an

opposition rally on 18 February 1990, which turned

violent; the distribution of fake Legionary leaflets

claiming that a fascist take-over in Romania was

imminent; the selective release of documents from the

Securitate archives aimed at compromising opposition

leaders who ran in the elections of May 1990; the

infiltration of the non-stop marathon rally in

Bucharest's University Square from April to June 1990;

and direct participation in anti-opposition violence that

occurred in Bucharest on 14 and 15 June 1990, when

thousands of miners from the Jiu Valley descended on the

capital.  Voican Voiculescu dismissed some of these

accusations as fabrications stemming from the SRI;

however he admitted that he had favoured the use of

Securitate files in the 1990 election campaign.



The involvement of two UM 0215 officers in the ransacking

in June 1990 of the home of Ion Ratiu, a leading figure

in the National Peasant Party-Christian Democratic

(PNT-CD) who returned to Romania in December 1989 after

spending more than 40 years in exile in Britain, was

proved in court in February 1994.  The accused - former

Colonel Ion Nicolae and Sergeant Cornel Dumitrescu - were

sentenced to four and three years respectively for having

stolen $100,000 from Ratiu's house.



However, the issue of who was behind the June 1990 riots

in Bucharest is much more complicated that it appears at

first glance.  Despite repeated denials by its leaders,

there are clear indications of the SRI's involvement. 

Recently, Voican Voiculescu even accused Magureanu of

having staged the violence in order to take over as prime

minister.  Other sources claim that the miners' arrival

in Bucharest was orchestrated by Major Dumitru Iliescu

(now a colonel), the chief of President Iliescu's Special

Guard and Protocol Unit (renamed the Protection and

Protocol Service in July 1991).



After June 1990 Internal Affairs Minister Doru Viorel

Ursu and his successor, Victor Babiuc (both close

associates of former Prime Minister Roman), are believed

to have succeeded in disciplining UM 0215.  It is thought

that the unit suspended activities that might be

construed as interference in political affairs and

focused instead on tasks normally undertaken by an

internal affairs ministry.



In 1993, however, internal regulations were released that

apparently signaled a resumption of questionable,

Securitate-style practices, including the gathering of

intelligence on Romanians living, studying, or working

abroad; people with dual citizenship; employees of

foreign firms in Romania; and foreign residents.  It was

also reported that the service was keeping tabs on

leaders of political parties and trade unions, political

personalities and journalists.  It also revealed the

close cooperation between UM 0215 and the SRI, which

involved the former being obliged to enter immediately

all sensitive information into the SRI's computer

network.  This implicitly confirms that the two services

have buried the hatchet and are now coordinating their

objectives.





Following the disclosure, the Chamber of Deputies

commission for Defence, Public Order, and National

Security summoned Gheorghe and Internal Affairs Minister

Doru Ioan Taracila to respond to the accusations.  The

two defended the reputation of the service and denied

again any involvement in Romania's political life.  They

conceded, however, that some employees might have

overstepped the rules; if this had happened, they added,

it was only because of behaviour "sequels" among some

officers.  Taracila stressed that UM 0215 was functioning

in accordance with the National Security Law, while 

Gheorghe insisted that those under surveillance - both

Romanians and foreigners - where suspected of involvement

with terrorist or criminal activities.  The arguments

 were accepted without reservation by Petre Roman,

currently the leader of the Democratic Party - National

Salvation Front and the chairman of the Chamber of

Deputies Commission for National Security.  This position

came as a surprise in view of Roman's denouncements of

any attempt to revive the spirit and methods of the

former Securitate.



As if there were not enough secret services in Romania,

in May 1994 media announced the creation of an Operative

Surveillance and Intelligence Directorate (DSOI) within

the Internal Affairs Ministry.  Colonel Traian Dima was

appointed head of the directorate, which stressed its

independence of UM 0215.  The DSOI appears to focus on

police-related tasks, especially combating organized,

cross-border crime.  However, as in the case of the SRI

and UM 0215, some of its powers are reminiscent of those

wielded by the communist secret police.





CONCLUSION



The present situation inside the Romanian intelligence

establishment shows to what extent the legacy of the

Securitate, one of the most brutal instruments of

repression in the former communist bloc, continues to

cast a shadow over Romania's quest for democracy and

European integration.  In light of this dubious legacy,

reassuring statements such as those uttered recently by

Taracila or Magureanu on the profile and the role of the

Romanian intelligence community, may sound hollow as long

as the facts seem to contradict them.



For the time being, together with Iliescu, Magureanu is

in fact the only leading figure of the December 1989

revolt to have retained his position within the

post-communist power structure.  Some analysts regard

Magureanu as the gray eminence of Romania's political

scene and warn against underestimating his influence in

the country's politics.  Thus, as long as the Romanian

secret service continues to function without a clear

legal basis of budgetary allotment, and the fate of

Romania's policy is decided behind closed doors, the

enemy within will destroy Romania's fragile path to

democracy and to a new destiny.









References





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