My first interview since retiring from CIA (2000-2024). My thanks to Marian Chiriac (Balkan Insight, BIRN SINOPSIS) for his interest in what I had so say on the topics. I will post the links to the interview (translated by Marian into Romanian), Marian’s summary in English regarding the regional comparative aspects of the interview (for the Balkan Insight audience), and my original responses to his questions in English. Thanks and hope you find interesting.
https://sinopsis.info.ro/2025/08/25/fost-analist-cia-despre-iliescu-teroristi-revolutie-i/
https://sinopsis.info.ro/2025/08/26/fost-analist-cia-despre-iliescu-teroristi-revolutie-ii/
https://balkaninsight.com/2025/08/26/former-cia-analyst-sheds-new-light-on-romanias-revolution-story/
Richard Andrew Hall (Rich Hall), Ph.D.: Introduction on my background
I first became familiar with Romania with the Summer Olympics of 1976 and 1984, when Romania was celebrated by the West. I became politically interested in Romania only in 1985 at the age of 19. In 1987, while backpacking for three months across Europe, especially communist Eastern Europe, I spent a week in Romania. Like the rest of the world, I watched the Romanian Revolution on television. I was living at my parents’ house in northern Virginia and working a boring, private sector job. As a graduate student at Indiana University, I visited Romania for three weeks in 1990 and again in 1991, three months in 1992, and 10 months on a dissertation research grant in 1993-1994. After I received my Ph.D. in Political Science in 1997, I returned to Romania to teach a semester and continue my research on the Revolution. I joined CIA in 2000; I had no prior association with CIA except the application process. I was an intelligence analyst for 23 years, about half the time working counter-terrorism because of 9/11, and the other half on Europe, where I was able to use my Romanian and Hungarian language skills on a daily basis. I have been studying and writing about the Revolution for 35 years, before, during, and after my CIA employment.
- The recent passing of Mr. Ion Iliescu has brought back into the spotlight a key issue in Romania’s collective memory: the “truth” about the 1989 Revolution. In this context, how do you interpret Ion Iliescu’s role in the revolution and in Romania’s post-1989 transition?
Let us start with Iliescu’s broader role and work back to the Revolution. Iliescu was already a political anachronism in 1990. His insistence on staying politically active and running for and serving as president ruined the way in which he will be remembered. Much of the anger shown toward Iliescu is about what he did and didn’t do as politician and president and this is retroactively projected back on to his role in December 1989. This is bad historical analysis and unfair. Because Iliescu is guilty for his role in the 1990 mineriada does not mean the accusations about his role in December 1989 are true. A person deserves to be judged for their actions at a particular moment in time, not judged retroactively in light of what they did later.
Iliescu could have been remembered for stepping down when he lost elections in 1996 and his mandate ended in 2004. One only has to look at Serbia and how Slobodan Milosevic tried to defy election results in 2000 to realize that leaving power at the end of a mandate is not automatic. Some of the criticisms of Iliescu are partisan and/or subjective nonsense: for example, the idea that Iliescu was some Russian agent. Romania continued on the road to EU and NATO membership (the latter achieved during Iliescu’s presidency in 2004) just like it did during Emil Constantinescu’s presidency. There was a broad political consensus among mainstream center-right and center-left parties in Romania towards joining these bedrock Western groupings. That was something that made Romania an attractive geopolitical partner for the United States.
Iliescu was what they call a “cost of the transition” from communism because of timing and how that transition played out. In Poland, it meant that Wojciech Jaruzelski was president for a year and a half because of the Round Table Agreement between Solidarity and the communist regime. Iliescu and the National Salvation Front were a cost of the transition—specifically a transition from Nicolae Ceausescu’s dictatorship. In Bulgaria, the cost of the transition was similar to Romania, because except for a brief government in 1991-1992, the former communists dominated politics until early 1997.
