Romanian Media to Find Out Which Journalists Worked For the Securitate

The initiative of the NGO led by journalist Victor Roncea to ask the authority in charge with the files of the communist intelligence services, or CNSAS, to make public the names of journalists cooperating with the former Securitate is up to a good start.

So far we found out that three of Roncea’s colleagues at the Ziua daily had signed contracts to collaborate with the Securitate; this fact lent more credibility to the project.

It is obvious that it is in our collective interest to find out which one in the journalistic profession was a collaborator. It is time for these people to become publicly accountable and answer for their deeds.

It is then up to the media owners and media consumers to decide if those journalists can stay in the profession or not.

The intelligence services cannot have any valid reason why to recruit personnel among working journalists, unless they plan to use them for collecting information abroad, relevant to the national security.

Domestically, this is unacceptable. An intelligence service has far more resources on the national territory than any media outlet, people working for it in the highest places, and the ability to monitor telecommunications.

This is why recruiting journalists for gathering information domestically smacks of political policing the population.

This is why I do not believe any of the journalists working for the Securitate ever provided information relevant to the national security. The Securitate interest was to control and prevent political dissent towards the political regime, not Romania’s overall security.

I was questioned by the former Securitate in my hometown of Constanta on 20 December 1989, for taking part in the events in Timisoara, the city I was studying in and where the revolution in Romania originated. I was then 19, and a student in mechanical engineering.

The Securitate officers asked me to give a written statement of what I did in Timisoara. When they read it they threatened me "they will shave me with an eyebrows tweezers." They let me go after two hours. They were in a hurry to report completing the inquiry of the group of Constanta born youngsters studying in Timisoara.

I was pretty shaken up by this experience. I still believe that those people, and other like them, should pay for what they did.

In 1994 I was questioned again, this time by the Prosecutor’s General Office, for alleged attack to the national security. At the time I was working in the newsroom of Evenimentul zilei daily.

I graduated from journalism school and went on to have postgraduate studies on defense issues, at the National College for Defense and the College for National Security.

Hundreds of other journalists attended those courses too. I specialized in this field, mentored by journalist Ion Cristoiu, whom I thank to this day for his encouragement to go into investigative journalism.

I never accepted to cooperate as an informant with the intelligence services, but it is very likely that writing - presumably better than other people on defense issues - and also doing it as a Romania correspondent for the Jane’s Defense Weekly, made some label me as an intelligence officer working for a foreign country.

There are people working in the media who are either dishonest or psychologically unstable, or both. I recommend them to seek treatment.

We may see miracles, both in medical terms, for these individuals, and in ethical terms, for the profession as a whole. I am a believer of that.

Translated by Anca Paduraru