Host: Secrecy is the very condition of its existence – this is how one could briefly describe the work of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SIE). It is the second most important Romanian secret service and these days it celebrates 20 years of existence. The way such a service works, how it gets involved in the national security issues - we will try to learn all these from The Political România ’s special guest, the Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service, Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu, together with Emil Hurezeanu. Good evening and welcome, gentlemen. Mr. Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu, I have said that you are leading the second most important Romanian secret service, but it does not sound that good to me. 

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Thank you. I was about to ask you that.

Host: You are leading an espionage service. Does this make you a chief spy?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: No. I am the manager of an institution and it is the only institution dealing with that sort of thing, being authorized to deal with something like that.

Emil Hurezeanu: By a law passed in democracy.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: In democracy, exactly. In 1998. 

Host: However, if you are an employee of the SIE are you a spy?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: No. It means, in quite general terms, that you have a training that is more or less adjusted to the profession, not to the spy profession, but to the intelligence officer profession. Espionage is rather the name of the activity; from the name of the activity derives from the common noun; espionage deals, as everybody knows, I assume, with collecting private, confidential or restricted intelligence information that is important and necessary in carrying out the security, foreign policy or strategic objectives of a state. However, not all the employees conduct espionage activities.     

Host: But still, a spy collects intelligence. But the same thing is also done by an investigative journalist and a private detective. Which is the difference between them?  

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I am tempted to give you a very brief answer, even if it is not the proper one: espionage starts where the investigative journalist stops. 

Emil Hurezeanu: Not because he does not want to investigate anymore, but because he cannot. 

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: He obviously cannot go any further, because the investigative journalist is happy when he succeeds in getting an exceptional or one-use source. When talking about espionage, this represents the very objective of his direct activity. Furthermore, the investigative journalist has to comply with the laws of his state, to behave and to act in keeping with them. Espionage is a crime.  

Emil Hurezeanu: So, you admit it?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Of course.

Emil Hurezeanu: However, not under the domestic legislation.

Host: This means that the spy has to comply only with the laws of the country he represents.  

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Exclusively with the laws of the country whose citizen he is; in our case, of România .  

Emil Hurezeanu: Not even the law of the country he represents, but the national interests of the country he represents, which are not always overlapping with the law.   

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Mr. Hurezeanu...

Emil Hurezeanu: Or not?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I do not know. In this case…

Emil Hurezeanu: No. I am thinking… Not all the national interests are enshrined in laws. You have a partly confidential agenda of national interests, which is not transparent to all Romanian citizens. 

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: This is different, because in this case, if I understand you correctly, you refer to the confidentiality that certain strategic papers have by their very nature.

Emil Hurezeanu: Yes, by their nature.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: This confidentiality is guaranteed by law. The law itself creates secrecy. Secrecy does not exist as a state of mind or as the result of our friendly agreement.

Emil Hurezeanu: It is not your hobby.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Secrecy is an effect of the law. The spies, the SIE employees, fully comply with the laws of the Romanian state, as we expect from any citizen. There is no limit outside the borders of their country, because the goal is to collect intelligence.

Host: What if they get caught?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: It means they did not respect something or they were not lucky. Actually, the real war is always waged between espionage and counter-espionage. 

Host: Does it often happen for them to get caught? 

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: It depends on what service you refer to.

Host: The Foreign Intelligence Service. 

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: It depends on what “often” means.

Host: What does often mean to you?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Hardly ever.

Realizator: Hardly ever...Can you give us a figure? One per year, ten per year?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I find it difficult to give you a figure, because there are no statistics for these cases. It can always happen;  there is always a risk; the risk is not just about the way the mission is accomplished, partially accomplished or not accomplished; when it failed, the risk can refer to the personal security, being actually a physical risk. These risks are ultimately assumed and assumable by the way an intelligence officer is trained and educated to respond within the limits of his capacity, but also within the limits of the way the Headquarters, which guides him, understands the situation. Most of the times, the worse does not happen; however there are serious cases as well.

Host: "La Repubblica" wrote once that România has many secret agents, more than other countries in the European Union. 

Emil Hurezeanu: More than during Ceauşescu’s time.

Host: 12.000 in the Romanian Intelligence Service. I would also want to ask you how many employees SIE has. Or, using the words of a famous politician, even we do not know how many we are?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: The figure itself is confidential. However, I can tell you the following thing: in terms of size, it is a small service where the quantity is not the most important thing.

Emil Hurezeanu: Minister, where are you placed within the constellation of the Romanian secret services - many and brave services? I know you cannot tell us the number of your employees, it is not the case. But are you the smallest, the biggest or a medium service?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I will partly satisfy your curiosity: it is a reduced service. And from this viewpoint, it is a service that is compatible, in terms of numbers, with the services of other medium to small countries in the European Union or the North-Atlantic Alliance. It is not a service with a social care dimension. Excuse me, I don not want to be derisory at all in this matter, but this is not a service to have employees just for the sake of the employees. First and foremost, it is very hard to get employed by this service, since there are special selection mechanisms.

