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Posted by on Mar 29, 2013 in Blog, Personal, Politics | 2 comments

What I Saw in the Romanian Revolution — VI. Non-Fraternization / VII. Island Station

 

nolan-dalla-romanian-revolution

 

Part 2 of a multi-part series on the 1989 Romanian Revolution in Bucharest and the aftermath, including my experiences.

 

VI.

NON-FRATERNIZATION

The rules were as strict as they were clear.

Every Romanian you encountered was presumed to be a spy.  It was that simple.

During the bitter final chapter of what was called “the Cold War,” tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union – and its satellite governments across Eastern Europe – were very real.

The stalemate was especially tense during the late 1980s.  The U.S. and U.S.S.R. engaged in a tit-for-tat high-stakes diplomatic chess game, stemming from mutual paranoia, out-of-control defense establishments, and an embarrassing espionage caper gone horribly wrong in Moscow when it was discovered the newly-constructed American Embassy building and compound had become completely compromised with listening devices, surveillance, and other intelligence-gathering devices planted by Soviet “construction workers.”

A certain degree of political posturing was to be expected.  But the moral high-handedness here was nauseating.  It’s terribly naive, even shameful, to believe the Soviets wouldn’t try to compromise internal security at the new American Embassy, especially given this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to plant bugs during the construction phase.  The American government’s reaction to this breach of diplomatic etiquette and direct attack on national sovereignty was the ultimate in hypocrisy.  You can be absolutely certain we engaged in identical intelligence-gathering practices whenever there was an opportunity — and that goes for any world capital where both Americans and Russians were present.

Nevertheless, there was severe diplomatic fallout for these acts.  In response, the U.S. State Department began playing hardball with our counterparts — which meant the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C.  Essential deliveries were interrupted.  Diplomatic visas were suspended.  Surveillance and tailing (mostly conducted by the FBI) kicked into overdrive.  In short, the lives of Soviet (and some East Bloc) diplomats stationed in Washington were made more difficult, without coming out directly and saying as much.  Alas, the game of diplomacy and espionage is often subtle.

American retribution, in turn, triggered an additional backlash by the Soviets.  Some local support personnel working for foreign missions in the U.S.S.R. were plucked from their duties.  Most of the Eastern European governments, including Romania, followed suit.  They simply pulled out vital people to the functioning of the embassy — everything from electricians to translators.  If being stationed in a hard-line Communist country before this mess had been difficult, things were about to get much tougher for everyone.

That’s where I come in.  The State Department shipped me off to Bucharest, along with my counterparts who went to other American Embassies throughout Eastern Europe.  We were assigned to provide essential support for the Embassy and its staff.  Bucharest was given two additional diplomatic visas (which included two-year terms).  I received one of those assignments [SEE FOOTNOTE].

Prior to transferring to Bucharest, I went through several months of training at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), which is the elite diplomatic and language studies school utilized by key government agencies.  I was even given two months of intensive Romanian language instruction.  Five days a week, eight hours a day, my only “job” was to learn Romanian and think of nothing else.  Then on top of that, there was homework.  You’d be surprised what you’re capable of under such extreme conditions.  You learn quickly.  It’s sink or swim.

Given the uneasy political rift between East and West, all personnel was carefully scrutinized.  It took almost a year for me to obtain the requisite “Top Secret” security clearance.  I went through a battery of psychological tests.  I was examined by psychiatrists (seriously).  What was most interesting about the entire process was that the government wasn’t looking for angels or seeking out people with squeaky-clean backgrounds.  Such people probably would have fared very poorly in the East Bloc.  They wanted real people who could think on their feet quickly and adapt to unusual situations.  I sure couldn’t pass the “squeaky-clean” test, but I must have come out okay on the “adaptation” part.

The training served a dual purpose.  First, we were provided with essential tools which enabled us to be productive.  But our training was also designed to instill strict obedience, intense loyalty, and something I think is best summed up in the term esprit de corps, which essentially means a shared sense of purpose.  When I initially landed in Bucharest, I wanted to be part of the team.  I felt like a patriot.  While this wasn’t the same as fighting for my country, at least I was serving my nation and its way of life in a way that I knew.

And so, Romanians were seen as the enemy.

The State Department implemented a strict code of conduct for all personnel which was called the “Non-Fraternization” policy.  Just as it sounds, this meant we weren’t permitted to fraternize with Romanians.  “Fraternizing” meant attending social engagements, becoming friends with, and most certainly dating Romanians.  The dating part was a terrible no-no, the penalty for which was immediate removal from the post.  “Non Fraternization” applied to everyone stationed at the American Embassy – including State Department employees (probably 40 people total), military adjuncts (we had two), USIA employees (two), and the U.S Marines (we had 12).

