romania revealed

Terrorists enjoy vacations in Bolivia.

 A photo of Toaso holding a sniper rifle with a high-precision telescopic sight (published in Cochabamba newspaper Opinión).

So this young gentleman is not your average yuppie spawn. His name is Elöd Tóasó, and he was captured in an antiterror operation on April 16, 2009 in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. According to police authorities, Toaso was the "communications link" of an international mercenary terror cell dismantled by the police, and was tasked with spying and telephone tapping.

It seems the Hungarian ambassador made his best efforts to protect Toaso, but his past makes such protection difficult.  Tóasó received military training in Bucharest, along with the Irishman, Michael Dwyer, who influenced Toaso to become a mercenary. The ever-brilliant and insightful Milfuegos, to whom I owe the honor of this discovery, tells the story better in his own words (note that this occurred in 2009):

The photo above was taken in the middle of last December in the Hotel Buganvillas, one of the most exclusive in Santa Cruz, where the armed group stayed for more than two months at cost to a third party, whom Rózsa Flores described in an interview in Budapest last September as "the Bolivian financiers" and providers of the weapons.

According to the management of the five-star hotel, the terrorist group booked in the Buganvillas under false identities. Tóasó, who was taken captive in the raid two weeks ago along with Jorge Tadik, a Bolivian ex-military man trained in Bolivia but with Hungarian roots, even convinced the ambassador of his own country that he was just an innocent adventurer, in spite of the evidence shown by a video of the conspirators making assassination plans.

"This man, to me, is far from being a terrorist. Young, 29 years old, who made mistakes, and I believe they invited him to come here offering to pay him this and that, but he didn't know what lay in store...I believe that this man had no money, because the financial crisis has hit Hungary hard too. We're very badly off, so this stems from the fact that our people have no money. He was young, and looking for adventure, and accepted something I don't think he thought through," said the Hungarian diplomat, trying to intervene on behalf of his countryman.

In Hungary, Tóasó was known to have belonged to the so-called "Szeklers", who consider themselves to be direct descendants of pure Hungarians... Along with Arpad Magyarosi, Tóasó joined the far-right paramilitary "Szekler Legion", which went to war in Croatia for separatist causes in the 1990s.

Of course, the Szekler Legion's website has disappeared, like the rabid right-wing nationalism which drives it, I'm sure. And Toaso's fans are continuing their letter-writing campaign to win freedom for the man who promises to reunite Greater Hungary. Irredentist sentiments alone should not land one in prison, but Toaso's defenders are the sort of people who believe a sentiment must be backed by violent action and Toaso is the sort of man who lives for nothing less.

Let's explore the life of Elod Toaso a little further. What happened on that day in 2009? What narratives color the palette? According to Hungarian Ambiance, who is working hard to free the Toaso:

In April 2009, Előd Tóásó survived a commando attack in the Las Americas hotel in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, together with Croatian Mario Tadic. In the assault Hungarian nationals Eduardo Rózsa Flores and Árpád Magyarosi, as well as Irish national Michael Dwyer have been killed. 

Word on the street is that Toaso was in Bolivia with fellow separatists for the purpose of training a separatist army- the sort of group that is defined as a "terrorist organization" according to international law. Let's meet Toasa's fellow day trippers.

A recent photo of Eduardo Rozsa-Flores.

Eduardo Roszsa-Flores, whose life has been fascinating enough to include everything from working for the secret police in Hungary to joining Opus Dei to becoming a hero in the Croatian war of independence, was killed in the April 2009 raid.  In 2003, he converted to Islam, claiming to be the spokesman for the Independent Iraqi Government, but then disappeared from the war-torn scene only to reappear in the strange circles of the Hungarian far-right.