Host: Can you be more precisely?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Out of 1,000 candidates, 8 pass.

Host: But are all these 1,000 people selected by you, are they screened or do they simply send their resumes and you make the selection?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: They simply submit their resumes, you can apply as well.

Host: So, can anyone apply?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Yes, including you or Mr. Hurezeanu.

Emil Hurezeanu: Yes, I did apply a long time ago… The results are known, I forgot. I ended up in television.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Thank you.

Emil Hurezeanu: I would like to tell you something: there is quite a rich literature in America, as well as in other countries, in Germany for instance, describing this recruitment procedure. CIA agents used to come, at least this happened during the Cold War, at universities… There is a German author of very well documented books on the activity of secret services in Germany andin other countries. His name is Udo Ulfkotte and he worked for a long time for the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”. He said, for instance: In the ‘80s, I was a politology student in Bonn and I found myself with an invitation to Bad Godesberg to a seminar held by the Institute for the Conflict Prevention, that is how it was called. We were 30 students in there, boys and girls, we had a very interesting discussion, we received a daily allowance of 20 marks, free grub. The talks were really interesting, East-West politics, the Soviet Union, America … Germany . Those who had interesting papers and were noticed by the teachers were invited to another seminar a month later. Five out of one hundred remained and at one point they were asked: would you like to work for the Bundesnachrichtendienst? Three said yes, two said no. So, that was a recruitment method.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Obviously.

Emil Hurezeanu: Is that still done?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Of course. Recruitment is as normal a procedure as possible and, obviously, it can also take this shape. On the other hand, any person eager to join the Service can access the website of the Foreign Intelligence Service and submit a resume, hoping that his/her application will be considered. A resume can tell you quite easily in which case there is only fantasy and which case there is a basis of general culture. And then, if there are good premises to assess the individual’s qualities – briefly at first, but more and more comprehensively afterwards – he/she will pass through successive stages of selection. The selection is not oriented towards a single individual quality, for instance general culture or the specialty knowledge, but towards a sum of individual qualities, in which the psychological structure plays quite an important role, as well as the architecture of his/her own values and so on.

Host: Mr. Ungureanu, a person’s liberties are very limited when you work in this institution. 

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Dramatically limited, yes.

Host: Then, you are either very well paid, or awfully patriotic, or crazy to join such a Service.

Emil Hurezeanu: Why would a young person come to you nowadays?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: You know, this is an interesting question, with variable answers. Many of these answers are circumstantial. There are years when, due to the SIE’s public profile, those who come towards the SIE and succeed in passing through the Caudine Forks of the selection have a good ethical motivation: the country, the relation with his/her own community, the willingness to do good, psychological indicators that can be, after thorough processing, turned into grounds of professional reasoning. 

Emil Hurezeanu: Minister, I heard that patriotism is one of the criteria. Is that true?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: But it is not just a criterion. It is the psychological nourishment, the psychological motivation.

Emil Hurezeanu: I fully agree, but how do you assess one’s patriotism? How do you make the difference between the patriotism, let’s say…

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: …ostentatious.

Emil Hurezeanu: self-declared – I have come here because I am a patriot and I love my country – and patriotism the way you understand it? You have a special definition of patriotism.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I think it is easier for me to give you an example without giving names or disclosing too much information. When one refuses blackmail for a good reason, considering his/her professional obligation or the letter of the law above his/her direct or even his/her family’s interest, therefore above the emotional relation with his/her own family, then that is a proof of patriotism. Actually, patriotism is not made up of rhetoric or enormous gestures, because nobody stays to build monuments outside…

Emil Hurezeanu: …That’s true.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: …It is a succession of small gestures. In the end, the genuine proof of patriotism is the moment when somebody manages to fulfill all his duties.

Emil Hurezeanu: I see, that applies to your employees.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Of course. 

Emil Hurezeanu: But I was thinking of the recruitables, of the potential employees who present themselves for examination.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I hope that nobody imagines that there are means to quantify the patriotism. It is not measured in kilograms…

Emil Hurezeanu: …. You only employ, as far as I know, citizens of Romanian nationality.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: We employ Romanian citizens who only have the Romanian citizenship. So, not citizens who have double citizenship, since that would imply a double allegiance. No, Romanian citizens, with a single, exclusive Romanian citizenship.   

Emil Hurezeanu: Is age important?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: In certain cases, yes. In other cases, no.

Emil Hurezeanu: Academic degree?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: We prefer people with an academic degree, but not necessarily.

Host: But what is the average age?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: At the moment, 37.

Host: They are young.