“Non-Fraternization” was especially tough on the Marines.  Mostly young men in their early 20’s, they really had it rough in a place like Romania.  A nation filled with gorgeous women with Latino blood was totally off-limits.  It was like locking a diabetic inside a candy factory.  Since they couldn’t date local women, and the opportunities to meet young females in diplomatic circles were extremely limited, Marines were granted generous R&R time.  That meant traveling to either the Greek Islands or flying on government transport back to West Germany – which was the closest reservoirs of normal female companionship.

Isolation led to a very close-knit group of Embassy employees.  Sometimes too close.  Everyone seemed to know everyone’s business.  It was like living inside a fishbowl.  Work and play were one and the same.  You played with the same you worked with.  And you worked with the same people you played with.  Divisions of class and rank were obliterated by our communal detachment.  It was nothing to be eating lunch and have the Ambassador of Deputy Chief of Mission sit down right next to you and engage in the most trivial conversation.  We all ate the same food.  We drank the same booze.  We heard the same stories.   Pretty soon, after you have beer after beer after beer with the same old people time and time again, the stories started getting told over again.  Everyone repeats themselves.  After a while, there’s nothing new.  It becomes a cross between a family and a lunatic asylum.

Whatever internal pressures contributed to a creeping sense of despondency, the external despair outside Embassy walls made things much worse.  The constant breadlines, the empty store shelves, the dim lights, the raggedy clothes, the stoic expressions, the political oppression, the soldiers with machine guns on the streets — this is what made Bucharest a “hardship post.”  It’s why we were paid a 25 percent bonus in salary which all sounded good back in Washington.  But once you were on the ground here, after months in this place, you’d trade every dollar in your bank account for a hot date and a genuine smile.

Prior to my arrival, there had been a series of scandals at the Embassy.  I won’t list any names but one involved a former Ambassador.  At one point during their assignment, the Ambassador’s wife became so frustrated with the bleakness in Romania that she reportedly gang banged several Marines.  Seemed like a win-win deal when really you think about it.  But the former Ambassador didn’t look at it that way.  Several Marines were removed from the post and the Ambassador’s marriage suffered.  I relay this scandalous story to give some idea of what life was really like behind closed doors.  There’s one thing they don’t teach you how to deal with at FSI.  That’s loneliness.

I presume Bucharest wasn’t an anomaly when it came to isolation.  People probably went stir crazy in other places, too.  But even Moscow wasn’t that tough of a post when you consider there were 500 Americans stationed there, plus dozens of transient employees coming and going all the time.  Bucharest was much different.  We were a few dozen people living in isolation.

We were forbidden from dating Romanians.  We couldn’t socialize with Romanians at bars  We couldn’t go to dinner with Romanians.  We couldn’t be friends with Romanians.  However, contact was inevitable.

For instance, most of the Romanians I encountered on a daily basis consisted of my housekeeper, a few Romanian employees working at the Embassy (given waivers by the government, probably because their intelligence-gathering skills were superior), and Romanian Army soldiers.

The American Embassy was a military fortress.  It was guarded around the clock by U.S. Marines and also by Romanian Army personnel, which was largely symbolic.  After all, no Romanians were actually going to attack the Embassy.  Having the Romanian Army right outside our doorstep at all times was a very subtle form of harassment.  I also had Romanian Army sentries always stationed in front of my apartment building.  They worked in 24-hour shifts.  After a while, I befriended them all.  Mostly 21-year-old kids from the countryside doing their obligatory service, they “protected” diplomats living in preassigned apartments.  I usually brought them cigarettes and candy, which they always appreciated.  The surveillance (some might say — harassment) wasn’t anything personal.  We were all just pawns in a giant chess game.

Everything about my apartment was designed to gain intelligence for the Romanians.  I presume all apartments were set up like this.  Compared to ordinary Romanians, we lived like kings.  I was single and yet was given a 2,500-square-foot completely furnished apartment overlooking a park in north Bucharest.  This might sound ridiculous, but the place was so big there were rooms I never once entered during my entire assignment in Romania.  I had three bedrooms, an office, a den, a living room, two balconies, and three bathrooms.  This was for one low-level diplomat.