Two days after his death, Hungarian Spectrum discovered that his friends and comrades in Jobbik were feeling heart palpitations. The Jobbik website posted an official statement: "With deep sorrow we report that our friend and fellow editor, Eduardo Rózsa-Flores, passed away. He died for his country." Other, more recently-expressed sentiments from the greater Hungarians who manage the Jobbik website include:

• "Jobbik condemns and despises the Simon Wiesenthal Center"
• Politician Gabor Vona promises to regain Hungary's lost territory and thereby "heal" the nation
• Defense of the Hungarian Guard, a paramilitary group who likes to terrorize Romany people in villages

If you are unfamiliar with Jobbik, then it is probably because you live somewhere in America and specialize in knowing small details of reality TV characters and Newt Gingrich's "wives". Wipe the trivia from your head and learn about Jobbik straight from the horse's mouth in this description of Party Chairman Gabor Vona:

The Jobbik chairman was born into a staunchly anti-Communist farming family in rural Hungary. He was accepted to read History at the prestigious ELTE University in Budapest, where he eventually qualified in his trade of school history teacher.

Though involvement in the University’s Catholic society was his main social pursuit while there, a chance encounter in the refectory led to him being invited to a gathering of Christian conservative students, concerned about the welfare of the Hungarian nation. This gathering led to the formation of a society that was the precursor of the Movement for a Better Hungary, or Jobbik. He was elected party chairman in 2006 at the age of 28. Since that time, it is no exaggeration to say that he has become the defining figure of Hungarian politics. Given that almost all political parties in Hungary now concern themselves with agenda, that he has brought into the public sphere.

Strangely enough, Chairman Vona's anti-communism and heartfelt Christianity do not assure me of much except that he is a demagogue well-versed in pandering to angry conservatives. Enough time dallying with political fascism in Europe. Let's get back to the action- back to freedom fighter Rozsa-Flores.

Bolivian authorities believe he was "the leader of a terrorist group which intended to assassinate Bolivian president Evo Morales". What led them to this belief? The aforementioned video is a good place to start.

Five days after Rozsa-Flores was killed, the Hungarian Television broadcast an interview recorded in September 2008 by Hungarian journalist András Kepes prior to his last trip to Bolivia. Kepes was instructed not to release the interview until given further notice. In the interview, Rózsa-Flores claimed that a Bolivian national requested him to return to Bolivia and help establish a milita for the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz, in response to perceived central government abuses. He said local politicians wanted to establish the militia,  and that he was chosen to create it based upon his Croatian military experience. Rozsa-Flores maintained the militia's primary role was to offer self-defense in the event of aggression by either central government or native "Indian" paramilitary forces.

Did Toaso, Rozsa-Flores, and Magyarosi go to Bolivia to pose with guns in a fancy hotel? Is there any truth to the rumor that Rozsa wanted to kill opposition leader Ruben Costas to create chaos in the country? Maybe we need to learn a little more about the rest of this fun-loving gang. Árpád Magyarosi who was also killed in the April raid was well-acquainted with Előd Tóásó. Both were Transylvanian Hungarians who attended high school in the same small-town of Sovata (Szováta) in Romania. After finishing high school both moved to Hungary.

A photo of Arpad Magyarosi engaged in nonviolent protest?

Hungarian Spectrum takes it from here:

Magyarosi sounds like a real loser: he kept changing high schools and tried several colleges as well. He had musical ambitions with only scant talent. He organized several rock groups that all failed. And as we can see from this photo, Magyarosi's interests weren't confined to music. The other Transylvanian, Előd Tóásó, was another drifter who never managed to finish any of the colleges he attended. He too was interested in the military and attended the Miklós Zrínyi Military Academy for a while. He speaks Romanian, English, and Spanish in addition to Hungarian. Both men joined a group, founded in 2002, that purported to promote rock climbing, the Székely Légió (Legion Siculus).  In 2006 the group became front page news in Hungarian papers because Ziua, a Bucharest daily, claimed that the Legion was a paramilitary organization planning attacks on Romania in order to establish an autonomous Hungarian (Szekler) area in the middle of Transylvania. The Romanian paper claimed that there were thousands enrolled in the Legion. The leaders of the Legion protested: it is an innocent organization that gives advice to young men and women interested in rock climbing. However, the Legion's internet website talked about survivor trips where the members carried heavy backpacks (20 kg) in addition to "weapons." They were schooled in marksmanship and the ability to detect mines. These don't sound like innocent rock climbing activities.

Magyarosi may not have been able to get a rock band going, but he managed to attract the attention of the Knights of Malta. According to this popular website for Hungarian diaspora, poor Magyarosi was "executed":

Karoly Nagy Andras, Foreign Minister of the Sovereign Order Of Saint John Knights of Malta, Federation of the Autonomous Priores, said that the Order would take the Magyarosi case to the court of human rights.

