Just released: "Cold Waves", a great documentary by the Romanian filmmaker Alexandru Solomon 
(41 years old) about what Radio Free Europe meant for the listeners in the Communist block, especially Romanians. It was the only trustworthy medium in a sea of Communist propaganda. It was also highly risky to listen to it. The Secret Police (Securitate) and the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu himself considered this radio station as the main enemy in the decreasing popularity of his regime. The Securitate had about 800 people hired to follow the RFE journalists abroad and their listeners in Romania. They constantly tried to silence the RFE voices. Starting with hostile propaganda on the lines of "Radio Free Europe is a CIA propaganda machine" (despite the fact that since the late 60s the CIA was not funding it anymore) and culminating with terrorist attack carried out by Carlos the Jackal against the Munich-based radio station. Three of the directors of the Romanian RFE section died of cancer and one of them suspected that he might have also been exposed to radiation. Although there were no traces of radiation in the building, the memoirs of the former Securitate-agent Ion Mihai Pacepa (Red Horizons) speaks of a portable device that could irradiate targets. Ceausescu even found a nickname for it, "Radu". Since the Litvinenko case, this theory might be more credible than before, but there is hardly any evidence to support it…
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Dec 1st, 2007
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