It seems Romania holds an international record: it has seven major intelligence and counter-intelligence services. It seems Romania holds an international record: it has seven major intelligence and counter-intelligence services.
Countries like Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, Canada, Iran, Japan and India have only three; Italy, Belgium, Spain, The Netherlands, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Brazil, New Zealand, Pakistan have only two such services.
Switzerland, Egypt, Finland, Estonia, Greece, Slovenia, Serbia, and Singapore have only one intelligence service.
The size of Romanian intelligence services is also out of proportion: the Counter-Intelligence Service sSRIt employs 12,000 officers, while DST, its French counterpart, employs 6,000. And France has double the population of Romania.
"So what!" some people in Romania told me: secret services cannot rule the game now, in Romania, which has a free press. Oh, but it can.
Look at Russia, also holding a free press, where secret services make the rules of the game more than they did during the communist era. The Russian president and half of his government are former KGB members. According to data collected by Novaia Gazeta, and reprinted by the Center for the Future of Russia in the United States, over 6,000 members of the central and local administration are nominally identified as former KGB staff.
Germany would not have embarked on a democratic path while harboring former GESTAPO members at its helm.
Why does Romania have so many intelligence services at a time when it is already a member of NATO and it will soon be one of the European Union, hence it is surrounded by friends, not enemies?
The answer is that when it comes to the intelligence community, Romania still looks to the East. It is quite normal; former Securitate members know