Where should we go now? Let's take a little detour, a small sojourn with his friends and buddies, those folks who are fighting for his release and standing in his defense. According to Hungarian Spectrum: 

Some of the mercenaries in the Bolivian group still at large are Hungarians: Tibor Révész (founder of the Székely Légió), Gábor Dudog, Dániel Gáspár and Lajos Tamás. Perhaps with some help from Bolivia, the Hungarians could find out more about their own extremists, for example, the Arrows of the Hungarians. 

The European Committee Human Rights Hungarians Central Europe exists to protect the rights of Hungarian minorities in Europe. It also maintains that the picture below shows the Carpathian basin, "which was known as Hungary until 1921. The people of the Carpathian basin are divided by borders that do not match the ethnical and/or language borders."

That's all fine and depressing, you might be thinking, but what happened? How did these guys get money? Who financed their little Bolivian vacation? According to this article:

On March 17th, former Santa Cruz civic leader Branko Marinkovic’s longtime personal assistant and right-hand man for 14 years Juan Judelka confirmed that Marinkovic was financing a group called “La Torre” that is accused of terrorist conspiracy.  Judelka declared under oath before prosecutor Marcelo Soza in La Paz that Marinkovic had on several occasions given him money in closed envelopes to deliver to Hungarian-Croatian-Bolivian Eduardo Rozsa Flores who was shot by police in a raid on the Las Americas hotel in Santa Cruz on April 16th, 2009. The Bolivian government accuses the deceased Rozsa Flores of being an international mercenary paid by Santa Cruz leaders to assassinate President Morales.
Judelka said, “If I did not testify earlier it was because of pressure by Mr. Marinkovic’s lawyer, but in my testimony I said that I effectively carried money from Branko to the La Torre (accused terrorist cell led by Rozsa Flores), after that Mr. Orlando Justiniano asked me to take this money to a Mr. “Germán” who was really Rozsa Flores.”  The Bolivian government is accusing the Santa Cruz state government of organizing the La Torre group during the governorship of Rubén Costas. The government accuses the Santa Cruz leaders of diverting some of the $40 million dollars they collected to finance Santa Cruz autonomy to hiring foreign mercenaries like Rozsa Flores to form a terrorist militia. Judelka added, “I do not know how much money was in the envelopes I took (to Rozsa Flores) and I don’t know if it was in Bolivianos or Dollars.”

Branko Marinkovic and his lovely wife circa 2004.

Branko Marinkovic.... such a Bolivian name for a man clever enough to pay a kid to write a favorable wikipedia entry about him. Sarcasm aside, Branko is a Croatian by origin, which connects a few dots and allows us to stipulate a Croation connection for this lovely group of gentlemen. More interesting facts about Branko:

• Marinković’s close ties with the current U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg, called “Ambassador of Ethnic Cleansing” because of his role in dismemberment of Yugoslavia, are also under investigation by the Bolivian officials. (Source)
• Branko is skilled enough to pull the wool over the eyes of this New York Times reporter.
• The Santa Cruz Civic Committee was the "sparkplug" for much of the separatist sentiment which Branko helped fan. Branko is also known as a "white separatist".
• Branko denies everything.
• "One of the most controversial figures of the autonomous movement is a member of FULIDE: the large landowner Branko Marinkovic. Marinkovic is FULIDE's spokesperson and at the same time, president of the Comité pro Santa Cruz, an association of large landowners favoring autonomy. Its youth organization is known for its violence and fascist behavior. The display of swastikas has been documented at several of their political rallies. Bolivian observers point out that Bolivia has its own history with the swastika. After 1945, numerous Nazis had taken refuge in this South American country, among them the mass murderer, Klaus Barbie. Barbie had served several Bolivian dictators - in their counter insurgency efforts. Barbie was in contact with several fascist circles. Nazi affiliated Croatian Ustashi had fled also with him to Bolivia, including some, whose families are among the autonomy supporters. According to the media, the father of Branko Marinkovic, the large landowner and president of the autonomists had also been a member of the Croatian Ustasha before coming to Bolivia shortly after the war. (Source)
• Branko has been officially charged with terrorism and armed uprising under Bolivian law.
• Branko is alleged to have ties with cattle rancher Guido Nayar in the plot to destabilize the Bolivian government.