Of course, not all was what it seemed.  The Romanians weren’t giving me a nice place to live just to be nice.  Listening devices were hidden inside the walls.  My housekeeper was on the payroll of the Romanian Secret Police.  Army soldiers were stationed out in front of the building.  You didn’t even bother using the home telephone for anything other than routine business because you knew it was tapped.  Even my neighbors were open to suspicion.  To the right lived a diplomat from East Germany, a hot-looking blond woman who was probably a member of the Stasi.  To the right was a diplomat from Libya.  Oddly enough, we could fraternize with fellow diplomats, no matter where they were from.  So, I began playing tennis regularly at the Diplomatic Club with the Libyan.  It never once occurred to me this man worked for Muammar Gaddafi.  Indeed, it’s remarkable how your feelings about people and places change when you’re placed in extraordinary conditions.

Invariably, you encountered Romanians in daily life.  Waiters, bartenders, maintenance workers, barbers, shop assistants, cashiers — were a part of day-to-day life  Non-Fraternization meant no friendships and no screwing.  It didn’t mean not talking to people.  It didn’t mean being rude.

Trouble was, there was lots of grey area.  What were you to do when out in public sitting at a table filled with other diplomats and a few Romanians join the conversation and begin drinking with the group?  Get up and leave?  What do you do if a utility worker asks for a favor?  What about getting approached on the street by a black marketeer who wants to change money at a far more favorable exchange rate?  These types of encounters happened all the time.

To clarify things, the State Department assigned someone called a Regional Security Officer to every Communist post.  The RSO was almost always some ex-military hard-ass with no sense of humor.  I suppose this is precisely why they were picked for such a job.  The title was terribly misleading.  Why would an RSO be needed for “security” when there were already a dozen Marines guarding the building around the clock?  It’s yet another abomination revealing how much waste occurs under the guise of “security.”  Fact is, the RSO was there just as much to keep us in line.  Don’t fool yourself into thinking American Embassies are benevolent missions of goodwill.  They even hired people to spy on “us.”

And so, RSO’s insisted on the filing of what were called “Contact Reports.”

Contact reports were mandatory anytime you encountered any Romanian aside from normal conversation or any suspicious activity.  Such as, someone who approaches you to exchange money.  Someone who makes a sexual advance.  Anyone who asks questions about the Embassy or its security and personnel.

Contact reports enabled the RSO, and superiors with the Embassy as well as the Romanian Desk back at Main State to gain a more comprehensive picture of approaches and threats by the enemy.

As things turned out, I filed more contact reports than anyone.

old-american-embassy-bucharest-romania

Top floor of the (old) American Embassy in Bucharest. Front windows are from the American Ambassador’s office looking out onto Strada Tudor Arghezi. In the background behind is the ominous Intercontinental Hotel, which had the top floors sealed off and surveillance equipment installed to spy on foreign missions (including the American Embassy) below.

VII.

ISLAND STATION

I hadn’t been in Bucharest 45-minutes before I attended my first embassy party.

Shortly after arriving at Otopeni (SEE PART 1 HERE), I was whisked off by my American compatriot to a party taking place that night at the British Embassy.  I came to learn the English always threw the best diplomatic parties, which meant they free-poured premium booze and there were single girls in attendance (mostly secretaries from other missions from Western Europe).

The cool thing about embassy parties was – this was the closest thing we knew to a normal life.  You could discuss anything, drink whatever you wanted, sleep with who you wanted, and not have to worry about the infiltration of filling those pesky Contact Reports.  The party scene on embassy row consisted of English, Belgians, Germans, Swiss, Danes, Italians, French, and staff from a few Asian counties.  This was a fascinating subculture.  During the early part of my assignment in Bucharest, embassy parties became the highlight of the week.

Yet on that first night in-country, partying with a bunch of Westerners was the very last thing I wanted to do.  Indeed, standing around in the English Embassy with a beer in my hand making introduction after introduction to strangers wasn’t relaxing.  It was like working.  I was much more eager to get out there on the streets — to see Bucharest and to experience the mysticism of a new place and culture.

Such opportunities came gradually.  I’m not sure if it was by design or just natural progression.  Over time, that which is familiar becomes dull.  The unfamiliar becomes intriguing.  Indeed, the same drinking rituals which were interesting on the first few occasions instill boredom over time.  It was inevitable no matter who the present company happened to be.  Many of the people around me had lived extraordinary lives.  They were stationed previously in exotic places all over the world, in countries that have made international headlines over the past few decades.  They had witnessed — and in some cases had a direct hand in– coup d’etats, political assassinations, revolutions, and who knew what else?  And here I was — at age 27 — a young wide-eyed kid making his first foreign assignment taking it all in as best I could.

