From Nadia Comaneci and the Secret Police: A Cold War Escape, by Stejarel Olaru (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 138-139:
The Securitate adapted to the new situation, deploying a new ‘network to influence, protect and defend gymnast Nadia Comăneci,’ as it is named in the archive documents, and simultaneously conducting surveillance and covert recording. As Géza Pozsár was no longer part of Nadia’s entourage, his reports from the first part of 1978 make only intermittent references to her. As a result, the secret police sought other solutions, and the measures they took starting from December 1977 entailed total monitoring: recording equipment in the gymnasts’ rooms at the 23 August National Sport Hotel, background checks on all the members of the team that had been assembled, talks ‘with a view to softening them up, in order to discover and prevent any action that might injure Nadia Comăneci’, alerting Section 5 of the Militia to provide additional security and protection measures in the area of the sports centre, and the instruction of the ‘three intelligence sources within the team of trainers and medics.’ Although Department One’s report gives us to understand that there were already three informers tasked with monitoring Nadia Comăneci, in reality the number seems to have been higher.
Even if the documents show that the trainers were kept under surveillance, it was also true that they had already collaborated with the secret police, albeit not all to the same extent. In February 1978, Iosif Hidi was an ‘operational connection’. He presented Captain Nicolae Ilie reports that he signed with his real name, followed by his title, ‘I.E.F.S. head’. Gheorghe Condovici was recruited as an informer in 1966 and was given the code name ‘Iosifescu Dragoş’ but in the archives it has not been possible to find any reports he may have written on Nadia, which suggests that for unknown reasons the Securitate did not use him as a source. But Atanasia Albu, alias ‘Monica’, was a secret police collaborator so devoted that the Securitate probably regarded her as more valuable even than Géza Pozsár.
Carmen Dumitru, who was esteemed by gymnasts and trainers alike for the skill with which she practiced as a physician, was an ‘official source’. She was not recruited as an informer by the usual procedure, but when information was required of her, she provided it. A specialist in cardiology and sports medicine, Carmen Dumitru treated members of a number of Romanian national squads, but the Securitate was interested in obtaining from her information about Nadia Comăneci’s evolving state of health in particular. In the same period, the Securitate also drew upon another informed, codenamed ‘Lili’, who was probably a nurse at the sports complex’s medical office, but whose identity remains unknown. From her reports it may be concluded that she was instructed to win Nadia’s confidence, and for a few months, she succeeded. Pianist Corneliu Grigore, who signed his reports under the pseudonym ‘Lazarovici Traian’, was recruited as an informer while doing his military service. Those who knew him describe him as a very good pianist, in love with what he did, a serious-minded and generous man, but overly timorous and lacking in courage. As an informer he filed only sporadic reports on the members of the national squad. As the intelligence machinery still included Nicolae Vieru and Mrs Mili – who continued their careers as informers ‘Vlad’ and ‘Lia Muri’ – the Securitate remained a presence in both Nadia’s professional and personal life.
The freedom Nadia hoped to enjoy in Bucharest was limited, as she was not allowed to go anywhere unaccompanied or without giving her reasons and planned route in advance. Her daily schedule and trips were known in advance by Securitate officers. When she did manage to slip outside the sports complex without permission, the authorities would enter red alert. An army of Militia and Securitate officers would set out in search of her, while top officials from the Party and N.C.P.E.S. went to the 23 August Centre anxiously to wait for the officers to bring her back or for her to return by herself. It was said that in such situations, even the borders were closed, to prevent her being taken out of the country against her will in the event that she had been kidnapped. Nadia lived out her life in the sports complex, which, no matter how comfortable it might have been, was too small and suffocating a world for a curious, developing adolescent.
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