And I haven't even started to peel the onion that is Branko. The tragic ending to this story is one in which Branko is living in the US, possibly even with political asylum, because the diplomatic relations bewteen the US and Bolivia are strained. If Branko has found a safe haven here, I am disgusted and disappointed. He should seek asylum in Croatia or in a country that can afford the presence of overt and violent racism. Honestly, the US is too fragile right now. Anti-immigration sentiment is at a peak. I'm concerned that a successful, smooth-talking car salesman like Branko could sell more than cars to disillusioned Americans.

Gica Popescu shows how patriotism becomes an excuse for being pathetic.

Gheorghe (Gica) Popescu, the former captain of Romania's national soccer team, finally admitted to having been an informer for the country's secret police during the communist era. Popescu's admission comes just three days after he denied the allegations, calling a newspaper report that he had been a Securitate informant "a big lie"-- a big lie followed by bigger evidence. 

In an interview with the daily Evenimentul Zilei, Popescu said he wrote four notes informing on teammates and other colleagues while he was playing at Universitatea Craiova. The defender was part of a Romanian team that qualified for three consecutive World Cups, starting in 1990 and for two European Championships. He also helped Barcelona win the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1997. When the allegations surfaced on Monday, the 41-year-old Popescu said he had only signed a document in 1985 promising to "defend the national interests" during the regime of the late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Always the seasoned opportunist, Popescu defended his actions under communism--  "Even if I wrote notes, I wrote good things", he insisted. "I praised [those] people." 

Romania's star soccer player Gheorghe Hagi, who is related to Popescu through marriage, came to his defense, saying sports had brought glory to Romania in the communist era. "We [sportsmen] were the ambassadors for Romania. They should look elsewhere" for Securitate agents, he said. Hagi, of course, maintains that he did not inform-- or, at least, that no one has evidence to the contrary.

It seems to me that such unselfish, noble athletes love to be looked upon by cheering crowds only to blush modestly when one attempts to look at how they really served their countries under communism. In case no one taught Popescu and Hagi how to be "good sports", here's a quick lesson: When you get caught cheating, at least have the honor to admit what you did without adding all those apparatchik-inspired excuses.

Romania exports a volkisch terrorist to Hungary.

A Romanian citizen from  Sambrias, Szasz Endre Istvan, was placed under preventive arrest for 30 days in Hungary, under charges of terrorism. Hungarian authorities describe Istvan as "part of a far-right movement that carried out attacks against socialist members of parliament." Police believe he was planning a bomb attack on the home of lawmaker Laszlo Esodi. For those unfamiliar with the current scene in Hungary, there have been a number of attacks by right-wing nationalists on liberal politicians. Istvan's name suggests he might be of Hungarian origin. If he was indeed planning such an attack, then he is part of an extreme nationalist movement in Hungary with irredentist claims to Transylvania. 

The Romanian attaché to the Ministry of Interior in Bucharest, Ioan Bente, says the Romanian was arrested on May 15 in Hungary, under charges of terrorism. He was wanted by the police under suspicion that he held suspect materials. Bente believes Istvan did not act alone:

"Some one month ago, the Hungarian police unfolded some raids following several attacks (...) There was an investigations, there was a circle of suspects and the trail led to the home of Szasz Endre Istvan, where authorities found various materials. He wasn’t arrested then. Police arrested him Friday (May 15), while he was in a house in Budapest. The second day, police and the prosecutor presented the case before the court with a proposition for 29-day preventive arrest. The judge allowed the request, thus he is now under preventive arrest for 30 days," Bente explained. 

Additional reasons to believe that Istvan was involved with Hungarian nationalist extremists can be found in a statement by Alin Serbanescu, spokesperson for the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Serbanescu told Mediafax "that the ministry has unfolded procedures for the identification of the citizen through the Romanian Embassy to Budapest, but Romanian authorities cannot intervene because the suspect has not issued a consular assistance request".

Sources: SE Times + Mediafax 

Ion Mihai Pacepa returns to sell more snake oil to gullible Western journalists.

