Eulogy for Mircea Căpăţina-Raţă

On Sunday, November 22, 2020, my old friend, Mircea Căpăţina-Raţă passed away at the age of eighty-three.  This is his story, the part that perhaps only I know.  I am glad to write it down for his adult children, and especially for his small grandchildren.  Someday, perhaps these little ones will appreciate what Grandpa Mircea did for all of them.

In 1977, I was a Special Agent in the Federal Bureau of Investigation assigned to the Washington Field Office.  Earlier, I had graduated from the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, where, over nine months, I learned the Romanian language.  I was assigned to a foreign counterintelligence squad that dealt with Soviet Bloc, Warsaw Pact satellite countries, which included Romania.  This was the height of the Cold War, and we were busier than one could imagine.

An objective was to recruit officers from hostile intelligence services, like the KGB, or the Romanian DIE, so they would work with the FBI, cooperating against their own countries.  But I saw it differently.  My goal was to find someone who would realize the freedoms we had in the West, our love of liberty, and want to live here.  But how do you find such a person?

The Romanian Embassy was on Massachusetts Avenue.  There was a half-circle brick driveway that met the sidewalk near Sheridan Circle.  One day, the senior intelligence officer, General Gheorghe Anghelescu, exited the embassy and, just as he came to the sidewalk, a little white dog ran right in front of him.  Without batting an eye, the general kicked the dog, which flew through the air and into the base of a tree a dozen-feet away.  Anghelescu just walked on.

Well, that was interesting.

I wanted to develop a quick personality analysis for the men in the embassy who were the subjects of our cases, and I had an idea.  I spoke with the woman who owned the little West Highland terrier, and she agreed to help.

A few days later, as Mircea walked that same path to the street, in perfect timing, the little dog raced up the sidewalk, right in front of him.  Instead of punting it into a tree, as his boss had done, Mircea seemed overjoyed.  He bent down and began to pet the dog.  The dog loved it and rolled over for a belly rub.  Mircea was enjoying himself.

            But then he froze.  He realized what he was doing was not permitted by his embassy.  He might have to meet the owner of the dog, who would be nearby, and he didn’t have permission to do that.  He was in a quandary.

            Carefully, Mircea looked over his shoulder at the embassy and saw there was no one watching him.  So he turned back to the dog, gave him one more good rub, then stood up.

            From this scenario came “Operation Toto,” named for Dorothy’s little dog in The Wizard of Oz.  Mircea had passed the test.  Just based on a quick personality analysis, he would do what he enjoyed—even if it was only something as inconsequential as petting a dog—but he took care not to get caught at it.  This was a man I could work with—truly a nice guy.

There was another man who was friendly with many of the people in the embassy, like doormen and chauffeurs.  His name was Nick Lungociu.  He was a pharmacist who had left Romania right after World War II.  He was also a friend of Mircea’s.

One day, very privately, Mircea approached Nick with a special request.  He wanted his infant daughter baptized.

This was pretty amazing because Romania was a communist country, aligned with the Soviet Union.  Their governments were atheists, and would never allow such a thing to happen.  But Mircea felt strongly and wanted to do this.

Nick was also a close friend of mine and had helped the FBI on many occasions.  He told me of Mircea’s request.

I went to the local Romanian Orthodox priest, Preotul Uşeriu, and told him I knew of a man who wanted to have his daughter baptized.  The priest was ecstatic.  He wanted to have all the parishioners invited and to make it a big celebration.  Then I told him it was a man assigned to the Romanian Embassy.

The priest exploded and got all red-faced.  He said he would never allow a communist into his church.  I told him how important this was, and that it was better to help the embassy consul because it could be good for the FBI and good for America.  Finally, he agreed.

A couple of weeks later, in the small Holy Cross Romanian Orthodox Church at Bailey’s Crossroads in Northern Virginia, Mircea and his wife, Ruxandra, Nick Lungociu and his wife, and Father Uşeriu, stood at the altar of the church as the child was baptized.  So, Mircea had broken his own country’s rules in a big way.  But it was for him and his wife to exercise a freedom of religion, important to him, which did not exist in Romania.

As a consul, Mircea would travel far from Washington, D.C., including to Michigan.  John was a Romanian-American he had met in Ann Arbor.  He was a well-established businessman, and also a contact of the FBI in Detroit. 

I made a request that the next time Mircea traveled to Michigan, for John to have a special conversation with him.  He was to say he had been visited by two men from the U.S. Government, who seemed to know a lot about him.  (This, to Mircea, could only mean they were in the FBI.) 

John would explain they thought he was a decent fellow, and one of them wanted to talk to him sometime, just a general conversation.  John was to plant this seed with Mircea and then leave it to germinate.

