Welcome to the fourth in the regular Friday series with Mister 8 where I shall be responding to the words of his capitalist spy master Allen Welsh Dulles with the words of Ion Pacepa from his book Red Horizons.

Lieutenant General Ion Mihai Pacepa is the highest-ranking intelligence official ever to have defected from the former Eastern Bloc. Pacepa was Ceauşescu’s adviser for national security and technological development and the deputy chief of the Romanian foreign intelligence service – DIE (Departamentul de Informatii Externe).

Ceausescu & Elena visit an exhibit on the new inventions of the Romanian General Directorate of Technical Operations.

“This is a telephone device that has been perfected by the DGTO after ten years of work,” Geartu started out slowly and methodically, in sharp contrast to Diaconescu’s rapid manner of speaking. He held an innocuous looking, beige coloured telephone. “This is not a normal telephone. It also serves as a very sensitive microphone, capable of recording all conversations in the room where it is installed. If this telephone is approved as the only kind legally allowed in Romania, it will open a new era of broad-scale electronic surveillance, without the tedious need for surreptitious entries into private homes to install microphones.”
“Could it have different models?”
“We have three models and five colours, and we can have as many as you wish to order.”
“That’s what I’ve been waiting for. How good is it?”
“Excellent” broke in the fast talking Diaconescu. “Much better than anything we’ve seen to date. We have samples of similar instruments discovered in our embassies abroad – American, British, and West German-made. Ours is much clearer. Please listen to these comparative tapes.”
“Can we use it on a wide scale?” asked Ceausescu, ignoring the request he listen to the tapes.
“We are only waiting for your command, Comrade Supreme Commander.”
“Approved. Starting today, March 28 ,1978, this is the one and only telephone approved for use in Romania. Period. How many old telephones do we have in use today?”
“More than three million,” Diaconescu promptly replied.
“Replace them with the new ones,” Ceausescu ordered.
………
“May we do a demonstration, Comrade Supreme Commander?” asked Diaconescu.
“Go ahead,” approved Ceausescu, with a large smile on his face and a glow in his eyes. Being addressed as “Supreme Commander” is even more exciting to him than having sex, or so Diaconescu had told me a few days earlier.
“To this portable monitoring centre we have hooked up four phones that are installed in four different, randomly selected apartments. Two are the kind we use now, and two are the new model. The monitoring centre is voice-activated, so it will automatically start recording when anyone of the phones is in use. It’s recording one conversation right now,” said Diaconescu, pointing to a moving recorder. The conversation could clearly be heard in the exhibit room when he pushed a button. “The recording stops when the conversation is over, as it just did. That’s all we can record with the old phones. But now let’s listen to the new one.”
Diaconescu dialed a number and asked if it was the National Theater. “Wrong number” came from the other end of the line, but the tape recorder did not stop after the telephone had been hung up. A woman’s voice could be heard asking who had called. “Some idiot who had put his finger in the wrong hole. Let me finish what I was listening to on Radio Free Europe about the trip the Dictator and his old bag are making to the United States,” the man’s voice replied, before being cut off sharply. Diaconescu’s hand, darting out faster than a snake, had flicked off a switch. He always did have good reflexes.
The deadly silence was interrupted when Diaconescu flicked another switch. A fuzzy noise together with heavy breathing and short yelps came suddenly out of the speaker, but Diaconescu’s quick hand immediately shut it off.
“Turn it back on,” Elena ordered with a biting voice. Her experienced ear was almost as good as Diaconescu’s. “They should be arrested,” she ordered, after listening a few more minutes. “At eleven in the morning, working people should be out working, not making love.”

This article is in response to Mister 8s A Dulles moment #4