There is no faster way to get my undivided attention than to whisper sweet nothings about Cold War myths into my ear. Consider me captive. And don't expect me to be ashamed of the shiver which bolted down my spine when I read the first paragraph Lauren St. John's delicious piece on the Transylvanian sex schools. Alas, the shame came later. For in postcommunist history, rapture comes rarely.

St. John opens the book to the forests and mountains of Transylvania, where she locates a myth from the cold war era:

This, some say, was the location of an extraordinary “sex school”, one in which the most beautiful and handsome of cold-war spies were trained in lovemaking before being sent forth to seduce and inveigle secrets from western diplomats and agents. In the mid-1960s, one American author claimed he’d been taken to one such school, housed in a former royal hunting lodge outside Brasov. He alleged that it had a curriculum of sex studies run by the Romanians and that at least three of its young students were jaw-droppingly beautiful.....Four decades on, the myth of an intelligence school for government whores is still deeply ingrained in the Romanian psyche. So is there any truth in it?

So far, so good. Unfortunately, after speaking with a few dismissive Romanians, St. John decides to seek the truth from one of the most notorious Romanian defectors of the Cold War-- Ion Mihai Pacepa. St. John displays her Western vulnerabilities when she admits:

I was told that one of the few people alive who might be able to confirm if such a school ever existed was Lt-Gen Pacepa, the former deputy chief of Romania’s espionage service. Now living in the US, where he is one of the country’s leading authorities on cold-war spies, he resides under cover so deep that, despite two Ceausescu-imposed death sentences and a $4m bounty on his head — $2m from the Romanian state, $1m from Yasser Arafat and $1m from the Libyan dictator Muammar Gadaffi, who sent Carlos the Jackal after him — he has never been found, officially. But thanks to the internet I reached him in days. He dismissed the idea of the “school” as pure fantasy, but in a letter confirming Romania had, nevertheless, employed prostitutes as spies, five words stood out: “You are onto something real.”

Ah yes, Pacepa. Everyone's favorite sell-out, "dissident", truth-teller, expose-writer, scum-dwelling ex-Secret Police-man. Suddenly St. John's article rankles. Who is this man, Ion Pacepa, that provokes my skepticism? I'll start with the facts and end with my opinion. Pacepa was the former head of the DIE (Departamentul de Informatii Externe), Romania’s foreign intelligence service. In other words, he was a top Communist whose skills at deception, propaganda, and counterintelligence led him to the top post in Ceausescu's socialist paradise. St. John, like many Western Newsweek intellectuals, buys into Pacepa's latest incarnation as anti-communist hero when she writes nonsense like this:

He helped trigger — with his 1987 defection and autobiographical book Red Horizons — the revolution that destroyed one of the cruellest, most corrupt dictatorships of modern times; Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu were sentenced to death in 1989 largely on the basis of the evidence it contained.

Did Pacepa provide St. John with this extraordinary piece of information which crowns him as king of the Romanian revolution from his cush home in the United States? As a matter of fact, he did. St John proudly announces Pacepa's exclusive participation in an interview with The Sunday Times.

In an exclusive interview with The Sunday Times, Pacepa, who ran the DIE from 1968 to 1978, revealed that, while all communist countries, including Russia and East Germany, used prostitutes, both male and female, as spies, “my DIE excelled at it”. But there wasn’t any school. “All training was individual and was done in special safe houses that were studded with hidden microphones and video cameras. But these were no ordinary agents. They were, for the most part, “illegals”, recruited for their very particular skill sets and attributes, the most important of which was their genitalia. The highly classified PGU (Pervoye Glavnoye Upravleniye — KGB foreign intelligence) manual for illegal operations puts it this way: “A regular foreign-intelligence officer has an official position, a diplomatic passport and a country behind him; an illegal officer acts under a foreign flag and has only his penis — that’s his cover, his source of information, his immunity.”

My excitement, by now, assumes the character of a haunting. St John proudly reports the dirty details from the trenches:

Having, as Pacepa calls it, a “king-size penis” was still the rule for male Soviet-bloc illegal officers from 1972 to 1978, when he ran the ultra-secret DIE component dealing with this category of spy. “These lady-killers were supposed to exploit their unusual sexual endowment [and outstanding academic or technical credentials] to achieve social status, usually by marrying wealthy or influential women,” he says. Hence the PGU manual’s dictum that an illegal’s penis is “his cover, his source of information, his immunity”. It was up to the agent to use his sexual and technical prowess, as well as his wits, to gain all those things. 