I had absolutely nothing to add that was intelligent to discuss.  I mean, what could you say after hearing a story from some political attache who was one of the last diplomats to evacuate Phnom Penh before the Khmer Rouge took over and began a bloody reign of terror that killed 3 million Cambodians?  What is there to say when the secretary you’re talking to at a party was stationed as part of a five-person mission at a remote outpost in Kenya where free time was spent on animal preserves with lions, giraffes, and elephants?  Here’s what you do — keep quiet and listen.  Amidst these circles week after week, I’d never felt so utterly insignificant, yet remained thoroughly enchanted by so many fascinating people and stories.

The fine art of storytelling was undoubtedly perfected and made all the more colorful by various truth serums, often in the form of Cuban rum and Russian vodka.  Never mind an American embargo on products made in Cuba.  Romania was a loyal trading partner with Castro and that meant plenty of the world’s best rum was always plentiful.  It cost the equivalent of about $2 a bottle.  It was cheaper than Coca-Cola.

These parties did far more than provide a much-needed social outlet.  They were the only human lifelines for news and information.  In a world inextricably linked online and through social media, where everyone now carries a cell phone, it’s hard to imagine a time and place when this was not so.  Imagine a world where the Internet and cell phones do not exist.  Further, imagine making a phone call and getting a reliable connection being a sigh of relief.  Back then in Romania, the only reliable telephones were in the communications center at the Embassy.  Your home phone was almost certainly tapped.  Making a long-distance call was even more challenging.  It might take an hour to dial out and finally get an open line back to the United States.  My mother used to call me at my apartment once a week on a predetermined day and time.  Dialing into Romania — she’s often hit the re-dial button 50 or 60 times before finally hearing the ring.

Getting news about current events usually means reading a newspaper, watching television, or listening to the radio.  But in Romania, the government-controlled everything.  The state-run television station (one channel) always showed news favorable to the government.  On the TV news, everyone was smiling, the store shelves were always stocked full of food, and everyone seemed to always be cheering and celebrating.  In fact, no one even bothered to watch television.  The nightly programming charade might consist of someone reading the quarterly agriculture harvest reports, followed by highlights of Ceausescu visiting some factory, followed by (if you were lucky) a movie made by the Romanian Ministry of Culture.  The shows were abysmal.  For this reason, I didn’t even bother to buy a television until long after the Romanian Revolution when additional stations were created and programming improved dramatically.

Newspapers were equally censored and worthless.  They were almost comical.  The daily headlines and images were always the same.  You could alter the date or re-run the same stories one month later and no one would bother noticing a difference.  “CEAUSESCU DECLARES NEW COOPERATIVE INITIATIVE BETWEEN SOCIALIZED ECONOMIES,” might be the headline in bold followed by several photos of the Secretary-General of the PCR standing in front of hanging pro-Marxist banners and signs, surrounded by common Romanian workers.  The next day the front-page photo might show farmers.  The next day would be coal miners or shipyard workers.  It didn’t matter.  The stories and words and images were always the same.

The two biggest newspapers in Bucharest were Scintea, which means “the spark.”  The other was Romania Libera, which means “free Romania” — and the odd juxtaposition of titles that would eventually mirror an unforeseeable course of events that would lead from one thing (the spark) to the other (a free Romania).  But those events seemed in the distant future.

Romanian radio was just as bad.  Local stations always played the same patriotic songs – “CEAUSESCU-ROMANIA” was a personal favorite.  It was so dreadful, it was actually wildly entertaining.  Sort of like what you might expect on the soundtrack of a Mike Meyers movie.  Hearing these songs today is camp theater.  One can’t imagine this stuff was real or that someone would take any of it seriously.  Here’s a typical song.  Imagine this kind of stuff being played on the radio all the time:

Indeed, no one took any of it seriously — television, newspapers, or radio.  Romanians knew it was all a giant orchestrated charade.  So instead of tuning into local media, they opted to listen to scratchy foreign radio broadcasts, which subjected them to arrest.  Radio Free Europe and Voice of America were both broadcasts in Romanian so people to get news from the West.  The BBC was also popular, although it was in English only.  One reason it was said there were no cars on the streets at night in Bucharest was half the city’s population was huddled around muffled radios listening to RFE, VOA, or the BBC.

Romanian society was built around one man, and that was Ceausescu.  The correct political term for such a system is “cult of personality.”  The leader comes larger than life — almost like a god.

