Host: Good afternoon, dear listeners! My name is Silvia Ilieş! We have a special edition at Radio Romania . Our special guest today is the Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service, Mr. Mihai Răzvan Ungureanu. We celebrate today 20 years since the establishment of this intelligence structure in Romania . The law according to which the SIE functions was adopted in 1998. Could we refer, Mr. Director, to several phases of restructuring or reform? Can we say that you have worked so far within established parameters or on the edge?     

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: First of all, I want to thank you for the invitation. I am honoured to be here with your colleagues from Radio Romania “Actualităţi”, and glad that I can speak about the Foreign Intelligence Service both on its anniversary and on summing up the activity of the past few years, a balance that we find today to be positive, having in mind the successes and more difficult moments.

Host: You did not say failures!

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: No, I did not say failures, because, there are no full or permanent failures in espionage. There can be times when the intelligence product or the energy invested in obtaining a piece of information do not rise to our or the decision-makers’ expectations, but we bravely overcome the difficult moments. Over these 20 years, the Foreign Intelligence Service has successively passed through several phases of transformation. During the first ten years, the Service tried to adapt as it went to the requirements entailed by Romania’s new geo-strategic position and by Romania ’s ongoing definition as a democracy in the years following 1989. In hindsight, if I were allowed to make a remark about that first evolutionary stage of the SIE, I would say, despite good intentions, the intention to modernize an espionage service – which could not be done then – was to adapt the mentality to the action and result-based thinking which an institution that weighs so much within the national security establishment had to have. Today, however, things are quite different.  

The reform, which started in 2003-2004, practically meant to dismantle and reconstruct the Service from its foundation bricks to the superstructure, following an Anglo-Saxon model that, concurrently with adaptations required by history, proved to be appropriate. What was the result? We have come up with a small-sized Service that favours quality over quantity, a very flexible Service and, therefore, viable, viable in the environment of all similar European and Euro-Atlantic services. This reconstruction of the Service, which we call ‘reformat’ using a term that is not necessarily appropriate because we actually talk about a structural reconstruction, has guaranteed an unprecedented effectiveness of the espionage service. Fortunately, this efficiency keeps growing every year. I am not saying this as a pro domo plea. The decision-makers can see this, in their capacity either as customers of our information or actions, or as partners in pursuing national interests.

Host: You said that SIE is not DIE and I wanted to ask you when did the delimitation actually take place, earlier than 1998 or 2002, as you have just stated? And, if so, what was the law underpinning SIE’s work between February 8, 1990 and 1998? 

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Up until 1998, the laws according to which the SIE worked were the national security laws.

Host: Dating back to 1991.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu:  Dating back to 1991. Because you have talked about the Law on the organization and functioning of the Service, which is an organic law valid since 1998, I cannot help telling you that such a law is today like a too tight coat on a rapidly developing body.   

Host: This is exactly what you were telling us in this very studio, exactly one year ago, when you celebrated the 19^th anniversary.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Then I am glad that we have come back to this issue. A law that has lived its life, which we might call obsolete in comparison with Romania ’s current geo-strategic identity, is not a law that could entirely serve the institutional interests of the Foreign Intelligence Service and I am going to give you an argument I believe to be supreme. Today Romania is a member both of the Nord Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union. Back in 1998, this geostrategic definition of Romania was desirable at most or imaginable at least for the simpler minds. The law we have today, although abode by in spirit and unquestionably in letter, is a law that should be fundamentally re-drawn.

Host: There is a law package debated in the Parliament.  We have been talking about national security laws since February 2006 …

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Yes, about the law package.

Host:...and the five laws, including the law on the military, on SIE officers, the law on the organization and functioning of the SIE – the new version. Four years have already passed. How do you work amidst these new challenges? There are a lot of things happening around us. Are you comfortable with this, if I may say so?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: All I can say is that we fully comply with the law, exactly as it is at this very moment.

Host: The one of 1998.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: The one of 1998.

Host: Does it hinder your work?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I could not say that it hinders our work. There is room for much more legal clarity and this is actually the issue at hand. Secondly, we need to define the status of the intelligence officers within democratic boundaries. After all, we are talking here about a public employee, who, besides the tasks on his job description, is subject, for instance, to an impressive number of personal restrictions. This score of elements should trigger a special definition of the legal status that an intelligence officer should enjoy. The reason why the law package you were talking about was delayed...

Host: The one we are talking about right now. 

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: …the one we are talking about, indeed… well, it is not necessarily my position to talk about or interpret why the law package has such an intricate path in the Romanian Parliament. One thing I can tell you is that this process is taking too long and it is unfortunately subjected to political injunction or almost abusive political interpretation, I would say. 