St. John leads Pacepa away from large penises and back to the Transylvanian sex schools, but Pacepa cannot be distracted from the "big" picture:

In Romania, the training of these “sexy” illegals took three to eight years and was done not in a Transylvanian school but in 150 safe houses where trainee agents were kept under round-the-clock control. Many of these safe houses were ordinary flats, moved from time to time to avoid suspicion. There, illegal agents perfected the language of their target country, learnt appropriate skills, such as tennis and bridge, and were taught how to infiltrate western scientific and industrial targets.

Despite the high priority given by the DIE to recruiting illegals with huge penises, Pacepa says only one seduction operation was used externally by his organisation, and that was a honeytrap involving a female Stasi agent, also used by the DIE. In May 1958, he was at a meeting in East Berlin with Markus Wolf, the famed chief of the Stasi’s foreign-intelligence service, when Wolf heard that a Moscow-trained DIE illegal, Gheorghe Mandache, who’d been moved to the city to perfect his German, had vanished with his East German girlfriend. It took over a year to find them; they were living under new identities in Düsseldorf, West Germany. The PGU wanted Mandache killed to discourage other illegals from defecting, and decided that “Gerda”, a German-born Romanian spy, would seduce him.

Pacepa is pitiful enough to ignore, but powerful enough to require refutation. I'll let him speak for himself again, this time, on the Kennedy assasination:

Gerda was one of a number of agents who Pacepa claims underwent cosmetic surgery on their genitals by specialist PGU surgeons. This surgery was most commonly practised on “wives” — women illegals whose role came into being in the 1950s and early ’60s, when the DIE’s Soviet advisers insisted they provide Romanian “wives” to as many western agents as possible in order to keep them “tied” to the DIE for ever. Under PGU guidelines, a “wife” had to have a “tight sex orifice, so that she could squeeze her lover’s penis like a vice,” alleges Pacepa. “PGU doctors specialised in mould-ing the sex orifice according to the particularity of each case,” he explained. It was crucial that the “wife” was sexually experienced. “Each candidate was secretly filmed making love; those selected were helped to perfect their sexual technique by illegal officers who could no longer be sent abroad.” In Programmed to Kill, Pacepa builds a convincing case that Marina Oswald, the wife of Kennedy’s assassin, was a KGB “wife” created specially for Lee Harvey, a loner who was unlikely to have had the social skills necessary to marry a Russian woman in the brief time he courted her.

St. John ends on an ominous note:

Unfortunately, if Pacepa is to be believed, the devastation suffered by victims of Romeo and Juliet agents, and the activities of illegal officers in general, did not end with the cold war, and we may still be at risk even now. This assertion was proven by the 2006 arrest in Montreal of the Russian spy known as Paul William Hampel, who confessed to being an officer of the SVR (the PGU’s successor). “The concept of the illegal officer was and still is unique to Russian intelligence,” says Pacepa. “It is Russia’s most secret weapon of the future.”

Apparently, there are still Russians with large penises that might pose a threat to our freedom. Call me crazy but I am more concerned about the threats posed by Pacepa's continuous media disinformation campaigns than by sex as usual. What better way to distract interested parties from a true investigation of Cold War myths than sordid blatherings about penis size?

Pacepa has demonstrated his talent for exaggeration and embellishment before. As a strong supporter of the Iraq war and Bush-style big government conservatism (which shares some principles with Ceausescu's national socialism), Pacepa penned a piece for the gullible gentlemen at the National Review arguing that international opposition to the war in Iraq was actually a communist plot originating in Moscow. When Pacepa's attempt to initiate a Red Scare failed, he decided it might be better to make Moscow a part of the international terrorist threat. So Pacepa published an article agruing that Moscow had moved Saddam's WMD. Of course, when St. John asked Pacepa about the Transylvanian sex schools, he could be counted on to provide the most lurid, exciting, and conspiratorial account.