Emil Hurezeanu: 37? They were 17 years old at the Revolution?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: And less, some of them. 37 is the average age.

Emil Hurezeanu: Some, more…

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: … Very few.

Emil Hurezeanu: …Some of them were colonels under Ceausescu as well.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: No, we no longer have such people.

Host: Where do most of them fail during the selection? In what sections? The psychological tests?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: The first answer would have been the psychological tests.

Emil Hurezeanu: At chess, Mrs. Medeleanu…

Host: Do they have to know to play chess?!

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: The answer is delicate and I hope you and the people watching us will excuse me for this: general culture.

Emil Hurezeanu: Are the salaries high?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: No, they are not. They are the normal average incomes.

Emil Hurezeanu: Can you give us an average in terms of salaries?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Let me just say it is the average university income - the average income in the academic centers.

Emil Hurezeanu: 25 million?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Around this figure, yes.

Emil Hurezeanu: I heard that the highest pension in your system – expanded system – including pensioners, reservists– does no exceed 50 million ROL?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: 4,600 RON that is 46 million ROL for a former four-star general with 38 years’ service. And…

Emil Hurezeanu: Is the military pension added to that?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: …and former dignitary.

Emil Hurezeanu: The military pension and probably the position of… state secretary?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: No, no additional pension is given for the public position.

Emil Hurezeanu: So you do not enjoy the so-called “shameless” pensions in your special system, as some people say?

Host: You are exempt from the law on pensions, isn’t that right? You are one of the exceptions.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Forgive me, I would not say it is a shameless pension because…

Emil Hurezeanu: You know that it was said, it was used, maybe it’s not the best formula, that magistrates, diplomats, the secret services’ employees have entered an area that remained out of the control of the common people’s society.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I will try to adjust what you have just said. I believe that, so far, no one has particularly referred to the pensions within the Foreign Intelligence Service. The average pension in the Foreign Intelligence Service is low; we are talking about a pension that does not even exceed 2,000-2,300 RON. So we cannot talk about exaggeration. On the other hand, we admit, and I believe that you agree with me, that there is an extreme gap between certain public positions in the Romanian state, in which both the remuneration and implicitly the pensions go beyond our imagination, and therefore beyond the responsible value of their work.  

Emil Hurezeanu: It seems that the CIA, for example, one of your partners, because you are a partner of the CIA, I understand…

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: … Yes

Emil Hurezeanu: … has a budget estimated at around 70 billion dollars a year, but it is not public, it is only assessed, it is estimated according to more or less, let’s say, transparent parameters. The CIA budget is not published anywhere. I assume that neither your budget is public, expresis verbis, or is it?!

Host: Yes, it is.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: No, it is public information.

Emil Hurezeanu: Is it big?

Host: It has been supplemented by EURO 10 million this year.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I wish it had, but it was not supplemented.

Host: What do you mean it wasn’t?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: No, because, first of all, the talks on the budget have not finished in the Parliament. We will see what happens, but the increase, unfortunately, was not accepted …

Emil Hurezeanu: Do you have a big budget?

Host: The proposal was of 10 million, wasn’t it?!

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: That was the proposal, yes, it was…

Emil Hurezeanu: …What it matters is to what would have these 10 million been added, to several billions?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: SIE’s budget represents 0.04% of the GDP. Now, calculate how much 1% of this figure is and you will find out how much the increase would have been.

Emil Hurezeanu: From the last GDP, which is smaller and smaller, so to speak, it has dropped from one year to another in recent years.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: The system’s budget drops to an equal extent, at least within the SIE.

Emil Hurezeanu: 0.04%?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Yes.

Host: OK, but should the amount be allotted, 10 million means quite a lot. Why do you need so much money? Is intelligence so costly?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I will give you a straightforwad answer: the Foreign Intelligence Service can function against all reason even with one Euro, but then Romania receives one Euro-worth intelligence. It can function with 1,000 Euros, but then again Romania is likely to receive 1,000 Euro-worth intelligence. It can also function with 100 million Euros and then the odds to receive very important strategic intelligence increase. 

Host: Can you tell us the highest value the SIE paid for a piece of intelligence?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: A person’s life.

Host: And financially?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Is not it enough when I say someone paid with his life?

Host: Oh, no, it is a lot, but we were talking about money now, about SIE’s budget.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: The SIE’s activity is not regulated in a similar way with other institutions of the Romanian central administration; the SIE runs on projects. The projects per se stem from a draft budget. If the anticipated result requires an additional financial resource, then the budget for that project is obviously increased. However, in SIE’s case, we adjust what we can do to the limits of the financial constraint. There is no extra-budgetary source to support our activities.

Host: Mr. Hurezeanu, Romania is a democracy, Romania is a NATO and EU member, what are spies needed for, why does România need spies?