Ion Iliescu arrived late for his historical role. Had he arrived as Karoly Grosz in Hungary (1987-1989 in positions of power), a timid reformer of the late communist era, uncomfortable with political pluralism, he would be far better regarded today. But then again, that was all-but-impossible because of the character of the Ceausescu regime. Instead, Iliescu is remembered for encouraging and welcoming the miners’ brutality in June 1990 and for presiding over political alliances with the ultranationalist, Ceausescu nostalgics from 1992 to 1995.
- How do you interpret the charges against Iliescu for crimes against humanity related to the revolution, especially in light of your research on the aftermath and the continuing conflict following Ceaușescu’s fall?
The official argument in the Indictment is that Iliescu and the Army engaged in a “false flag” operation, that they created/invented a non-existent enemy—securisti-teroristi—in order to legitimize their seizure of power, prevent the continuation of an anti-communist revolution from below, and cover-up the Army’s role in the repression in Timisoara and elsewhere. Retired military prosecutor Catalin Ranco Pitu and his promoters are always telling us how “logical” this explanation is.
Let us examine this accusation/explanation for a minute. I don’t think those who accept Pitu’s claims really understand what his argument implies. In fact, I am not sure Pitu does. In order for the Indictment to be correct, Pitu and company must demonstrate that there was not a single real terrorist, that all 1,425 people, each and every one of them, who were arrested as suspects, were arrested by mistake or without cause. They must go through, to begin with, all 1,425 people on the list in the Files and demonstrate that each and every one of the suspects was innocent. Pitu has done nothing of the sort.
Moreover, Pitu claims the Army operationalized an existing plan. How is it that the Securitate did not know about the plan and were unable to stop it? Directorate Four—military counter-intelligence, the CI-isti—somehow didn’t know or couldn’t stop it? How is it that no Securitate officer in December 1989 or immediately after came forth in domestic or international media to reveal this alleged “false flag?” How is it that there was no dissident Army member or revolutionary or bystander who said, wait a minute this isn’t right, it is not fair to make the Securitate a scapegoat, and came forward in the media to reveal this so-called “truth?” Pitu wants us to believe that the Securitate knew about this plan, were the victims of it, but said nothing at the time about it? That’s pretty ridiculous. Moreover, he wants us to believe that Iliescu and the Army were better at disinformation than the Securitate which had a unit specifically devoted to Disinformation. That makes no sense. That is Pitu’s “logic.”
Ultimately, though, history is not about logic, but about what happened, which often includes elements that in retrospect seem illogical, but may have been very logical for the actors involved at the time. Thanks to an injured party in the Revolution case and European law, since 2021 my colleague Andrei Ursu and I have had access to the documents in the so-called Revolution File. We thus know what the military prosecutors used from the File in preparing the Indictment, but we also know what they have ignored.
Recently, Pitu repeated in the press what he told Ion Cristoiu in May 2023: that each and every component of the Defense Ministry prepared after action reports on December 1989 and that, independently, each and every component, as well as the operations’ journals, concluded that there were “no terrorists.” This is absolutely false. On the contrary, those documents—they are included in the file “dosar revolutie nou,” and many of them were declassified in 2017/2018 from the MApN archive in Pitesti—demonstrate exactly the opposite of what Pitu says. I would appreciate if you could publish some of them in some form.
Pitu is a promoter and disseminator of the former Securitate’s narrative on December 1989. He is covering up for the former Securitate. I can only figure that Pitu engages in such a blatant lie about the declassified MApN documents because he knows that the Romanian media will not challenge him. You have to understand: when you read these documents, you realize this isn’t a matter of interpretation, this isn’t just negligence. Pitu knows exactly what he is doing, but he assumed no one would ever be able to have access to the documents to which he refers. He is wrong.
