The Party and the Securitate were two different things. What the party knew the Securitate had to know as well so the fight was permanent. If you were in a party organization, you, an idiot, if anything happened, you were attacked by both sides. The Securitate came first, they were the first to find out, the party had a slower hierarchy, but a more substantial one. The Securitate changed its hierarchy; you knew some of them, you did not know others, it was tricky. Somebody made a mistake, I don?t know what he had told in our group at the university. The Securitate took me to tell them what this guy had told.  I had no idea, you know, but immediately somebody who became important later inside the Party took me aside and asked me what that person had told. It?s the first time I wrote three lines that I signed with my name, of course. They had me write that I didn?t know what had happened. (S. R.-B, D. R.-B., 137)

Immediately after the Revolution, I went to take my kids who had martial arts lessons in the sport hall of the High school Zoia Kosmodemianskaia, the present Central School. I had got bored and I was talking in the secretary?s office to one of the girls from the boarding house. She told me that a young officer had come a little before the 14^th Congress and gently told the children:  ?children, if you hear anybody speaking about the general secretary or his wife or the state of the country, write down and come to us?. (C. V., 7)

In each enterprise there was a Securitate agent. As a division chief I received the periodical visits of this officer who expected every time to inform on any employee who had a big mouth. I had to think up of a lot of tricks so as not to tell anything and at the same time to tell something. I managed to fool him because that officer was not very smart. I used to tell him that it was nothing special, people weren?t concerned with the problems he was interested in (discontentment towards the measures of the government, the party). His preoccupation was to obtain any news that could fill the report he had to forward to his superiors.

There were some tense episodes when a friend, who had been a close co worker in the Institute had a conflict with the party leadership.  He had become an UNESCO official and he came back to Romania holding this position. Because of some conspiracy between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Romanian Embassy in Paris, he was not allowed to leave the country.  He was given various positions and favors that he did not accept, insisting to keep his position.