A few weeks later, when Mircea was visiting Ann Arbor, John had this all-important conversation, and Mircea said he would think about it.

A few days after Mircea returned to Washington, he was again on the phone with John.  Mircea referred to their conversation but didn’t say anything specific.  He knew that Romanian Intelligence was listening even to their own embassy’s phone calls.  Mircea told John he would go to the meeting they talked about.

John told his FBI contacts that he would fly to Washington the very next weekend and meet with Mircea at a hotel near the embassy.  This may all sound simple, but it had taken many months to arrange. 

What most people involved did not know was that the weekend before, on December 10th, 1977, I had been married.  Because it was the second marriage for both my wife and me, we had a small wedding.  But we planned on having a large celebration on the very next weekend when our families and 85 guests would come to our home in Annandale, Virginia, to celebrate with us.  Now, John, from Ann Arbor, Michigan, had arranged for me to meet with Mircea, and it was the exact time when my wedding reception would take place!

On the Wednesday between the weekends, I told my wife what had just happened.  I needed to work on Saturday.  What a thing to say to a new bride!  But she understood how hard I had worked on this, and asked me to get back to our reception as soon as possible.

On Friday night, John arrived in Washington and stayed at the Fairfax Hotel, a couple blocks from the embassy.  The next morning, Mircea arrived at the hotel for breakfast with John.  Finally, at the end of their meal, John mentioned my overture.  He told Mircea the man would meet him at the statue of Albert Einstein several blocks away at Constitution Avenue and 22nd Street.  Now it was up to Mircea to take the big step.

About fifteen minutes later, I was at the small memorial.  There is a twelve-foot-high statue of the great physicist sitting back on a large bench, in an open area.  It was surrounded by high bushes, giving some privacy.

There was movement on the path and then—Consul Mircea Căpăţina-Raţă appeared.  It was quite a shock because this was the very first time that anyone from the FBI had ever met with a Romanian Intelligence Officer for a private meeting.  We had to break the ice and get to know each other, because what was planned was treason, by Mircea, against his own country. 

It is important to understand his psychology and philosophy.  The Romanian Government, controlled by the hated Soviet Union, had taken a peaceful monarchy from before World War II, where people could engage in whatever business they wanted, and worship as they pleased, and replaced it with a very oppressive communist regime.  It was no longer Mircea’s old country of Romania—ţara—for it had been taken over and was now ruled by an evil dictator-for-life, Nicolae Ceauşescu.  This was who Mircea hated and was so fearful of.

When Mircea and I stood in front of the statue, face to face, I said, in my best Romanian, “Buna dimineaţa.  Imi pare foarte bine de conoştinţi.”  That is, good morning and it is very good to meet you.

Mircea stared at me.  Then, in his accented English, he said, “Oh, you speak Romanian!” 

As many emigres, Mircea was proud of how well he spoke English, and he refused ever to speak Romanian with me.

We talked for a few minutes as we stood there.  I told him I appreciated that John had enabled this meeting to take place.  Mircea got a fearful look and asked me to tell John that we only had a short conversation, resolving some little problem he had, and that was the end of it. 

That was fine with me, but it implied there would be a longer meeting, and perhaps more in the future.

I suggested we take a walk.  We crossed Constitution Avenue and went up the hill to the Lincoln Memorial.  With all of the gigantic memorials they have in the Warsaw Pact countries, one of our own great memorials was one Mircea said the embassy people never visited.  It was about time.

Once inside the memorial, Mircea stared at the Great Emancipator sitting in his giant chair.  Then he turned to the engravings on the side walls.  On one was Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and he read through it.  On the opposite wall, was Lincoln’s second inaugural address, which Mircea also read, slowly, with his head moving left to right, taking in every word.

When he got to one sentence he stopped and he tugged on my sleeve.  He pointed at some of the words, then read them aloud, ones spoken when our country was in a fierce war in 1864.  Lincoln was referring to when he had given his first inaugural address, four years earlier, when the country was about to begin the Civil War.  He said:

While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war – seeking to dissolve the Union….

            Mircea turned to me and said, “That’s me!”

            This was an extraordinary moment.  Here was a man admitting to me his status as an Intelligence Officer in the Romanian Foreign Intelligence Service—Direcţia de Informaţii Externe, the DIE.  His service, along with those of the other Soviet Bloc countries, was tasked with destroying America, and without war—a Cold War.  This was the first actual piece of bona fide intelligence received from Mircea, even if it may not seem like much now.  But it would open floodgates of information in the future.