Regarding the Revolution, Iliescu’s “crimes” are in fact better categorized as “errors” and are not what most Romanians believe. Iliescu made a mistake on the evening of 22 December 1989, declaring there would be a “public trial,” which it quickly turned out was going to be impossible. His error with regard to executing the Ceausescus is that he was so fixated on demonstrating “communism/socialism with a human face,” that he was slow to realize the threat posed by the “terrorists.” Had Iliescu and the other Front leaders killed the Ceausescus on the night of 22/23 December, there would have been far fewer deaths, injuries, and mayhem. Gelu Voican Voiculescu claims that it was only after the attacks of the night of 23/24 December that he was able to prevail on Iliescu to kill the Ceausescus. According to Voican, Voican asked him, “Do you want to end up like [the overthrown Marxist Chilean leader] Allende?” In fact, they wanted to keep the Ceausescus alive for the semblance of a trial; insulin was transported to Tirgoviste, but the diabetic Nicolae refused to take it because he thought it might be poisoned. The point is that they tried to keep Nicolae Ceausescu alive, when they in fact should have executed him much earlier, based on what captured “terrorists” described as their oath and their mission.
- To what extent do you believe the violence and confusion during the December 1989 Revolution, especially the role of the so-called “terrorists”, were orchestrated by remnants of the Securitate, versus being spontaneous?
The “terrorists” of December 1989 existed. The “terrorism” of December 1989 had three main components: 1) Disinformation, by telephone, the spreading of rumors in person, and the interception and intoxication of military communications; 2) Radio-electronic warfare to make it look as if Romania were being invaded and that the enemy was more numerous than they in fact were; and 3) Sporadic episodes of gunfire, especially at night, designed to frighten, to confuse, to panic, to exhaust, and to keep the military pinned down in their barracks and the population in their homes. The latter followed the guerrilla tactic of harassment and intimidation, or as some military officers detected, “hit and run” or “strike and disappear” operations.
The ”terrorists” were in fact the name given to a failed counterrevolution to save the Ceausescus that took the form of a guerrilla warfare “resistance struggle” (lupta de rezistenta). Its main and most important protagonists were culled from the Securitate. A key word there is “failed.” Many people dismiss out of hand that there could have been counterrevolutionaries precisely because the plan failed. That’s just bad historical analysis. History is not and cannot be about cui prodest, establishing who benefited from an event and working backwards to assess the preferences, pro-con balance sheet, and strategic calculation of actors in retrospect. This is a common shortcut practiced by many who don’t have the time or patience to study the dynamics of the event itself.
The “lupta de rezistenta” was drawn up in the late 1960s initially to respond to an invasion and occupation of Romanian territory, in theory by NATO, but in actuality by the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies. Over time the plan was adapted to counter a potential military coup or popular revolt. However, its authors could never have conceived of and prepared for a popular revolt in which the military defected from the regime to the side of the people, as happened in December 1989. Like other so-called stay-behind forces it aimed at causing panic, mayhem, and confusion, with the goal of slowing the enemy’s advance and preventing the “occupying” government from functioning normally. In its initial stages then, it did not imagine the seizing of military and political objectives, because even if it had forces to conquer such objectives it was unlikely to have enough forces to hold such objectives. It was a plan for a battle that could take weeks or months, yet the compressed timeline of what happened in December, and the capture and holding of the Ceausescus, forced them to speed up the timeline and types of actions they engaged in, to include infiltration efforts and ambushes. Notably, preparations for what happened after 22 December 1989, began in some cases back to before the XIVth PCR Congress in November, and especially in the days preceding the 22nd.
It was in southern Romania, from the border with non-Warsaw Pact member Yugoslavia through the mountains in the center of the country to the Black Sea where much of the most intense action took place in December 1989. All of the focus on the televised images of the CC or TVR misses the fact that it was in places, out of the domestic and international media spotlight, like Resita and Hateg, where you had real battles. Significantly, antiaircraft units were a particular objective of interest for the “terrorists.” They were subject to radioelectronic warfare, to terrestrial shooting, and to a wave of disinformation phone calls and intercepts or blocking of their communications. Antiaircraft units were targeted because the “terrorists” needed to secure the airspace in these more vulnerable points (the Yugoslav border; the Black Sea) to evacuate or infiltrate forces, and in the event that they rescued the Ceausescus, to spirit them out of the country.