Emil Hurezeanu: This question can be addressed to the United States as well, and also to France or Germany , older democracies.

Host: We will not have answers from there.

Emil Hurezeanu: We will. They will swiftly answer back: because we are democracies… Does not Mr. Boc want to defend democracy with missiles? The more the missiles, the safer the democracy? Democracies shield themselves even better with spies, with services I mean, than with missiles, I guess. It’s an old job, almost as old as the oldest one…

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: ... As some other jobs.

Emil Hurezeanu: As some other jobs. Or professions…

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: … As the lawyer’s, probably…

Emil Hurezeanu: Yes, the bangles … with the gold bangles, yes, thank you. But, you see, espionage is a form, so to say, that reaches us through a cinematographic, literary perception, from "James Bond" or "Mission: Impossible" I imagine that not all spies work the same way, I mean…

Host: ... And not all of them are that handsome.

Emil Hurezeanu: And they do not have those cars. They cannot own those cars, can they? But the information… In some way, they, the gentlemen who are part of these foreign intelligence services, have heralded some sort of a global village and global communications era. We have now reached the level where, for instance, a young Chinese, but this is probably not the best example since Google is withdrawing, but anyway, in southern Siberia, deep into the Korean inland or in an Indian village somebody contacts a California-based company and even works for it. The World is Flat, as Friedman’s famous book says. Now, these people were the pioneers of global computerization, so to say. As a matter of fact, it was not by hazard that the military experiments led to the emergence of the internet and online realm. So the experiments carried out by the Pentagon in the 1980s resulted in the surfacing of the internet, of the fax machine, which then became widespread facilities. But there is another point I would like to settle with the minister.

Host: Let’s settle it.

Emil Hurezeanu: You actually work outside the law. And I will tell you why: because your law dates back to 1991.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: To 1998.

Emil Hurezeanu: Oh, that’s your organic law. 

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Our organic law…

Emil Hurezeanu: But the national security law …

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: ... dates back to 1991, yes.

Emil Hurezeanu: Meanwhile, România has joined NATO and the EU, whereas you are still working…

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: ... beyond the law.

Emil Hurezeanu: You are working beyond or below the law, according to some laws that do not refer to your new configuration.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: This is absolutely true. One of the absolutely necessary stakes of its activity is the obligation to find time soon to complete the debate on the set of laws pertaining to the national security system, as this is not just about the SIE’s organic law, but it is also about laws pertaining to special issues, such as the Law on the intelligence officers, for instance, the Law on national security, which do not refer, as Mr. Hurezeanu said, to Romania’s current geo-strategic status... This is where the paradox lies, because we work inside the European community of the intelligence services…

Host: So the Romanian laws are not compatible with the EU ones?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: No, I would rather say that the Romanian legislation is past its age, it is obsolete. I cannot say we do not comply with the law, because we do. We do comply with it, with its spirit, but its provisions are frozen on past realities that no longer reflect România ’s or our service’s individual status.  

Host: What changes do you expect from these laws?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: For instance, you cannot initiate partnerships with other intelligence services, as intelligence means, grosso modo, espionage...

Emil Hurezeanu: Not only brainpower.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Brainpower also.

Emil Hurezeanu: Yes.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: One cannot start partnerships with counterpart services in the EU and NATO without being backed by a motivation, a comfortable legal ground. Still, we do it, we do it because we have an obligation that stems from our very presence as signatories of the Washington Treaty, but this is not enough. We need good legal framework back home. And there are countless other details, but I will just give you one example that is important to us: such laws establish competences and clearly outline the scopes of action in the democratic architecture of a modern state, the confinements of the actions that can be taken by the special services. I would rather call them special instead of secret services, because their activity is secret, whereas they experience a different kind of institutional treatment, hence they are special services. This delimitation of competences, this precise delimitation of competences prevents confusion. Confusion is sometimes the major source of abuse. Yet, it is to the democratic state’s best interest not to generate abuse or help it emerge. This is where things stand right now, I think, with all the components of the national security setup. And there’s one more thing: these laws need to settle the oversight competencies of the specialized committees within the modern boundaries of the authority exerted by the democratic institutions in a modern state. We need real parliamentary control…

Emil Hurezeanu: Do you need a parliamentary mandate? A political mandate?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: You willl have to be more explicit.

Emil Hurezeanu: Do you operate within the boundaries of a political and democratic mandate?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Obviously, we do. 

Emil Hurezeanu: And who defines the mandate? Do the laws define it, do the committees define it...

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: The CSAT does it. That is, the Country’s Supreme Defense Council.

Emil Hurezeanu: And what about your case?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: In the case of the Foreign Intelligence Service, the CSAT is both the author of and the supervisor on the implementation of a national intelligence priorities plan.

Emil Hurezeanu: Do you have a structural pro-presidential partisanship?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: No, we don’t.

