According to a CIA survey authored by Larry Watts, Virgil Magureanu and Ioan Talpes are two of the great manipulators of the secret services in Romania after the 1989 Revolution. Virgil Magureanu is denying accusations, claiming he did not collaborate with the Soviet secret service. The maker of the SRI (Romanian Secret Service) is even saying that Larry Watts is “talking crap”. But Ioan Talpes, a godfather of Virgil Magureanu, is standing by the analyst now affiliated to CIA. The man who headed the SIE (Foreign Intelligence Department) and the National Security Department when Ion Iliescu was in power claims he knows about Virgil Magureanu’s secret encounters with some “inferior rank” officers of the Russian services. It is to be reminded that the anti-KGB department was dismembered right after the 1989 Revolution, when the SRI emerged as part of the Securitate (Communist Secret Service), under the coordination of Virgil Magureanu. The famous UM 0110 was reestablished in 1994 and it turned into the “Z” Unit. But it vanished from the SRI structure once again, although the MI5 consolidated the structure to counter the Russian intelligent services. General Aurek Rogojan, a former adviser of several intelligence service chiefs, opines that NATO did not get involved in the making of the new SRI. He argues as follows: “Any allied service’s interference in decisions regarding the use of the Romanian state’s sovereign power for its own security is out of question.” He describes the renunciation to this structure as irresponsible. It is the SRI that is hiding behind the classification, for the service wouldn’t make the fate of the “Z” Unit clear. (…)

(V.R.)