Host: What do you refer to, for instance?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Because we are in the position of NATO members, we must also be aware that good regulations which would equally take into account our interests within the Alliance and the basic confines that the democratic state rises around the activity of special services are a matter of legislative emergency for us rather than a matter that can be endlessly a subject to debate. If only this debate were profoundly ideological, but it is often not so and it is rather circumstantial. What can I wish for then? Precise laws that would remove ambiguity. I keep saying that ambiguity is one of the main sources of abuse, abuse of fundamental civil liberties that citizens enjoy in a democratic state; furthermore, ambiguity is the one that leaves room to interpretation in matters of the competences that each component of the national defence system has. Therefore our wish underpinned by logical argument and by the Romanian geopolitical context, I believe, is to see these legislative initiatives finally completed, obviously after very careful thinking, interpretation of each and every provision.   

Host: Why do you prefer saying that the SIE is an espionage service that serves the national interest of Romania ?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Because is perfectly true.

Host: ...a service that deals in an activity that is strictly defined as a felony and condemned as such by any state, namely espionage. We also have some prolonged trials of people accused of espionage. In the same time, you state that Romanian espionage is one of the best within NATO and here I quote from your interview in ROMÂNIA LIBERĂ today: “the assessment” – you said and I would ask you to tell us again, but from this viewpoint – “comes from our foreign partners”. So what are we supposed to infer? That it is the foreign partners who assess the espionage, find it good or bad, even if it is concurrently condemned by the laws of each country? How come this paradox? There you have: an ambiguity.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: It seems to be a paradox, but it is a moral paradox. An espionage service or better said the intelligence officers that deal in espionage must strictly comply with Romanian laws like any other Romanian citizen for that matter.         

Host: They are Romanian officers. 

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: No, they are Romanian citizens. This is the first thing that should be said. However, the activity as such, espionage, namely getting confidential information by any means possible, information that is subject to other laws on secrecy in other countries, is an activity that any criminal code, including our own, condemns. Hence, it is an offense. Anywhere outside Romania it is a crime. The way in which the activity of an espionage service can be evaluated and assessed implies quite a few elements that range, if you like, from the quality of the intelligence an espionage service collects to the way in which it serves the national interest. But obviously this is the call of the decision-maker. On the other hand, an espionage service such as the SIE is part of the European and Euro-Atlantic clubs.     

Host: So these foreign intelligence services have made up a club? Do they cooperate?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Yes, they do. There are formulas of actual cooperation that is developed, inter alia, in the form of multilateral meetings attended by services of NATO member states, for instance. Well, it is in the partnership with such structures that we can really see whether a service can meet the requirements that an alliance such as NATO proposes its members or not. The activity of the Foreign Intelligence Service today is both trustworthy and a strong support of NATO’s strategic projects: in other words, very successful joint operations, a good use of national or allied resources, for instance, excellent communication wherever needed. In this way, national interest is also attained by pursuing the interest of the clubs we belong to.      

Host: Taking into account the experience of other members of this select club, we guess that any foreign intelligence service has two components: one that has to do with assessment, analysis, research, and impact studies necessary to correctly inform the intelligence customers, I suspect that both inside and outside Romania from what you are telling me, and a concealed component, so to say, that has to do with operations, or operational activities, which is top secret even by Romanian laws.

When are we going to make this separation: the assessment, research-analysis component within the service and the military component? When will the intelligence services be demilitarized, meeting NATO’s requirement? So how do you put this whole story together? Maybe that’s why we have to do with this shroud of mystery – perhaps the ambiguity and misunderstanding of what is happening in Romania herself – and the SIE’s name has been often quoted in the last year.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I draw two questions out of this. First, allow me to briefly present, to draw up in a few words the path that information follows. It is obtained by specific espionage means, delivered to the departments that deal with operational analysis or with its contextualization, and then forwarded to decision-makers in an easy to understand formula. Consequently, by knowing the context and the information and accessing other information sources as well, the decision-maker knows when and how he or she can take a decision and to what extent he or she can assume responsibility for it. From this point of view, collecting and processing information are linked – the two halves of the same fruit. As to the second question, it is a service that currently works based on rigorous internal rules.

Host: Military rules.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Military rules. The requested demilitarization is again a matter which the long-awaited laws should refer to. In this case it does not at all concern the military or civil functions of the service, because the internal rules stay the same, because the institution’s valid internal regulations do not change, because intelligence collection tradecraft implies very well controlled moves and, of course, personal reserve. A modern law on the intelligence officer does no longer raise the question of military uniform, or of the military assuming our professional duties, namely espionage. Therefore, a good law on the intelligence officer solves the problem of the demilitarization of the service.

Host: But it is Romania ’s obligation to make it happen by 2012, isn’t it?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: It is Romania ’s obligation, no doubt about it. However, such a law would also admit the special status an intelligence officer assumes once he or she is employed by an espionage structure, for example.

Host: I am a journalist, may I speculate? Do you think the security laws and the laws on the intelligence officers, the intelligence officer, will be made in 2012 or must we make them now, however, so that we could have a modern law? 

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I can join your game with only a wish, that is all. I hope that the law package that we refer to will not spend too much time in the Parliament awaiting the vote.