Emil Hurezeanu: Do you answer to the President, just as, for instance in other countries, such as Italy, the foreign intelligence service is subordinated to the Minister of Defense or to the Prime Minister in the UK ? In România , the President, in his capacity as head of the CSAT, is also your chief?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Under the law and given that the SIE has top executive representationin the CSAT, the one at the helm of the CSAT is lawfully the one that our service depends on in its capacity as CSAT member. And now, excuse me, I will return to what I was saying, the SIE’s activity planning is built around this draft of national strategic priorities, also detailed, among other things, in a joint intelligence priorities plan where the CSAT converges the interests of all departments or ministries. It is the synthesis of the national interest, as it is perceived on a strategic not tactical level, i.e. on the level of the composing institutions. And the obligation of the service is to put it into practice within its strict scope of competence as stipulated by the law. 

Host: Any democracy needs to be defended. Which are, Mr. Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu, the main threats to our national security from SIE’s point of view?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: As simple as this question may sound, I would actually have to draw a very large picture of what threatens Romania, because we are not talking about hypotheses here, we are talking about real threats, starting with cross-border crime – paradoxically, the fastest updating evil, with no passport, trespassing borders and incredibly penetrating and EU-oriented, so ranging from cross-border crime to direct strategic threats. Romania is not afloat on a happy island; it is not trouble-free.

Host: Although it is one the safest countries, at least in the European Unions, isn’t it?

Emil Hurezeanu: Not yet; after 2015, when we will be under the shield.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I would like to believe that it is a calm country with secure prospects also because the SIE sees to it.

Emil Hurezeanu: Will you have anything to do with the shield in the future, when it’s there?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: If the CSAT requests it, we probably will, I don’t know.

Emil Hurezeanu: But, Mr. Ungureanu, it is said that this service, the SIE, we know as much as we do, has, nevertheless, a predecessor: the DIE. It was a long time ago, before 1989, that’s how history was, you could not pick your own parents or grandparents, you could not link directly to Moruzov or, I don’t know, Cristescu. You also have Pleşiţă in your ‘family’ tree. OK, we understand that this is a modern service where the average age is around 37, a service working with the great Western ones. I even heard that it is among the top five most appreciated foreign intelligence services in the Western world, within NATO, which is great, a service that had partners in the Anglo-Saxon world when its first modernization occurred, seven-eight years ago. Very well. But have all the veils been pulled off the past? Still, there were missions that did not necessarily protect national interests, but let’s say they served the dictatorship’s interests, which were mistaken for the eternal national ones. Well, the dictatorship’s interest at some point required that a dissident or a critic, an opponent of the regime abroad be silenced. There were DIE plans to put such people to silence. Many say that clearing up the air about the masterminds of these plans, these files is being shelved. Knowing our past is being posponed.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Today’s SIE does not stand in the moral affiliation and is not part of the moral genealogy that would link it to the DIE or the CIE.

Emil Hurezeanu: Professional genealogy, of course, I didn’t mean moral one.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: No, this is about a principle that any state has: to build its own espionage service, be it part of a repressive system, such as the Securitate in a totalitarian state, be it part of a democratic system, of the organized antibodies of the democratic system. Far from me the intention to imply or ever affirm that the SIE is the upholder or heir of some blurry history baggage. The very proof of it is the fact that the SIE fully delivered CNSAS all the files it had inherited along with its archives.

Emil Hurezeanu: Everything you had?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Absolutely.

Emil Hurezeanu: With a few legal exceptions, right? Foreign citizens, current interests or how was it?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Yes, the law is only clear about the files of operational interest. Some of these files are of operational interest or have a level of classification that I personally, or you or anyone else cannot deny, as the law is the supreme ruler in this case.

Host: Yes, people have changed in the system, they are now younger, fresher, but did the practices remain the same? Did at least some of them remain the same?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: What do you mean by practice?

Host: We all know what the former Securitate did. Do we really have to say it again?

Emil Hurezeanu: For instance, illegal tapping as a preventive measure.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: No, no.

Emil Hurezeanu: To find out who works against the national interest, I have to know what he/she does. So I tap him/her.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: But let us not forget that we are talking about an espionage service whose activity is fully dedicated to the exterior of the country, not to its national soil. So, first of all, this question will not find its answer with me.

Emil Hurezeanu: It does with Mr. Maior, at most. Or at the military unit 0215 (nicknamed ‘Two and a Quarter’).

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I do not know, but I see the principles underpinning this issue a whole lot differently. And I think my colleague, Mr. Maior, would agree: we want these laws exactly because they force the employees of such systems to strictly obey the moral, ethical, and professional conduct principles of a democratic state. Very good laws means very little abusive incidence. And, if laws are well constructed, if each interpretable piece in the fine intelligence collection ensemble is pointed out and precisely outlined by the law, abuse is cast away. 

