A quick post here, although there is much to say about this. Angela Bacescu, from April 1990 in Ion Cristoiu’s Zig-Zag, by late summer in Corneliu Vadim-Tudor’s Romania Mare, and then on to a permanent position as the former Securitate’s mouthpiece at Europa.
This article is interesting and significant for a number of reasons. Bacescu invokes the reputable, dissident Petre Mihai Bacanu’s Romania Libera article as a jumping off point, but seeks to clarify: the soldiers in the bus coming to Otopeni and massacred were not M.Ap.N. (army) troops but from the M.I. (Ministerul de Interne). There are many questionable, including factual aspects, of how she presents/allows her interlocutor to present unchallenged, the details of how the buses approached Otopeni and what happened when they got there. But perhaps most significant of all is not just that she realized well the public mood against the M.I. at the time and how she carefully had to rehabilitate them, but that this was February 1990 and the role of the Securitate and the existence of “the terrorists” in December 1989 was still fresh in people’s minds. Until the last week of January 1990, senior Securitate officers and high level prosecutors (Grigore Ghita, Gheorghe Diaconescu) were still telling the official daily Adevarul that the “terrorists” had existed, but sought to carefully argue that although they were Securitate personnel, they did not represent the rest/bulk of the Securitate that had fought on the side of the Revolution in December 1989. “The terrorists” remained a reality in February 1990 and their existence was not in question for most people, including the nascent political opposition to the National Salvation Front. Bacescu would argue somewhat differently in Zig-Zag two months later in April, questioning the very existence of “the terrorists,” but she did so after General Victor Atanasie Stanculescu had taken over at the helm of the Defense Ministry and after, in particular, the role of the USLA in December 1989 had begun to officially be revised, starting in early March 1990. But here…in February 1990…she seemed to realize it was preposterous to argue that “the terrorists” had not existed. Instead, they remain mysterious, and yet, she gives away key clue to both their existence and the fact that they were not standard military personnel (and in fact were from the far better armed Securitate):
Au intrat in el [an unnamed, badly wounded recruit from the Cimpina M.I. unit who was shot at Otopeni Airport] peste 30 de gloante, asa cum spuneau medicii, dar nu gloantele de la teroristi pentru ca acestea spargeau carnea si oasele altfel, de la acelea nu se scapa cu viata iar tinta era precisa.
In other words, the M.I. recruit was shot…by Army soldiers…and not by “the terrorists” whose existence was demonstrated precisely by the highly destructive and lethal weapons and ammunition that they used (based on the description, one can easily read that as explosive, dum-dum bullets) and that they shot very precisely (in other words, as snipers would shoot).
Roland O. Thomasson, PHD 
3 thoughts on “Bacescu Angela, “O noua fila la dosarul ,Cimpina-32′,” Dreptatea, 23 februarie 1990, p. 2.”