Mircea Răceanu

Mircea Răceanu (born Mircea Bernat October 17, 1935) is a Romanian diplomat.

He was the son of two Transylvanian members of the underground Romanian Communist Party (PCR) in the 1930s: a Romanian worker named Ileana Pop and a Jewish carpenter named Andrei Bernat, who was killed by Fascists during World War II. Mircea was born in Văcăreşti prison, where his mother was sentenced for Communist activities. After the war, his mother married another old-time Communist, Grigore Răceanu.

Mircea Răceanu grew up in Bucharest, studying at the "Ion Luca Caragiale" high school and later in Moscow at the State Institute of International Relations.

Răceanu started work at a department which dealt with the Romanian-American relations and with time he was named the chief of this department. In 1969, he started working at the Embassy of Romania in Washington, DC and, between 1974-1979, he was the first secretary in the same embassy. After returning to Romania, he was the chief of the North America department, which dealt with the United States and Canada. Between 1982 and January 1989, he was the chief of diplomacy department which dealt with the relations with all the countries of the Americas.

While in the United States, Răceanu became an American secret agent, giving information from an insider's point-of-view on the politics of Romania and information on human rights and religious freedom. He claimed that he sent no national security or military information and that he betrayed his ruler, but not his country. In fact, Ceauşescu claimed during a talk with Rabbi Arthur Schneier that Răceanu did not actually leak any real secrets, but "betrayed me personally".

...
Wikipedia