Host: Is morality compatible with espionage?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Just a second, excuse me, I would like to add something. Indeed, these are relatively young people. Now, youth does not always mean experience.

Emil Hurezeanu: Almost never. It does not always mean quality, either. 

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: But in Romania, a generation is now surfacing that is dedicated to obeying the laws in a democratic state and that feels protected by obeying these very laws. And this is very important. It is a major shift of mentality which cannot be perceived from one day to another, but which is perfectly perceptible in the communities where the secret is the main rule in communication.

Host: Do you really feel that?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Yes, of course. Actually, everyone needs the law, because this way they protect themselves and their own activity has a purpose, and is automatically offered to the democratic state within the boundaries imposed by the democratic state itself.

Host: I have a pretty bad opinion on the politicians. I find some of them irresponsible, irrational. And, still, some of them are the beneficieries of your activity. Is it still your job to check the course of the information once it reached the decision-maker?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Honestly, it’s not. The contract that an institution such as the SIE has with the policy-maker stipulates the institution’s obligation to provide information according to the beneficier’s competences or interests – presumably, interests of the national state…

Emil Hurezeanu: ... Excuse me, Minister, a parenthesis on Melania’s question: are your customers “more equal” than one another? What I mean is, are there any privileged customers?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: What do you mean by privileged?

Emil Hurezeanu: Who receives the highest amount and the most sensitive intelligence information?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Everyone receives intelligence information according to what the law defines as access to classified information. Everyone receives intelligence information…

Host: One needs an ORNISS certificate to access the information…

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Not only that. The legal customers, such as the president, the prime-minister, ministers, receive intelligence information according to their competencies. Rest assured that the intelligence information does not always go to a unique recipient. And when the intelligence information refers to national importance projects, and since there is no unique political responsible for strategic projects, the intelligence information, sometimes the same body text, goes to all those in charge.

Host: Have you ever felt any pressure from the politicians?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: No. Allow me, I had started to answer a question of yours. I was saying that the duty of the Service is to provide intelligence information in keeping, among others, with a phrase in English which is both meaningful and concise: need to know. The need to know is governed by the laws and by what an administrative position means, by the competences of the administrative position that will receive that piece of intelligence information. Now, what those who send the intelligence information expect from the decision makers is the political responsibility which is not regulated by laws. Such a responsibility is part of the political decision maker’s moral structure. A responsible politician will read the intelligence information, understand it, put it in a context, interpret it, and use it.

Emil Hurezeanu: Or leaves it in closed envelopes, as it has sometimes happened.

Host: Or passes on the envelope. There are cases when something like this happens.

Emil Hurezeanu: To whom? To the enemies of the country?

Host: No, but let me quote what Mr. Claudiu Săftoiu has said: "The snakes and scoundrels who provide coward and dishonorable services to the politicians should disappear”.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I hope you do not expect me to comment on this.

Host: You will not?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Obviously not.

Host: Ok, you will not.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: It is not my responsibility.

Host: I see.

Emil Hurezeanu: Minister, do you still have anything to do with the Foreign Ministry and the diplomats? Because there are...

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Undoubtedly.

Emil Hurezeanu: You do! Because, if you remember, we have also inherited this from the Communist times and we were encouraged by events from the post-Communist period when it is known, it is rumoured, it is suspected that a certain consul is clearly the son of…, the vice-ambassador or the gardener, the driver’s wife is clearly a SIE employee, pay attention because the gardener is more important than the ambassador…

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: If you listen to all these stories...

Emil Hurezeanu: Well, but they belong to a world...

Host: Are they in any way true?

Emil Hurezeanu: Are they based on something real? For instance, do you control the consuls?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: What does controlling the consuls mean?

Emil Hurezeanu: Are they your employees? Do they have two pedals, similar to the driving lessons? Two wheels, two brakes? Both the Foreign Ministry and the SIE? I apologize if my questions seem childish, but people are wondering, you are quite an impenetrable service.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: No, no, I could not express the truth the way it should be expressed. I will make two collateral remarks. Firstly, the SIE, i.e. the espionage service, accounts for only 2% of the people representing our country abroad. So, of all România ’s representation abroad, the SIE is 2%.

Emil Hurezeanu: Yes, it is an important piece of information.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: And I think this is the first time I am saying this. But you should know that this is quality work because, if we had had a larger figure and the same results we have today, it would have meant that the service was, in fact, a social care service, as I was saying in the beginning. Secondly, the SIE conducts its activities abroad in various formulas. In some cases, with multiple identities; in other cases directly. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is a partner of SIE’s activities rather than an institution that the SIE inhabits just as some sea snails inhabit empty shells. Not at all. These are two different things.