I am disappointed in St. John's reluctance to research Pacepa's past and provide a genuine reportage of the Transylvanian sex school myth. Responsible journalists wishing to revisit history should never offer their sources an open podium without first checking to see if they preached snake-oil in the past. Rather than getting anti-communist Romanian emigres like myself aroused by the possibility of an honest report on historical myth, St. John gives the microphone to the Master snake-charmer/myth-maker and elevates him to the status of a prophet.

Of possible further interest:

• "Am tradat Romania in anii cand am servit Securitatea", Pacepa's interview with Ziua in 2006.
• Ovidiu Jur's wonderful website chronicling the history of Ceausescu in documents and images.
  
• "CIA dezumfla mitul Pacepa si il trimite la consult...", a fascinating post at Frauda si Vot Illegal in Senat.
  

[Cross-posted at totalitarianism today.]

Viktor Bout: A Romanian connection?

I found this information about Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout at AxisGlobe, and thought it might be fun to use it as a jumping-point for a little investigation. If you've seen the movie "Lord of War", then you already know something about Bout, whom Nicolas Cage portrays. I quote in full from the newsblurb:

David Dastych, a veteran journalist, has been continuing a series of articles in the Canadian Free Press website, describing about the DEA sting operation against Viktor Bout, Russian arms dealer, who for 15 years has run guns to African warlords and Islamic militants, and also on some events from the past, involving him. Dastych says his correspondence with former member of Romanian parliament Valentin Vasilescu and an article from the Polish paper Gazeta Polska provide additional disclosures about the illegal weapons trade and Bout’s connections to the Romanian and Polish military intelligence. Vasilescu writes that in 1998, the Romanian authorities made up a fake cigarettes-smuggling case against him. In fact, there were no cigarettes on board Viktor Bout`s airplane IL-76 operating for Air Sofia which were unloaded at the Bucharest-Otopeni Airport. Overnight standing at its military apron was necessary for the Romanian secret services to load Romanian-made anti- aircraft missiles for destination to under UN embargo. Daily Ziua wrote then that weapons under the cover of cigarettes were exported apparently by a company owned by Viktor Bout and Shimon Naor because they had the monopoly on such secret transactions at that time. Connections of Bout and other gun-runners to the Romanian military intelligence seem apparent. Vasilescu testifies that only a few Romanian intelligence agencies covered the import-export firms and were involved in cigarette smuggling on the Bucharest airport and in the free trade zone of Agigea, in the Constanta Sea Port (new and old), to make money for support of the military training of Islamic organizations. In fact, the management of the network of the under-cover firms belonged to Colonel George Dumitrescu, an active duty, high-ranking officer of Anti-terrorist brigade of the SRI (the Romanian Homeland Intelligence Service), which coordinated the activities of the Arab citizens and their Muslim brothers in Romania. His cousin, the ex-personnel head of staff of the Intelligence Academy in the 1990s, was appointed colonel prosecutor of the Military Panel of the Supreme Court. In all operations with cigarettes this network was supported by a general and the head of the Economic Counter Intelligence Division of the SRI. Personnel of the SIE (Foreign Intelligence Agency of Romania) based in the Romanian embassies was responsible for preparing the fake documents necessary for commercial operations of the arms smugglers network. Bout’s planes operated not only from Romania but also from the neighboring Republic of Moldova, according to Dastych.

The comments section in this Times Online article mentions a business link for Bout with the Romanian government in the period from 1996-1999 by the name of Colonel Gigel Bratiloveanu. This Colonel currently works as an economic adviser for the Romanian Embassy in Moscow, so the Romanian government must not be distancing itself from him too much. After all, the Embassy is in Moscow, not Siberia. There is also more about Bratiloveanu in this extended essay by David Dastych.

In the DEA's charges against Bout, which accuse him of supplying weapons to the Colombian FARC group, phone conversations between Bout, Andrew Smulian, and his undercover agents posing as clients suggest that Bout did not want to travel to Romania due to his "high profile" which made it more likely that he be "caught" in Romania . The DEA must have had a plan with the Romanian government to catch him in Bucharest, since all three operatives emphasized the convenience of meeting in Romania. Them in January 2008, DEA undercover operatives met with Smulian in Bucharest "again"-- it seems Smulian, at least, had a Bucharest connection. The Romanian government provided transcripts of these cell phone conversations to US authorities upon request.

