Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
07BUCHAREST52
2007-01-17 12:47:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Bucharest
Cable title:  

LUSTRATION: SECURITATE RECORDS HANDED OVER BUT

Tags:  PGOV KCOR SOCI KJUS RO 
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VZCZCXRO0098
RR RUEHDBU RUEHFL RUEHKW RUEHLA RUEHROV RUEHSR
DE RUEHBM #0052/01 0171247
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
R 171247Z JAN 07
FM AMEMBASSY BUCHAREST
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 5850
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 BUCHAREST 000052 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

STATE DEPT FOR EUR/NCE - AARON JENSEN

E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/16/2017
TAGS: PGOV KCOR SOCI KJUS RO
SUBJECT: LUSTRATION: SECURITATE RECORDS HANDED OVER BUT
MANY QUESTIONS REMAIN

REF: A. A) 2006 BUCHAREST 1368


B. B) 2006 BUCHAREST 1202

Classified By: Deputy Chief of Mission Mark A. Taplin for reasons 1.4 (
b) & (d)

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 BUCHAREST 000052

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

STATE DEPT FOR EUR/NCE - AARON JENSEN

E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/16/2017
TAGS: PGOV KCOR SOCI KJUS RO
SUBJECT: LUSTRATION: SECURITATE RECORDS HANDED OVER BUT
MANY QUESTIONS REMAIN

REF: A. A) 2006 BUCHAREST 1368


B. B) 2006 BUCHAREST 1202

Classified By: Deputy Chief of Mission Mark A. Taplin for reasons 1.4 (
b) & (d)


1. (SBU) Summary. President Basescu announced December 29
that the intelligence services have completed the transfer of
the archives of the former communist political police, the
Securitate, to the National Council for the Study of
Securitate Archives (CNSAS). At his urging, the Supreme
Council for National Defense (CSAT) directed that all
archives be handed over to the CNSAS before EU accession.
However, despite Basescu,s optimistic announcement, more
than 100,000 Securitate files reportedly remain in the
custody of the intelligence services, still classified as
important to "national security.8 Members of CNSAS asserted
that the security services have not cooperated fully in the
lustration process, shielding some of the worst Securitate
perpetrators. The conventional wisdom in Bucharest is that
much about the Securitate will never come to light, in large
part because many current political figures and security
officials still have secrets to hide that date back to the
communist period. End summary.

A Clean Slate before EU Accession
--------------


2. (SBU) President Traian Basescu visited the headquarters of
the Council for the Study of Securitate Archives (CNSAS) just
before year's end to announce that the transfer of the
Securitate archives had been completed. It is a project the
president insisted should be completed before EU accession
and one which he had publicly championed. The Supreme Council
for National Defense (CSAT) ordered the Romanian Intelligence
Service (SRI),the Foreign Intelligence Service (SIE),and
the Ministry of Defense (MOD),to complete the transfer of
the Securitate archives to the CNSAS by the end of the year.
Basescu declared he was taking a direct interest in the issue
and would personally check whether the decision would be
carried out in time. A few hours before the planned visit of
President Basescu to the CNSAS headquarters, all three

institutions announced &mission accomplished.8

Many Files Still Hidden or Lost
--------------


3. (SBU) However, more than 100,000 Securitate files will
remain in the custody of the two main intelligence services.
The SRI announced that it would keep under its control 75,000
files with information about counter-espionage and
anti-terrorism. SIE director (and former presidential
political advisor) Claudiu Saftoiu declared in an interview
published December 28 that the SIE retains in its
&operative8 archive 27,000 files from the Securitate
period. He claimed that access to the content of these files
would &compromise ongoing operations.8 However, Basescu
remarked December 29 that even these files will be reassessed
in the following months by joint committees made up of two
representatives of CNSAS and two from the intelligence
services. He underlined that &with the CNSAS' agreement,8
the files considered "of national interest" would remain
under SRI custody, but all other files will be subjected to
the scrutiny of the CNSAS researchers.


4. (SBU) The integrity of the Securitate archives handed over
to CNSAS is another controversial issue. Journalists,
researchers, and others have noted that files were missing
and existing files were incomplete. For example, prominent
Romanian dissidents have been told that their files did not
exist. The files of politicians recently exposed as former
collaborators of the Securitate had missing pages. SIE
director Saftoiu acknowledged in his December 28 interview
that it is very likely that many files had been destroyed
between the collapse of communism in December 1989 and the
reestablishment of the Foreign Intelligence Service in
February 1990. Basescu acknowledged that he "cannot
guarantee that the SRI archive is intact or that no file has
been taken out from it since 1990.8

CNSAS Officials Fear Loss of Momentum
--------------


5. (C) CNSAS President, Claudiu Secasiu, along with CNSAS
member Dragos Petrescu, and the Director of Investigations,
Dr. Germina Nagat, told poloff in a December 15 meeting that
they routinely found evidence of tampering in the archives
and claimed to have proof of at least 1,000 destroyed files.
Secasiu also pointed to what he characterized as a broad
coalition arrayed against the institution, "with voices from