Emil Hurezeanu: It is not a cover alibi.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: It is neither an alibi nor an empty formula filled with the content of the SIE’s activities. But we do cooperate, we work together to fulfill the national interests. Our activities can indeed meet, but they do not overlap. There are different technologies to collect information, the diplomats or the consuls and the intelligence officers have different tasks and I need not tell you that, in fact, the diplomats and the consuls and everyone working in a diplomatic representative office has to abide by the laws of the country where they work. The spies, on the other hand…

Emil Hurezeanu: ... at the first sight.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: The spies do not.

Host: Has the economic crisis fallen within the scope of your responsibilities and have you collected intelligence information on what was to happen for a long time?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Madam, whenever we have intelligence information, we pass it on.

Host: I am trying to find the moment in time when you provided such information to the Romanian authorities.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Rest assured that everyone knew in due time.

Host: What does “in due time” mean? The beginning of 2008, mid-2008?

Emil Hurezeanu: I must warn you that she is trying to get from you…

Host: ... A piece of news.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I realize.

Emil Hurezeanu: ...the same piece of news she got from Mr. Maior a few months ago.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: No, in this case I will answer very bluntly and very clearly: all those who were supposed to know knew in due time, exactly when they should have.

Host: And do you think that they acted in due time after you had provided them with the intelligence information?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: It is hard to say because the legal beneficiary is not obliged to send us any feedback, any assessment of the intelligence information.

Host: Would it be useful to you?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: It would be extremely useful and, in fact, this is what makes the difference between the legal customers. Some legal customers understand to read the intelligence information, absorbing it in a critical way, reading it thoroughly and then producing questions or asking for clarifications on that particular piece of intelligence. Those who do so, gain as both politicians and political decision makers. Those who don’t…

Host: You have been on both sides in this process: you were in the Foreign Ministry and received the intelligence information from the SIE and now, from the SIE, you provide the Foreign Ministry with intelligence information. Did you give the feedback the SIE was waiting for during your tenure at the Foreign Ministry?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Yes, undoubtedly. Well, but this is natural because there are countless moments in the diplomatic activity when the information collected by the diplomacy legally, in a morally justified way is not enough. The necessary adjustments or the fine tuning in the diplomatic dialogue needs supplementary information and that information often comes from the hidden side of the world.

Host: Speaking of morality, I have asked you but you did not have the chance to answer: is it compatible with espionage?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: As long as this art of the impossible serves the national interest, this is how it is called, the art of the impossible...

Emil Hurezeanu: So it is not like the war, the art of the possible; you have reached the art of the impossible.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: The art of the impossible. As long as the art of the impossible serves the national interest, it is obviously moral. Knowledge is power, we have known it for about 500 years, at least from Bacon on. Knowledge is also necessary to a democratic state because otherwise it cannot resist.

Emil Hurezeanu: ... and even information.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Information is one thing and knowledge is another. Here is the difference between gleaning a piece of information and intelligence. Intelligence means knowledge.

Emil Hurezeanu: You have drawn a line between information and knowledge. You had been a man of knowledge even before you were the head of the foreign intelligence because, and I am saying this with friendly admiration, you were a Wunderkind of the ‘90s, a historian with successful studies in Iasi , a very precocious professor. You also studied in Germany, the UK , you were a secretary of state in the Foreign Ministry, then Foreign Minister. Every once in a while you appear in the working hypotheses of the top echelon…

Host: Especially when a political crisis emerges.

Emil Hurezeanu: ... of the moving political forces. I mean, at some point it was rumoured you were being considered for the position of prime minister, you remained a member of the Liberal Party, but you are close, by the nature of things, to President Băsescu. Some people, and I am one of them, wish you a future back in the civilian political world that should be as important as the very promising past in the politics…

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: ... And he has just said he was my friend.

Emil Hurezeanu: Well, no, you will come back… Because at some point if you remain in this position, if the law changes the way you want it, a member of the Chamber of Deputies could come and say: after you leave such a position, at the helm of the SIE or the SRI, you are not allowed to be involved in politics for the next five years. And we get to the retirement age. And you will not be a Foreign Minister again… Or maybe you want something else?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I will answer as directly and honestly as you have challenged me: I have no vanity of this kind.

Emil Hurezeanu: Weare not talking about vanity; we’re talking about a goal, a career plan, and a life plan.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: My career is my university career.

Host: Yes, but you were a very good foreign minister...

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Thank you.

Host: Why couldn’t you be once more? Don’t you want that? This was the question: if you want that.

Emil Hurezeanu: I think that sometimes you look somehow condescendingly at these people who fill quite important public positions in some ministries, because now you know more than many people, even than those who fill these positions. Well, can’t you use and capitalize on this intelligence to serve a new power? A public, transparent one?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: If something like this happened, it would be detrimental to democracy. When there are politically appointed persons, especially in such extremely fine systems that add knowledge to what you already knew, the knowledge that you did not always wished for, the individual responsibility acquires a completely different dimension. Politics does not mean to use intelligence information, which is a national asset, because the intelligence information does not come in my possession, nor does it come in the possession of the legal beneficiary – it is intelligence information of national importance and then its owner is what we call, in abstract terms, the Romanian nation.

