DIA Chief Stefan Dinu (1/1994): “…din martie 1979 nu s-a mai numit nici un atasat militar in exterior….Pe stat erau 31 de atasati militari pentru acoperirea a 50 de tari, dar de fapt aveam patru in decembrie [1989]…Budapesta, Belgrad, Paris, Roma.”

an excerpt from a draft of my Appendix in Andrei Ursu and Roland O. Thomasson, Trăgători și mistificatori. Contrarevoluția Securității în decembrie 1989 (Polirom, 2019), with a fuller passage from Dinu’s 13 January 1994 testimony.  Those who seek to suggest that somehow the Army and the Securitate were equals (including in their weapons’ arsenals!”) or that both were subordinated equally to “The Party,” or that Nicolae Ceausescu’s sultanist dictatorship somehow affected all institutions equally, simply do not know or are unwilling to acknowledge facts like the following:

Three decades removed from the Ceausescu era, some readers would have little inkling of the “Steaua-Dinamo” (shorthand reference using the Military and Securitate football clubs as proxies for the broader clash) bureaucratic competition and distrust between the military and the Securitate that had come to characterize the late Ceausescu era.  No element of the military was regarded as more adversarial by the Securitate than the Army’s DIA unit.  And the military and the DIA specifically were keenly aware of efforts by the Securitate to surveil and control them.  In his testimony before the so-called Gabrielescu Senatorial Commission investigating December 1989, the head of DIA in December 1989, Rear Admiral Stefan Dinu stated in January 1994 that on paper the Romanian military had 31 military attaches abroad to cover 50 countries; in reality, by December 1989, it had only four, in Budapesta, Belgrada, Paris, si Roma![1]  According to Dinu,

Deci, aveam o sectie a atasatilor militari romani in strainatate.  Pe stat erau 31 de atasati militari pentru acoperirea a 50 de tari, dar de fapt aveam patru in decembrie.  Pentru ca, treptat-treptat, datorita poate adversitatii serviciilor de informatii DSS, nu avea interes sa mai existe alaturi de ei, undeva, independent, vreun serviciu de informatii.  Aveau intotdeauna obsesia ca nu se lucra corect in aceste servicii—vorbesc de cele externe, ca in tara noi nu aveam nimic—, ofiterilor sub acoperire li se gaseau tot felul de sicane ca sa fie retrasi.  Ii retragem si altii nu s-a mai numit.  Deci eu va declar aici cu toata raspunderea ca din martie 1979 nu s-a mai numit nici un atasat militar in exterior.

Cu exceptia astora patru care erau foarte in varsta si bolnavi.  Veneau si stateau in tara cate 3-4 luni la refacere si nu puteam sa numim altii.

Acestia erau la Budapesta, Belgrad, Paris, Roma.[2]

[1] Serban Sandulescu, Lovitura de Stat a Confiscat Revolutia Romana (Bucharest: Omega, 1996), pp. 211-212

[2] Serban Sandulescu, Lovitura de Stat a Confiscat Revolutia Romana (Bucharest: Omega, 1996), pp. 211-212

https://www.academia.edu/43052683/How_the_Securitate_Won_the_War_for_the_History_of_December_1989_A_Detailed_Sourced_Analysis_of_the_SPM_Rechizitoriu_in_the_Dosarul_Revolutiei_of_5_April_2019_Initial_Draft_for_volume_Tragatori_si_Mistificatori_