Significantly, among the documents in the Revolution File, is a handwritten three page “urgent message” dated 25 December from retired Securitate foreign intelligence officer Domitian Baltei to those overseeing the campaign against the “terrorists.” In it Baltei details the actions and locations of what he refers to as “the resisters,” in other words those involved in the lupta de rezistenta. He talks about the involvement of Securitate Directorate Five (service for the protection and guarding of the Ceausescus) officers and reserves, the use of safe houses, and the secret Securitate telephone exchange where they intercept and redirect phone calls. Baltei was no uninitiated neophyte, however. In the late 1960s he had been in charge of creating funding mechanisms for the “resisters” abroad and thus knew of “lupta de rezistenta.” Those present at the interrogation of the head of Directorate Five, say that he admitted the existence of “the terrorists” and the location from which they were being commanded.
The files also contain occasional verbal exchanges between those on the side of the revolution and the counterrevolutionaries. For example, the deputy foreign minister recounts in a January 1990 deposition how two Securitate Directorate Five officers who were firing from inside the Foreign Ministry Building (MAE) told him they were shooting because they were well-reimbursed and they had taken an oath to defend the Ceausescus. Senior officials of the Securitate Troop Command who had joined the Revolution also discussed these two Fifth Directorate officers. Commanders who dispatched Securitate Troop officers to disarm the Fifth Directorate officers, warned them that they were dangerous. In fact, when the Securitate Troop officers arrived on 25 December to arrest the two Fifth Directorate officers, it turned out they had far more numerous forces under their command than was believed and that they initially refused to surrender their weapons. Thus, even those elements of the Securitate not participating on the side of the counterrevolution acknowledged the existence of “terrorists” who would not submit to the Revolution.
- What aspects of the 1989 Revolution and its aftermath still require serious investigation or reassessment by historians and researchers? Do you think valuable information could still be found in archives, whether from the former Securitate, the Romanian Army, the CIA, or Russian sources?
The Securitate documents released with much fanfare in late 2022 and promoted by two CNSAS researchers who just happen to also teach at the SRI’s intelligence academy brought little light on what had happened in December 1989 and were in fact something of a diversion. Army documents that could help clarify December 1989 remain in the archives of local military procuracies. We have learned the hard way that many files from the Revolution File were sent back to local procuracies under the pretense that they “did not contain information relevant to the investigations.” In fact, those few files we have recovered from a local procuracy, show exactly the opposite and that they appear to have been sent back to local procuracies in order to bury them. The absence of many files that are part of Dosarul Revolutiei is particularly glaring in the cases of cities like Sibiu or Braila.
Dr. Mark Kramer, head of Harvard University’s Cold War Studies Project, has probably performed more research in the Soviet archives than anyone I know. He has not found anything to substantiate the accusations of Soviet involvement in December 1989, let alone of a planned Soviet invasion. One has to understand how ridiculous it sounds to a Soviet specialist like Dr. Kramer that the Soviets would have accepted the loss of East Germany and Czechoslovakia in November 1989—especially given the Soviet forces based in East Germany—and done nothing to reverse it, only to intervene in Romania, a country of much less geopolitical importance, in December 1989.
We still need to better understand the “lupta de rezistenta,” its tactics and resources, and how it was operationalized in December 1989. Moreover, ironically, establishing what happened after 22 December 1989 is easier than what happened before 22 December 1989. We know the Securitate, the Militie, and the Army all had a role in the repression, killing, and maiming of demonstrators during that week. In December 1989 and immediately after, the focus was on the Securitate and Militie. 36 years later the focus is on the Army’s role. The Securitate have effectively written themselves out of the repression of that week, to leave the Army, as always, “out front” to take the blame. Establishing the exact role and responsibility for the pre-22 December 1989 period has to be taken from the top again, because Securitate disinformation has succeeded in rewriting and muddying the narrative.