BUCHAREST 00000052 002 OF 003


the left and right accusing CNSAS of illegitimacy." He
complained that politicians have concluded that CNSAS as an
institution was "no longer necessary anymore." They also
complained of a concerted media effort to discredit the
institution's work. Secasiu asserted that the CNSAS had made
real progress in the spring of 2006, taking advantage of the
arrival of a new government in power and provisions in the
law that enabled "indirect lustration" by uncovering former
members of the political police by piecing together evidence
from files of both collaborators and victims. He argued that
the composition of the CNSAS, which includes two
representatives from each of the major parties, had
"depoliticized" CNSAS decisions on individuals' files -- an
assertion with which many political observers in Bucharest
would argue. However, relatively few files made reference to
current politicians.


6. (C) To illustrate how cumbersome is the process of
identifying higher level politicians guilty of political
policing, Nagat said she had worked for two years on the
recent case of a former minister, piecing together from
individual files the code name, evidence of identity, and
evidence of political policing. (Note: Though she did not
mention the former minister's name, it was understood from
the context to be that of former Justice Minister and Senator
Rodica Stanoiu.) According to press reports, Stanoiu wrote
about 30 "informative notes" to the Securitate about
colleagues she worked with during the communist period.
Nagat said CNSAS researchers have considerable evidence
against former Securitate officers, but that the current law
requires the CNSAS not to identify individuals without their
birth date and parents' names. She claimed the security
services do not want to provide this information because it
would lead to more revelations about the role of the former
Securitate.


7. (C) Nagat gave Poloff a tour of the CNSAS Department of
Investigations, where several dozen young researchers were
crammed into a room poring through files and entering pieces
of information into a custom-made computer database to
facilitate cross-referencing. No electronic or card indexes
were available, a major impediment. When asked what type of
pressures the investigators felt, Nagat said these recent
university graduates were relatively insulated from the
political pressures she had felt under the last government.
It was only then, she emphasized, that she felt she "could
breathe." Sufficient funds were allocated in 2006 to build an
archive and the number of researchers was increased to 300,
though a request for an additional 120 positions was rejected
by the Romanian parliament in November. With almost two
million volumes to review, plenty of work remained and the
staff appeared to be busy.

Former Securitate officers and informants still active?
-------------- --------------


8. (C) A former dissident and leading member of the CNSAS
board, Constantin Ticu Dumitrescu, argues that there has been
&massive destruction8 of the Securitate archives, citing
the fact that the CNSAS has "only" received 17 kilometers of
archives, whereas in Germany the STASI archive has 176
kilometers. &Was the Romanian Securitate more stupid than
the German one?8 he asked rhetorically. Another outspoken
member of the CNSAS board, Mircea Dinescu, contested the
decision of the intelligence services to classify a sizeable
part of the Securitate archives on the grounds of continuing
"national interest.8 Dinescu believes, as do other
Romanians, that many former informants are still active in a
country that he claims employs more intelligence officers now
than under Ceausescu.


9. (C) Comment: While President Basescu has championed the
release of Securitate archives and the overall
de-communization process (reftels),the political class as a
whole seems to have concluded that it cannot risk moving
further ahead on lustration. Senior Romanian intelligence
officials have acknowledged as much to us in informal
conversations. Even Liberals like Prime Minister Tariceanu,
who initially expected to capitalize politically on the
outing of rivals like Senator Mona Musca, were shocked to see
how quickly the ad hoc revelations and leaks emanating last
summer from the CNSAS spun out of the control of any single
party or interest group. Facing a downward spiral of
damaging press stories and the spectacle of more prominent
figures facing CNSAS "hearings" and the accompanying TV
cameras, the major party heads seem to have tacitly agreed to
pull back. Liberal deputies, who long championed a
lustration law, point to Basescu's surprise choice of
opposition Social Democrat George Maior for SRI director as
evidence the president has ceded control over the most

BUCHAREST 00000052 003 OF 003


sensitive files to the former communists. Yet Prime Minister
Tariceanu's national security advisor, himself a Liberal and
scholar specializing in the history of the Securitate,
acknowledged to us recently that a proposed new law on
lustration was stuck in Parliament with no prospects for it
to move forward this year. "I'm sorry to say," he explained,
"that my own party does not want to pursue this matter
because we cannot risk antagonizing the Social Democrats,"
whom the Prime Minister must rely on to help him keep his
minority government propped up. While the CNSAS is likely to
reveal many interesting details about lesser figures in the
months ahead, the big political players look to be relatively
safe. While the year-end transfer of Securitate files to the
CNSAS underscores that politicians and Romania's elite no
longer enjoy unchallenged control over the intelligence
dossiers, most powerful heads will still rest easy at night.
End Comment.
TAUBMAN