SRI swears there was no political police action

The SRI (Romanian Secret Service) report on the information uncovered by Mugur Ciuvica, a head of the Group for Political Investigations, admits the documents' authenticity, still claiming the documents are the outcome of common mass-media monitoring, an ordinary activity of the SRI.
Parliamentary sources say the report argues that those SRI documents on some activities of the PNL (National Liberal Party), of Liberal senator Norica Nicolai and of Social-Democrat Victor Ponta are just ordinary, "unclassified" pieces of information. But, they add, these pieces are not to be found in the SRI archive, as they were destroyed, because of their insignificance. Sources explain: "The interior regulation of the department authoring these reports goes that unclassified documents are to be destroyed once a year. And therefore the SRI is claiming the documents Mugur Ciuvica produced are authentic, but they no longer exist in the SRI archive because they were destroyed".
The same sources argue as well: "According to the SRI report, the SRI is in the habit of drawing such reports from open sources such as TV and radio shows and newspapers and sending them in a synthesized version to some higher authorities". Sources mention the conclusion goes as follows: "The SRI has never taken part in political police action. The information on Norica Nicolai, Victor Ponta and the PNL did not effect from intelligence operative action by the SRI". The SRI representatives also provided the parliamentary committee to control the institution with an annex consisting in unclassified information on various public persons, drawn in the course of time. (...)
MPs are enraged
Some MPs in the committee to control the SRI expressed their dissatisfaction with the explanations given by the SRI officials. One committee member argued: "We don't believe that an entire department in the SRI watches TV, listens to the radio and reads newspapers just to draw common, unclassified reports. We need more explanations from the SRI and we hope the SRI chief George Maior will explain things to us during the hearings". The senators and deputies in this committee are meeting today too and they intend to reach consensus and inform the press.

Razvan Gheorghe
Ziua wednesday 10 october 2007 http://www.ziua.net/english