Previous intelligence services in Romania In 1865, the
Romanian General Staff (inspired by the French system) created the 2nd Section (
Secția a II-a) to gather and analyze
military intelligence. This marked a growing interest in centralising intelligence efforts spurring the creation of the General Safety Bureau in 1892 within the Ministry of the Interior with responsibilities pertaining to the safety of the state. However, despite ambitions, the various government entities and associated municipal governance structures were not set up in a way which allowed for national, collective intelligence services. Prior to 1905, Romania’s regional police forces were dependent on the local politics and had no strategic continuity. The
1907 Peasants' Revolt highlighted critical gaps in oversight, specifically in the ability to ascertain with certainty the motives behind the revolt and whether any foreign elements were involved in the events. In March 1908, the Bureau became the Police and General Safety Directorate. Among its responsibilities of leading judicial and law enforcement matters nationally, it would also occupy itself with gathering intelligence pertaining to events and offences with a political footprint. In a bid to correct the gaps of the past, police infrastructure was reorganised with regional brigades in each municipal capital. Funded centrally and with a focus on gathering information pertaining to the security of state borders, a key distinguishing feature was the complete independence from regional politics thereby ensuring a stable and organised entity. The intelligence gathering responsibilities were shared with the Prefect’s Office of the Capital City Police and General Inspectorate of the Gendarmerie. In parallel with law enforcement developments, select intelligence and counter-intelligence units were being created by the Romanian Army with a remit of both at home and abroad. Between 1914 and 1918 Romania faced unrest on several fronts including corruption, espionage and a unification war. The impact of recent reorganisation efforts should not be overlooked. The establishment of central entities for gathering, processing and sharing information critical to national security allowed the Romanian State to maintain its integrity in the face of more powerful states in central Europe and uncover German spies, some in positions of power within government and armed forces. As of 1918, the State of Romania included 3 new provinces which brought their own challenges to national security considerations. New ethnic minority groups, now under the geographic territory of Romania, formed political and revolutionary groups causing further unrest. Simultaneously, there were significant political and social issues emerging in the aftermath of the first world war which would continue to overshadow national security decisions for decades to come. For this reason, national security became wholly focused on domestic issues and lost sight of foreign threats even though, it can be argued that espionage threats were increasing across Europe. It is critical at this point to highlight that the geographic location of Romania was considered strategically advantageous for political, economic and military interests and coveted for its rich natural resources. For example, German and Anglo competing (and often in conflict) interests in expansion have often played out in Romanian territory. This hidden war gave rise to many espionage operations by France and the United Kingdom. Various publications in the years that followed which boasted of successful agents and their missions prompted the start of a new department of intelligence. By 1925, after several years of efforts,
Mihail Moruzov managed to convince the General Staff about the necessity of a
secret service that uses civilian employees to gather intelligence of interest to the
Romanian Army.
Iulian Vlad, the head of the Securitate, together with some of his deputies, were arrested on December 31, 1989; Iliescu named
Gelu Voican Voiculescu as the new head of the Securitate. Voiculescu assured the Securitate agents that he does not intent to wage a war against individual Securitate officers and, by mid-January 1990, the Securitate officers continued their activity in their old headquarters.
Securitate archives SRI inherited Securitate's archives and it has been accused of destroying parts of it or supplying sensitive parts to certain politicians. On June 22, 1990, SRI officers unloaded a truck full of Securitate documents in a forest in
Berevoești,
Argeș County, after which they buried them with soil. The goal was to transfer all Securitate documents which "do not affect national security".
Involvement in the Mineriad The extent of the involvement of the Romanian Intelligence Service in the violent repression of the
1990 anti-government protests has been a matter of debate. On June 12, 1990, the government decided that the Police and Army, in collaboration with the Intelligence Service, evacuate the protesters of
University Square. During the violence that followed, the protesters attacked the headquarters of the Romanian Intelligence Service with rocks and
Molotov cocktails. This view is supported by military prosecutor Dan Voinea, who said that all the miner groups were escorted by police and SRI agents who led them to the headquarters of parties and NGOs. During the 2000s,
Virgil Măgureanu, the head of the SRI at the time, has been investigated by prosecutors (together with other leaders including President
Ion Iliescu) for several counts including
genocide and
torture, however they decided in 2009 not to charge him with any crime.
Phone tapping In 1996, a former SRI employee, Constantin Bucur was the
whistleblower who alerted the media that the Romanian Intelligence Service was performing illegal phone tappings of politicians, journalists and other public figures. Bucur was convicted for revealing
top secret information, The president of the Group of Political Investigations (a Romanian organization that independently monitors the activity of state agencies), Mugur Ciuvică, has stated that he has evidence of ongoing illegal phone tappings. According to Ilie Botoș, a former Attorney General of Romania, between 1991 and 2003, the phones of 20,000 people have been tapped. For the year 2005, a number of 6370 phones belonging to 2373 people were tapped, the average tapping being of 220 days. Patriciu sued the Intelligence Service and won a compensation of 50,000 lei in 2011.
Relationship with the press The Romanian Intelligence Service had an uneasy relationship with the press, which it monitored, infiltrated and accused of being a national security liability. In 2010, "the press" has been included in the list of national vulnerabilities in the "National Strategy for the Defence of the Country". An early controversy occurred in 1996, when Tana Ardeleanu (a journalist for
Ziua who had published some articles about President
Ion Iliescu) had been
shadowed by SRI agents. Amid press anger, SRI director
Virgil Măgureanu admitted that SRI agents followed Ardeleanu and argued that the surveillance was a "mistake" and that the agents thought they were following two suspected spies. This claim has been quite controversial, as, according to
Cristian Tudor Popescu, journalists are not a threat to national security The Romanian Intelligence Service admitted that the documents were indeed genuine, but it claimed that their agent was only monitoring the leaking of secret documents to the press.
Known operations In March 2005, three Romanian journalists were kidnapped in Iraq by unknown abductors (later described as members of the Muadh ibn Jabal Brigades) in
Baghdad's
al-Mansour district. A few weeks after being kidnapped, the terrorists broadcast a tape on
Al-Jazeera stating that they would kill the journalists if Romania did not withdraw its 860 troops from Iraq. However, due to efforts of the Romanian intelligence community and the collaboration between several intelligence agencies, the group were freed on May 23, 2005, when they were placed in the hands of the Romanian Embassy in Baghdad. It is believed that (the former deputy director of the SRI) coordinated the rescue operation. On 28 February 2008, the Romanian counter-intelligence officers arrested a
Bulgarian
military attaché, Petar Marinov Zikolov, and a Romanian NCO, Floricel Achim. They have been prosecuted with charges of espionage. It is believed that the leaked information might have been sent to
Russia or
Ukraine. The Bulgarians have denied any connection with Zikolov. This has been one of the few espionage cases that have received media attention. ==Programs==