Host: This year?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I wish it with all my heart. I am actually pleading for something like this.

Host: I would like to ask you something. How have you personally felt in the last year since we last talked about all the scandals involving SIE officers or the service – that is the Hayssam scandal, weapons, weapons trafficking, fugitives in all kinds of remote countries, corrupt people more or less connected to the SIE, not to mention Romania’s image, that at least in the last year always rates us last but one on all accounts: perception of the future, optimism, etc. How does it make you feel? Is there a bit of truth or just fantasy?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: People fantasize a lot. This is the tragic truth, I believe.

Host: But who is fantasizing? Is this good to let the public opinion fantasize?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: It is a free society.

Host: However, is it good for the service?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: The service has enough strengths and it does not refer to public image but with the same deference that we show to democratic speech in general. Otherwise, anything that has to do with those who have broken the law, since they are no longer SIE employees the relevant institutions ranging from the Prosecutor’s Office to the trial courts should deal with them. 

Therefore, from this point of view, I have no problem whatsoever. As for public perception, the SIE is highly cautious to preserve the confidentiality of its actions. Actually, the condition that any employee assumes is anonymity. You and I are now having this dialogue, but I doubt that anybody else who is a full-fledged intelligence officer could come here for the very simple reason that his or her social life is built on different coordinates, on other kinds of human relationship. We will never know who they are, we must not know who they are and they will never show off with their results. From this perspective, I have to tell you that the degree of institutional development that we have reached does not leave room for any kinds of frustration. You hear about a lot of successes of the institutions that fight against organized crime, seizing illegal drug or weapons shipments etc. We see these successes, these real successes from behind the curtains and implicitly believe that they have been guaranteed by the SIE’s preliminary activity, because without informing the proper relevant institutions before the bad thing occurs, the action inside the country might not be successful.  We will not raise the flag because we cannot tell everyone that we are the outpost. The real satisfaction is the result as such even if it does not bear the SIE signature. The real beneficiary is the peace of the country. From this perspective, the way in which the service’s activity is interpreted in the media reveals again how huge the difference between knowledge and ignorance is. Knowledge however is easily acquirable when you are accustomed to reading or to exchanging intelligent questions in a relaxed dialogue. Ignorance, especially the one that leads to ultimate sentences, which we are unfortunately often faced with, has no cure or at least not one that I know. 

Host: Do you deny comments on anything that has gone public, at least in the last year, and that has affected the service? Books written in this period and published during the electoral campaign.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Allow me to be even more precise than that. Everybody is free to say anything he or she wants. The moment that raises our attention is the moment when the disclosure of confidential information, for example, which is against the law that makes it secret and for good reason, is not followed by the reaction of relevant institutions. Yes, that is a delicate moment. The fact that it can subsequently trigger a long series of assumptions, as Topârceanu put it, is not our problem anymore.

Host: Didn’t you receive any legal reaction this year or during these 20 years?

 Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Let us say that all the cases that may be subject to criminal investigation have been delivered to the relevant institutions.

Host: Are they many?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Quite a few.

Host: So, for those who are now listening to us and for the ones that perhaps get involved in the news which circulate on the market in certain times of crisis… 

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: If you allow me, I have only one recommendation, a suggestion. Try to inform yourselves properly, following a simple logical pattern. 

Host: Where does this information come from, Mr. Director, where does this information come from?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Madam, I do not know if I am the one to answer this question. In very many cases it is pure fantasy, in many cases, it is over-interpretation. And now, if you allow a poetic license to my answer, very often things are so simple, transparent and crystal-clear that fantasy becomes ridiculous. However, it is juicy and, obviously, boosts ratings.  

Host: Now is it normal for today’s Romania to live on ratings? Shouldn’t somebody come out and clarify things?

 Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: I do not want to surprise you, but I think it is normal because it is a free country and free speech is one of the best news of 1989. There is a risk entailed, too. The more people, the more analysts are there, people who understand that there is both a logical and moral principle, whose combination may result in a media conclusion, the better for everybody.

Host: Today is review day for the SIE. What are the biggest success and the biggest failure?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: You should know that I have never made an assessment by such terms because I do not use quantitative criteria. There are no failures that I could deem total losses.

There are lost battles, but not lost wars. There are withdrawals, rallies, and then returns to the issue in focus, perhaps with other human or logistical resources. Successes? Many, I could say. Quite a lot considering several aspects. First of all, the size of this service, which is small; the way it understands how to limit its flight, its altitude depending on available, strictly budgetary, not alternative financial resources, and on available human resources.  It is a service that very carefully selects subordinates and employees; it is a service that has no “misunderstood social protection”.   

Host: How many employees do you have, 3,000 or 3,500 as the newspapers write or less?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Way less.

Host: You mean another fantasy in the newspapers, don’t you?

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Unfortunately, I do.

Host: Mr. Director, we are looking forward to your next visit here. We are glad that you have been here today, in our studio, and maybe you can come again this year.

Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu: Thank you very much.