“The Securitate Counter-Revolution Will Be Televised”: Documentary Maker Cornel Mihalache’s Long History of Promoting the Securitate Narrative on December 1989 (Ib: USLA, sediul MApN; “Revista de Front,” Ghencea)
(purely personal views as always, based on decades of personal research and scholarship)
By now, I have seen and heard enough from and about Corneliu/Cornel Mihalache to call him the Videographer of the Securitate’s Counter-Revolution, a sort of more talented, sophisticated, camouflaged, and ultimately more dangerous version of Angela Bacescu on celluloid (for some background on Bacescu, see https://www.rferl.org/a/1342502.html). His numerous films on the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu in December 1989 have hundreds of thousands of views on Youtube, have reached millions through Romania’s state television broadcaster (TVR), and have been praised and awarded at home and abroad. Many have been taken in by his slick production skills and editing. This series of articles will focus mainly on examining the content and interview subjects of some of his films from the 1990s through last year’s 30th anniversary, which he marked by an, at last count, 18 episode series called “1989 — Red December” (1989 — Decembrie roşu), which was broadcast in prime time on TVR1. (For the details, documents, and arguments which refute Mihalache’s claims, please refer to the many posts and pages on my site, thank you.)
This episode (Ib) will continue to do content analysis, specifically looking at what Mihalache has had to claim about the Securitate’s USLA.
It says so much about Cornel Mihalache’s agenda that the still photo chosen for his Vreau Ratia Mea de Adevar (I Want My Ration of Truth) from March 1999 is of the USLA ABIs in the aftermath of the Defense Ministry Incident of 23/24 December 1989. If Mihalache’s claims about this incident (starting from min. -32.07) are outrageous and false–the leader of the USLA detachment, Trosca, does not appear to have worked on Militaru’s suspected espionage file in the late 1970s as alleged (both Madalin Hodor AND a nemesis, Marius Oprea maintain that Trosca did not) and the USLA Commander, Gheorghe Ardeleanu, claims that it was he and not Militaru who chose Trosca to head the mission to the Defense Ministry–his agenda and the absurdity of his contentions become clear when he discusses the “revista de front” (falling out for review by commanders) ordered by Militaru at Ghencea.
It is not enough that Mihalache claims falsely that Trosca and his men were intentionally massacred so as to be presented to the public as “(Securitate) terrorists” to justify the Army and CFSN’s propaganda. No, from approximately min. -26.30, he maintains that Militaru and the military leadership ordered the “revista de front” at Ghencea Stadium with the intention of 1) massacring the (he claims) remaining 400 USLA troops in order to 2) then take their corpses and spread them out in the hotspots of the capital so as to 3) present them to the public as “dead terrorists…because they needed them to justify the ‘guerrilla war’ of [Army] tanks against a Securitate that was already under arrest.”
That Mihalache goes beyond the standard USLA incident revisionism to include the “revista de front” conspiracy theory is perhaps the clearest tell in this film that he is not just some confused maker of historical documentaries.
What Mihalache does not understand is that some of us have been on to the pattern of the Securitate’s revisionism for many years. Below, a letter from a “Group of Securitate Officers” from the Securitate’s Fifth Directorate (charged with guarding the Ceausescus and accused in part for the terrorism of December 1989), published in the Ceausist publication of Eugen Florescu (!), Democratia in September 1990. See an excerpt below, about Nicolae Militaru, Trosca, the Defense Ministry Incident, and significantly, the “revista de front” claim. Their letter could have served as an early script for Cornel Mihalache. Below that is the revisionist tract of Angela Bacescu from Zig-Zag in April 1990. Finally, following that are excerpts from the first time I discussed the significance of the Defense Ministry Incident for the former Securitate (how central it was to their revisionist campaign) in a published article (written March 1996, published December 1996).
(for further reading that refutes many of Mihalache’s claims on the Defense Ministry Incident)
https://romanianrevolutionofdecember1989.com/usla-bula-trosca-militaru-adevarul-reloaded/
https://revista22.ro/dosar/asasinarea-lui-trosca-i-misterele-uslailor-ucii-la-revoluie
https://www.mediafax.ro/politic/astrologul-care-a-salvat-securitatea-gelu-voican-voiculescu-i-a-impartit-pe-securisti-in-buni-si-rai-18803913
http://docuart.ro/documentare/vreau-ratia-mea-de-adevar
NICOLAE MILITARU…A avut o contributie criminala la scoaterea D.S.S. in afara legii, dind de doua ori dispozitii sa fie exectuate cadrele fostei Directii a V-a si USLA, pentru o asa zisa “activitate terorista.”
Personal, a cerut ca fostul colonel TROSCA, din USLA, sa vina sa apere M.Ap.N.-ul si tot personal, dupa ce s-a asigurat ca aceasta s-a pus in miscare, a dat ordin sa se traga impotriva lui afirmind ca “vin teroristii.”
Colonelul TROSCA a fost ofiterul care, pe vremea cind lucra la Directia a IV-a (C.I. militare) a probat activitatea tradatoare a generalului MILITARU. Pentru aceasta, generalul MILITARU l-a condamnat la moarte si l-executat.
The timing of Mihalache’s films in late 1998 (Amnistia are calibrul 7, 62 mm) and the one above in March 1999 fill an interesting period, because it was also when Sorin Rosca Stanescu’s daily Ziua also began to ramp up its revisionist campaign, as I wrote back in 2002:
1 May 2002, Volume 4, Number 9 THE SECURITATE ROOTS OF A MODERN ROMANIAN FAIRY TALE: THE PRESS, THE FORMER SECURITATE, AND THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF DECEMBER 1989
https://www.rferl.org/a/1342506.html
Discusses the “Olaru” case from April 1999
The Archive of the Romanian Revolution of December 1989 