- What lasting myths or misconceptions about the Romanian Revolution remain in Romanian society and historiography, and how did political figures like Iliescu contribute to shaping these narratives?
Iliescu’s crime is not that he invented non-existent “terrorists” as Pitu accuses, or that he controlled the “terrorists” or they fought on his behalf, but that he allowed the Securitate to clean up and cover up their bloody responsibility for the deaths, injured, and mayhem of December. Iliescu needed the former Securitate to hold power, and so he turned the other way and ignored their true role in December 1989. Iliescu wanted and needed the problem of December 1989 to go away, so he needed the “terrorists” to disappear; he was not interested in justice and accountability.
Since February 2022 and the continued Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Romania finds itself in a geopolitical position that may not have existed since Romania of the late 1960s/early 1970s. After the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, Romanians sensed that they could be next. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, suddenly the threat to Moldova and even to Romania increased. Because of fear and anger, narratives about the Russian threat posed to Romania “sell” to the broader Romanian population. Today’s anger and fear is thus projected back on to historical events, especially December 1989. Hence, the former Securitate narrative about December 1989, that it was a Soviet/Russian coup d’etat—what Ceausescu himself voiced at the time—is much easier to market to the historically Russophobic Romanian population. It is demagogic and populist, and thus now more successful than in the past three decades. The former Securitate narrative has reshaped the story about December 1989 from focusing on the Ceausescus and the Securitate, to focusing on Ion Iliescu, the Army, and the Russians. One can see plainly how this revisionism plays to the benefit of the sovereigntist, nationalist Ceausist Securitate.
Romanians need to know that although “foc fratricid” was a real component of the December events, it was a consequence not just of disinformation and radioelectronic warfare, but also of the actual gunfire of Ceausescu’s counterrevolutionary network. In fact, there is some evidence to believe that in certain places and circumstances, the “terrorists” attempted to confuse and weaken units—including morale—by causing them to shoot into one another. Suspicion and fear were the weapons of the “terrorists.”
- This year – 36 years after the fall of communism – Romanian secondary school students will begin studying the history of communism. In this context, what would you tell a young person today about the communist regime and the 1989 Revolution?
To begin with Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu were not “victims” of the Revolution as Pitu has sought to suggest in relation to their trial and execution. They were responsible for the bloodshed and death, including after 22 December. What young Romanians need to know is that they should be proud of how the majority of Romanian citizens acted in December 1989. The Romanian Revolution of December 1989 should be seen as a heroic event.
Young people need to know that the revolt that turned into a Revolution, from Timisoara, during the week of 15-22 December, was mostly spontaneous. It was fueled by the political repression and economic destitution of the late Ceausescu era, not by the actions of foreign agents. The Securitate narrative promoted by Ranco Pitu steals that from the Romanian people. Pitu argues that what happened after 22 December was a coup d’etat. But no matter how he presents the week leading up to 22 December, because it is “lucru de fapt judecat,” his words betray him. He suggests it was not so much the demonstrators from Timisoara who traveled by train to Bucharest and were trying to get into the mass rally who were responsible for the disruption of Ceausescu’s speech on the 21st, but the Army trying to undermine Ceausescu. In his book, Ruperea blestemului in one breath he states the juridical interpretation of Timisoara—that even the Securitate participated in the bloodshed—but then raises doubts about the possible role of Soviet tourists and suggests that perhaps knowing Ceausescu would fall the Securitate took a step back and allowed the Army to exclusively engage in the repression of demonstrators. This is needless and baseless speculation but Pitu purposely seeks to muddy the waters even with regard to the period before 22 December, always in the direction of reducing the responsibility of the Securitate.
The former Securitate has stolen the Revolution from Romanians, to make them believe foreign agents before and after 22 December played an important role, to believe that the events were more coup d’etat than popular revolt. Romanians need to reclaim the authenticity, the spontaneity, and the courage of the Revolution of December 1989 from the former Securitate.
Thank you.
The Archive of the Romanian Revolution of December 1989 