Emil Hurezeanu: Well. Now, you know, Mr. Kinkel went from Bundesnachrichtendienst and became Foreign Minister and Vice-Chancellor in the Germany of the ‘90s. But we have Bush senior who became the US President after he was the CIA Director.

Host: Do you wish him to become the president of România ?

Emil Hurezeanu: Well, I imagine that now it is not that interesting to be a foreign minister any more...

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: He wishes me to become the President of the USA . Mr. Hurezeanu, let’s leave time to decide.

Host: You are saying that you will return to the university career after you finished your tenure at the SIE?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: No, I have not said that. That will always be there, it is the constant of my life. That is the other side, the side that I share with the historians, the other side, less visible today, of my direct activity. I teach every week, I write my studies, I write my books.

Host: May I ask you what your relations with the liberals are, especially since your departure from the Foreign Ministry was not in a happy context?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: It depends on what you mean by “liberals” in this case.

Host: Călin Popescu Tăriceanu, for instance.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Madam, in politics it is always a good thing to respect all those who have more expertise and more political intelligence than you. Irrespective of the situation in which I was put, be sure that I will treat everyone equally respectful.

Host: Crin Antonescu? Is the answer the same?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Of course, it is the same. Politics is not – and it is a pity when it is – a sum of moods. A politician is not a cynical individual who lacks emotions. As long as he understands his role as being fully dedicated to the interest of the community, an interest far greater and more complicated than his own interest, the problem of personal reactions is almost out of the question.

Host: But are you still close to liberalism or would you turn to the other side?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I think I have said it here before and I can tell you now as well, without this being translated other than, so to say, a personal ideologic tendency, I am basically a right wing man.

Host: Any comments, Mr. Hurezeanu?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: But I don’t have any political activity in this position.

Emil Hurezeanu: I see, I see. You are almost as young as the service you are at the helm of, twice its age, yes…, a service that tomorrow, February 8, will be, as far as I know, 20 years old.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Exactly.

Emil Hurezeanu: Congratulations.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Thank you.

Emil Hurezeanu: But I would like to ask you why are you so modest? The spies are, of course, mysterious, secret, but why should they be modest?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: The service and everyone employed in the service, intelligence officers or members of the support departments, assume from the very beginning a certain social condition, namely to remain completely anonymous. The face of the service, what the service offers to the world, is basically limited to the three members of the top leadership: a director and two state secretaries. As for the rest, they are anonymous, and the anonymity derives from the very type of activity that the service conducts. You cannot be a spy and go public at the same time. It is a logical incompatibility between the two options. And then, obviously, assuming this condition requires a special psychological profile, another way to interact with the society. When you retire, no one will open the door at your block of flats for you and the head of the block administration may not say hello to you, unlike the former police chief who used to live there…

Host: ... Or they might ask you: “When did you move in that block of flats?”

Emil Hurezeanu: Yes, but you can be like Ian Fleming, to have worked… or John le Carré or Graham Greene, to have been a secret agent or even Lawrence Durrell, and at some point you may write novels that would make you rich and you may make movies based on your experience.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Yes, and then, in time, the world may find out that you used to be an officer even though they know you as an author of detective stories.

Emil Hurezeanu: …or of movies.

Host: It is exactly because people don’t know too much about your activity that they have a blurred opinion, so to say, about…

Emil Hurezeanu: ...mystical.

Host: Quite so, mystical, and you are afraid of things you don’t know. Does this fear help you or would you rather have a different image, something closer to reality?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Well, image is not within the scope of SIE’s activities. It is neither our nightmare, nor our worry. The image, and sometimes the mysticism, the thin veil of secrecy has its own role. The image is firstly generated by the nature of our activity. It is indeed a completely secret activity, but I am telling you an interpretation that goes beyond the strict framework of our dialogue, namely that absolute knowledge implies absolute dedication. And God has sorted things out very well here: you know a lot but you cannot tell!

Host: May I ask you, in the end, what exactly worries you?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: When?

Host: You, generally, what exactly is your greatest worry, what makes you frown most of the time?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: At the office?

Host: Yes.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Ok... Waiting.

Host: Thank you very much.

Emil Hurezeanu: I told you, you see, speaking of the previous questions.

Host: Thank you for this special edition of “The Political Romania”.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Thank you, too.

Emil Hurezeanu: The presence of the Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service in a public platform such as Realitatea TV is a form of modernization and change. Thank you.

Host: This was "The Political Romania ". Good night.