To understand the cult of personality that surrounded all things Ceausescu, consider the “bookstores.”  Bucharest must have had more bookstores per capita than any place on earth.  From the outside, the typical bookstore looked like what one might expect in the West.  Several books would be displayed in the window and then once inside, the shelves were stocked with the latest books on a variety of subjects.  However, instead of best-sellers or magazines with the latest news, all bookstores would be stocked with the words, speeches, and writings of Nicolae Ceausescu and his megalomaniacal wife Elena.  Their speeches.  Their ideas.  Their thoughts on every conceivable topic imaginable from foreign affairs to culture to science to sports.  The only thing missing was “Nicolae Ceausescu’s Guide to Handicapping the NFL.”  Of course, none of these books were actually written by the Ceausescus.  They had an army of ghostwriters who penned work after work with all the loyal trappings or Marxist-infused dogma, destined to become books that no one read, no one bought, and no one except a powerful circle of loyal sycophants regarded as serious.

And so bookstores were always totally empty, except for some bored store clerk.

One time, I stepped into one of the bookstores.  I began looking through the Ceausescu books.  The clerk seemed baffled at first that anyone would actually bother to digest any of this unreadable stuff.  She acted like she hadn’t seen a customer in years.  Certainly, no one would pay for such rubbish.  I remember asking her about buying an entire encyclopedia of Ceausescu’s masterworks – which I indeed eventually bought (probably the only legitimate sale the shop ever made).  Since Ceausescu fancied himself as a great Marxist thinker and visionary, leather-bound all of his thoughts and ideas as was typical of all the other top Communist leaders.  To this day, you can see the complete masterworks of Lenin, Mao, Stalin, Khrushchev, Tito, and other “great thinkers” which look identical to a complete set of encyclopedias except they are twice or three times as many volumes.  These texts are mind-boggling dull, with fabricated facts and figures from economic conferences, which made the state look far more productive on paper than it was in reality.  But these volumes of nothingness stand as timeless reminders of what political narcissism does to a leader, the government, and to a nation [SEE FOOTNOTE 2].

COMING NEXT IN PART THREE:  More about life in Romania before the Revolution.

FOOTNOTE 1:  Initially, I was to be sent to Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia).  In fact, I spent a few months studying Yugoslavia and learning the Serbo-Croatian language.  But somewhere along the way, with the stroke of a pen, someone at the State Department decided I’d be better suited to a far more difficult post, which was Bucharest.  It’s remarkable to reflect back now and think how different my life might be had someone I never met not changed my assignment.  For one thing, I’d probably have never have met my (Romanian) wife Marieta.  We’ve since been married for 22 years.

FOOTNOTE 2:  Here’s some idea of how out of touch we all were with the outside world while stationed in Romania.  And remember, unlike ordinary Romanians we actually had access to information which we received on a delayed basis through diplomatic pouch (mail that came in twice weekly with no customs check).  When boxer Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson in a shocking upset in February 1990, we didn’t learn about it in Romania until a week later.  This was only because one of the Marines subscribed to Sports Illustrated, and the shocking knockout was on the front cover.  I remember every male in Embassy crowding around that issue of SI like 13-year-old boys looking at Playboy for the first time.  One of the most anticipated events of the week lunch every Friday when someone back in the U.S. would tape a couple of episodes of ABC’s World News Tonight on a VHS.  The Embassy came to a standstill while we watched the latest news from the U.S. and around the world – albeit at least a week old.

ADDENDUM:  PHOTO EXPOSE (ROMANIAN REVOLUTION — DECEMBER 1989):  I shot the following photographs which were taken in central Bucharest, near the area around the Communist Party Central Committee Building — which was ground zero of the revolution.  Note that all of these photos are in black and white.  We had no digital cameras then, so all film was shot in 35mm.  I don’t remember the details of each and every photo.  But there were all taken within a half hour or so out on the streets.

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2 Comments

  1. Hello,

    What do you know about the Romanian Refugee program so called “Les Misérables” dating back in 1991?
    Thank you,
    Julian

    • NOLAN REPLIES:

      I don’t recall their specific relationship to the US Embassy, but I do recall in Summer of 1990 a group of Romanian protestors who stood in front of old compound and marched with signs. I believe their claim was they’d done various favors/work and perhaps even risked lives for the US (as Romanian citizens) and then were abandoned when the post-Revolution era opened up the opportunity to get US visas. There was some advocacy for these “Les Miserables” as they were called, with accelerating the process and giving them priority when there were strict quotas in effect. I do not know the outcome, as I was gone from the staff by 1992.

      Hope this helps.

      PS. I remember at the protest, the marchers would turn their backs on the US Embassy and shout out that America had turned its back on them. That’s why I remember the specific incident.

      — ND

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