The Tanase Affair

Overview

In 1982, the newly elected President of France, François Mitterrand, clashes with the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu in a spy story worthy of a detective novel, a conflict during the Cold War and a hidden struggle in which the secret services of both countries, the French DST and the Romanian Securitate, were involved. In 1982, Ceaucescu orders one of his agents to assassinate two Romanian dissidents living in Paris, the writers Virgil Tanase and Paul Goma, French citizens. But instead of carrying out this order, the Securitate agent Matei Haiducu, alias Matthieu Forestier, went directly to report him to the DST.