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Romania Department of External Information
The Department of External Information (DIE) was
Romania's
primary foreign intelligence organization
(see
fig. 13).
It worked
closely with the Ministry of Interior, the Securitate, and
the
general staff's Directorate for Military Intelligence
(Directia de
Informatii a Armatei--DIA). The defection of the DIE
deputy
director, Lieutenant General Ion Pacepa, in 1978 revealed
considerable information on its activities abroad for the
first
time, precipitated a major purge of personnel from the
DIE, and
contributed to the cooling of relations between Romania
and the
United States in the 1980s.
The DIE was formed with Soviet assistance in the
mid-1950s.
Until the early 1960s, Romania sent its intelligence
officers to
attend a two-year KGB training course in espionage
tradecraft near
Moscow. In 1964 Romanian leader Gheorghiu-Dej curtailed
DIE
cooperation with the KGB and established a DIE training
center in
Brosteni, in Suceava judet.
The Directorate for Operations conducted clandestine
intelligence collection and other activities outside
Romania. Its
officers operated under cover throughout the world,
collecting
political, economic, and technical intelligence for
analysis by the
Directorate for Foreign Intelligence. Brigade SD had 300
intelligence officers who were assigned primarily to
Western
countries to conduct technological espionage. It focused
on
acquiring military-related technology for use in the
domestic arms
industry and armed forces. According to Pacepa, however,
Romania
also transferred illegally obtained Western industrial,
electronics, nuclear energy, and data-processing
technology to the
Soviet Union, under a secret bilateral agreement, in
exchange for
hard currency.
Within the Directorate for Operations, the Emigré
Brigade had
intelligence officers who contacted and worked among the
600,000
Romanian émigrés living in the United States, France, and
West
Germany. Playing on Romanian nationalism, they encouraged
former
Romanian citizens to cooperate with the DIE in obtaining
Western
high technology and engendering a favorable image of
Romania
abroad. The Emigré Brigade also monitored the activities
of exiled
dissidents who were vocal critics of the Ceausescu regime
and
attempted to assassinate selected émigrés in retaliation
for their
opposition to Ceausescu.
In 1982 a Romanian agent who was dispatched to kill
dissident
writers Paul Goma and Virgil Tanase in Paris defected to
French
authorities before undertaking his mission. This episode
severely
strained previously close French-Romanian relations. The
DIE's
primary target abroad, however, was the Munich-based staff
of Radio
Free Europe's (RFE) Romanian service, many of whom were
Romanian
émigrés. For many years, RFE's Romanian service had
monitored
internal developments in Romania and exposed the
repressive nature
of the Ceausescu regime. The beating and stabbing of
several RFE
staff members by unidentified assailants, several death
threats,
and the deaths from cancer of three successive directors
of the
Romanian service were attributed by some observers to DIE
operations.
Also within the Directorate for Operations, Service D
conducted
covert operations, including the dissemination of
forgeries and
disinformation, to promote Romanian national interests and
foreign
policies. According to Pacepa, Service D's forgeries and
disinformation were designed to influence Western
countries to
reward Romania for its independence of the Soviet Union
with
economic assistance and trading privileges and to generate
political support among Third World countries. Service Z
of the
Directorate for Operations reportedly maintained ties to
non-state
entities including guerrilla movements, terrorist groups,
and
international organized crime.
The Directorate for Technical Equipment was responsible
for
designing or obtaining specialized espionage equipment
required by
the DIE. It was reportedly involved in equipping some
Romanian
trucks to conduct espionage operations in Western Europe.
The DIE's
National Center for Enciphered Communications had the
mission of
protecting Romanian government and party communications
from
Western and Soviet electronic monitoring. In 1989 the
ministries of
national defense, interior, foreign affairs, and foreign
trade
relied on the center's encryption systems in their daily
operations
at home and abroad.
* * *
The best sources of information on Romanian military
history,
doctrine, and strategy are Ilie Ceausescu's Romanian
Military
Doctrine and Ion Coman's The Romanian National
Defense
Concept. They cover the development of the Romanian
military
establishment from the earliest times until World War II.
Romanian
writers, however, ignore Soviet-Romanian fighting between
1941 and
1944, as well as Soviet domination of Romania until the
late 1950s.
John Erickson's two-volume set, Stalin's War with
Germany,
fills this gap. Alex Alexiev's Romania and the Warsaw
Pact
and Aurel Braun's Romanian Foreign Policy since
1965 provide
the best descriptions and analyses of postwar developments
in
Romania's defense policy and armed forces.
Information on more current developments in the
Romanian
military establishment can be found in several sources.
Radio Free
Europe analysts have written extensively on Romanian arms
sales,
military budget, major command changes, and the
professional
military establishment's relations with the PCR and
General
Secretary Ceausescu.
There are few sources of information on Romania's
system of law
and order. Radio Free Europe Research [Munich],
produces
highly reliable articles on dissidence in Romania.
Lieutenant
General Ion Pacepa's Red Horizons is a highly
interpretive
firsthand account of the structure and domestic and
foreign
activities of Romania's security and intelligence
services. He was
deputy director of the DIE and a personal adviser to
Ceausescu
before defecting in 1978. (For further information and
complete
citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of July 1989
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