Then, in February 2008, the Romanian government intercepted a phone call between Bout and an unidentified party (CC-2) who operates an airline company in Romania. Bout asked CC-2 to help him acquire a Romanian visa; CC-2 discouraged Bout from attempting to come to Romania, saying it would be difficult to get a visa for him. In December 2007, a televised news broadcast in Romania referred to a business relationship between Bout and CC-2. The complaint does not provide information as to the character of CC-2. Could it be Colonel Bratiloveanu?

Or is there another key player/Romanian partner who assisted Bout? Reading through the UAE community blog, there is no mention of Romania until you reach the end of the comments, where you will see an anonymous comment posted this past March:

His Israeli partner-born in Romania, the admiral Shimon Naor a friend of Romanian ex-president Emil Constantinescu, connected Viktor Bout to Arsenal and Romtehnica, companies of Romanian DoDefense. Cigarettes in cargo manifest of Air Sofia aircraft, in fact rifle guns amunitions loaded on board at Bucharest-Otopeni Romanian AFB for a destination under embargo in 1998 ( Sierra Leone ).

Who is Shimon Naor? Or rather, who is Lieutenant Colonel Shimon-Hershkovitz? Ha'aretz brings him up in the context of the Israeili Defense Ministry's bribery scandals:

A case that did worse damage to Israel's image and harmed relations with the United Nations was that of Lieutenant Colonel (Res.) Shimon Naor-Hershkovitz, a former manpower officer in the navy who, after his discharge from the Israel Defense Forces, became an arms dealer for several Israeli companies. He was arrested in Rumania in August 1999 on suspicion of selling Rumanian arms, using forged documents (end-user certificates, indicating that the arms were intended for Togo) to the guerrilla forces of Dr. Jonas Savimbi, thus violating the sanctions of the United Nations Security Council against arms sales to Angola.

Naor-Hershkovitz was released following guarantees provided by Israel and returned here, in part thanks to the intervention of then deputy defense minister Ephraim Sneh.

In November 2001, a UN investigative committee that was examining the case requested information from Israel regarding Israeli-registered companies owned by Naor-Hershkovitz and his partners.

The Defense Ministry did not bother to assist the UN even though the ministry has a powerful tool at its disposal - the department of the Supervisor of Security at the Defense Ministry (known by its Hebrew acronym, Malmab), which can easily provide such information.

Naor didn't stop there. He was arrested again in 2004 in Jordan on suspicion of smuggling arms to Sudanese rebels. It seems Naor had friends in high places-- his protectors in Israel are evident, but public prosecutor Cristian Bojinca also tried to protect Naor in Romania. So much so that, in 2001, the Romanian Supreme Court of Justice heard his defense following his arrest with Judge Valentino Acatrinei of the Bucharest Court of Appeal. And what happened to Naor with all these friends in high places and guns in low places? Well, in 1999, Naor was arrested and sentenced to 7 years in prison by the Romanian courts for his role in illegal arms trade. The Israeli deputy defense minister at the time, Ephraim Sneh, tried to assist Naor, but the Romanians refused to release him. In the end, Naor managed to gain his release on bail and fled to Israel. In Romania he was sentenced to seven years imprisonment in absentia, and is considered a fugitive from justice. And guess what? Naor is still believed to be selling arms.

And who are these other folks mentioned by the Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism, which serves up quite a detailed look at the holdings and aviation companies owned by Bout and associates in Romania? What is the Flying Dolphin ring? And are these well-connected guys still selling arms, still considered by various governments to be useful potential partners for covert operations? This blog is not the place for an exhaustive answer to this question. But there are certainly more avenues to explore..

• You can read "Vicktor Bout's Last Deal" to learn the story of how Bout was finally busted by the US DEA.
• You can also learn more about the book Merchant of Arms in this interview with author Douglas Farah.
• Explore Bout's connections with the administration of President George Bush, including his role as "useful partner".
• Read the very clear and accurate account of Bout's activities and arrest as related to the Romanian government in the Romanian press, specifically Ziua.
• John C. K. Daly gets specific about Bout's American connection in "The deadly convenience of Victor Bout".