Mihai Caraman, the spy who created the largest network of informants that infiltrated NATO to extract classified documents and deliver them to the KGB, the Soviet Union’s intelligence agency, died on Thursday at the age of 95 in Bucharest. Although he was called the Romanian “agent 007” (in reference to the James Bond character), he is one of the most unknown secret agents. But, according to historians, he is considered one of the most prominent Romanian intelligence agents during the Cold War and ranked among the top in the world, alongside Kim Philby. After being ousted from the intelligence service in the throes of the communist regime, he became the first director of the Foreign Intelligence Service of democratic Romania from 1990 to 1992, which led to strong criticism from the Atlantic Alliance.
Born on November 11, 1928 in Oancea, a small town on the banks of the Danube, he began his career in the secret service in 1950. His analyses, which revealed an excellent knowledge of psychology, led him to be appointed head of Romanian espionage in France between 1958 and 1969. During that time, he organized and coordinated the so-called Caraman network, which stole and smuggled into his country thousands of documents from NATO headquarters — including the classification code Cosmic Top—which affected the functioning of the military organization. It was the biggest blow ever dealt to the Alliance and remains one of the most famous and enigmatic spy missions.
The information was sent first to Bucharest and then to Moscow, following an agreement signed on 11 July 1960 between Romania and the Soviet Union, which stipulated that materials provided by Romanian agents should also be forwarded in copies to their Soviet counterparts. The classified documents ranged from long-term military plans and the development of Allied infrastructure to the purchase of weapons, tanks and aircraft. The fuel supply system, emergency plans in case of disaster and the location of weapons depots, airfields and missile launch pads were also revealed.
The method of recruiting agents differed from the Soviet technique. While Moscow used “impersonal mailboxes” to avoid personal encounters, Caraman used persuasive methods through contacts in public places and persistent surveillance to check whether they were detected by the French counterintelligence services.
Caraman recruited at least 12 agents, who held senior positions within UNESCO and the Romanian Embassy in Paris. Their mission was not only to infiltrate NATO, but also other international institutions such as the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), as well as the French Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Finance. His loyalty to the KGB led to him being decorated by the Kremlin for special merits in the fight against the democratic world – the only agent of the Securitate, Romania’s fearsome political police, to have received such an award.
After NATO uncovered the spy network, French authorities expelled Caraman, who continued his career in the intelligence service with a low profile, although he was forced into the reserve after the defection of Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking intelligence agent to defect from the Eastern Bloc. However, he returned to the fore in 1990, immediately after the anti-communist Revolution. President and Prime Minister Ion Iliescu and Petre Roman, Romania’s first democratic leaders, appointed him director of the Foreign Intelligence Service. But he was dismissed from his post two years later due to pressure from the then NATO Secretary General, the German Manfred Worner, who did not agree to dialogue with the spy who had penetrated his organisation.
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“Caraman was not in the service of independent Romania, but of totalitarian Romania, a member of the Warsaw Pact, that is, of a military-political organisation designed and directed by Moscow. This is the historical truth, without embellishments or retouching,” explains historian Vladimir Tismaneanu, while regretting that little is known about the “biography of the Soviet-Romanian communist mega-spy”: “He took countless secrets with him to the grave.”
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