Documente inedite: Serviciul Secret din România
Original documents: The Romanian Secret Service

Summary/Abstract: Although mentioned since the early years of Alexandru Ioan Cuza’s reign, the Internal Affairs Bureau’s intelligence service has almost remained obscure to the Romanian historians. The few facts known about this issue occur around the year 1862, when Cuza, while visiting Bucharest’s police prefecture, recomended to the prefect to take all the necessary steps to guarantee the efficiency of the „renseignemente chancellary”. Afterwards, with the lack of certain documents, historians and specialists had tried to reimagine the starts of these intelligence structures by using the hypothesis that the Internal Affairs Bureau (assigned with the defense and maintainment of public order) undertook intelligence activity through specialized personal and utilised secret funds for ghatering intelligence and remunerating its own agents. Following this lead, with the help of valuable documents from the Romanian’s National Archives, the goal of this paper is to shed light upon this historical issue and to prove the fact the Internal Affairs Bureau’s intelligence service was brought into existence since 1860 under the name of The Secret Service, that was provided since the start with a national coverage. From this point of view, The Internal Affairs Bureau’s Intelligence Service can be considered to be the modern Romanian’s first intelligence service.

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