What the Securitate looked like at the end of Ceaușescu’s regime / CNSAS has made public documents revealing the scale of the apparatus of repression

The National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (CNSAS) published original documents on Monday showing that the State Security Department (DSS) had 14,629 employees on September 24, 1988. The documents were discovered in a file held at the office of General Iulian Vlad, the last head of the Securitate.

Of the total, 8,760 people worked in the central apparatus in Bucharest and in the security troops, while 5,869 worked in the territorial structures. Approximately 1,200 were civilian workers, without military rank, involved in technical, logistical, maintenance, and secretarial activities.

The central apparatus in Bucharest had 6,023 personnel, the security troops 2,737, and the territorial structures 5,869. The Bucharest Municipal Security had 557 employees, while the 40 county inspectorates totaled 5,312 personnel. The largest central structures were Directorate IV, with 1,022 employees, and Special Unit “F,” responsible for surveillance, with 745 personnel. USLA had 772 employees in the capital.

The documents also indicate that there were 2,297 women in the DSS, representing 15.70% of the total. Only 22 held management positions, according to CNSAS. The structure presented highlights the scale of the repressive apparatus and the way it was distributed for monitoring the population, counterespionage, interceptions, and control of correspondence.