Word: escu
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Ceauşescu gets another prize
Some unkind critics might think that Rumania's party boss, Nicolae Ceauşescu, was trying to encourage a, well, cult of personality. Bronze heads and busts cast in his image dot the country. He has twice been declared a Hero of the Socialist Republic of Rumania. His uniform as commander in chief of the Rumanian armed forces is encrusted with medals. He has been acclaimed in the adulatory party press for "exceptional creativeness in philosophy, political economy, history, education, science and culture." Now, as a fitting cap to this imposing catalogue of achievements, awards and encomiums, the diminutive...
Armed with a rifle, Ceauşescu went hunting in the craggy forest land of the northeastern Carpathians, home of the wild Rumanian brown bear. There, according to the International Council of Hunting and Game Preservation, Ceauşescu shot the largest bear ever recorded in the history of hunting in Europe. This month, the general manage? of the council, François Edmond-Blanc, presented Ceauşescu with a golden plate. He declared that the Rumanian leader had beaten the previous world record by 100 points, according to a complex formula involving the bear's size...
...fact, Pacepa was no ordinary economic envoy. He was a lieutenant general in the Rumanian security police and a close confidant of President Nicolae Ceauşescu. He may have also been a longtime spy for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, which probably spirited him out of West Germany. For the past three weeks, Pacepa has been tucked away in a CIA "safe" house near Washington, where he is presumably spilling information about Rumanian intelligence operations...
...Pacepa was not a mole, his defection remains a riddle. He was in no known trouble with Ceauşescu, although a clandestine source insinuated that he may have run afoul of the Rumanian President's short-tempered but influential wife. Mole or not, Pacepa may be something less than an outstanding prize for the CIA. "A major defection from Bucharest is almost a contradiction in terms," says a U.S. intelligence expert. Because of its resolute independence from Soviet influence, Rumania is not privy to the most sensitive intelligence traffic between Moscow and its more compliant satellites...