            From there, we talked as we strolled down the length of the reflecting pool, over to the Tidal Basin, and finally, to the Jefferson Memorial, a distance of over a mile.  I told him that while the Lincoln Memorial was impressive, Jefferson’s was my favorite.

            Inside, even with dozens of tourists, you could hear a pin drop with the reverence of silence.

            Mircea read all of the engraved words of wisdom on the wall panels from our third president.  When he had finished, he stood in front of the nineteen-foot-tall bronze statue of the man.  He tilted his head up to be able to read the words that went around the full circumference at the edge of the domed ceiling:  I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

            With this, Mircea turned to me and extended his hand to shake.  As we did so, he said, “I think I can work with you.”

            To me, that was the ultimate success, but neither he, nor I, saw him as a traitor to his country.  He was actually working to have it restored to something it no longer was, and from the current repressive regime it had been turned into by the communist government in Moscow.

            That ended our meeting, and now I had to get back to my car.  I drove like a maniac to Annandale, Virginia, so I could attend my own wedding reception!

I had not told Mircea about any of this.  All the while during what appeared to be a leisurely stroll by the reflecting pool, behind the scenes, my mind had been racing, wanting to get this going, become friends with the first Romanian official I had ever met, then get the heck out of there.  I looked much calmer than I was.  The trick is compartmentalization.  With Mircea, I had been working on something that had taken hundreds of hours to arrange.  If it worked, it would affect the rest of his life, and mine, too.

When I finally arrived at my house, my supervisor was blocking the front door.  He didn’t seem to care about the reception going on inside and asked me, “Did it work?” 

I told him it did, and I would meet with Mircea again.  That made him happy.  However, my wife was even happier when I finally walked through the door.

In the FBI they now call this “The wedding reception recruitment,” but it was more than that.  I had given Mircea the opportunity to do what was already on his mind, but without a path to accomplish it.  Now he had that.

We would meet every couple of weeks for over a year.  We learned that the big deportation case brought by the Department of Justice against Viorel Trifa, that is, Archbishop Valerian, leader of the Romanian Orthodox Church in America, was all based on false information provided by Romanian Intelligence.  It had been fabricated by the DIE in order to subvert the Archbishop and try to destroy the church.  Mircea also told us about many other Romanian Intelligence operations.

At one point, when speaking about emigres Mircea met with, who we had later interviewed, I told him some of them thought he looked like Charlie Chaplain, the 1920s silent film star.  Mircea was cerebral about it, but saw the humor.  Then he told me I looked like John Wayne.  Mircea was short with a little black mustache, while I was a big, tall American.

We had a special phone installed in our FBI squad area just for Mircea to make contact with us and arrange for meetings.  We agreed that he would identify himself as Charlie Chaplain.  Of course, he would ask to speak with John Wayne. 

When it came time for Mircea and his family to return to Romania, we had a big restaurant dinner with him.  Of course, his family knew nothing about our relationship.  My partner and I told him he should not return.  He never discussed money for what he was doing with us and for the U.S. Government, and he didn’t want any.  I would describe this as a philosophical recruitment.  But we told him we had set aside funds in his name in appreciation of his cooperation.  Also, if he chose to stay in America, he would have official defector status, which would help him set up a new life in the U.S.  We did all we could to convince him to stay where he would be safe, and not return to Romania. 

Finally, he held up a hand, then pulled out his wallet.  He stuck a finger in between two pieces of paper and brought out a photo the size of a postage stamp.  It was the face of a young boy.  For the first time since he had returned to the United States, he told this story.

After having served two years of his assignment in the Washington embassy, the Căpăţinas returned to Romania for the summer months.  They called it a “vacation,” while the FBI saw it as “home leave,” before they would return for the last two years of Mircea’s assignment in Washington.  However, not long before they were to get on the plane in Bucharest, they were told their 13-year-old son could not go back with them to America.  He would be kept in Bucharest for the rest of Mircea’s two-year tour of duty and live with his mother’s sister and her family.

This was an enormous shock!  How could they leave their son behind?  Was Mircea under some sort of suspicion?  And this was before the overture from the FBI.  Unbeknownst to the DIE, this decision would not bode well for them.

The Government of Romania often kept the families of emigres divided, with relatives in Romania held as hostages so the ones in the U.S. would not say bad things against Preşidente Ceauşescu.  Here, they were doing the same thing, and this time to one of their most trusted embassy officials, a Senior Consul, because the DIE did not trust anyone.  With all of the people we had interviewed about Mircea, no one had ever heard this story.  It was an important reason why Mircea did what he did with us.  He didn’t want to be part of a country that would separate parents from their child, held as a hostage.

I finally understood and told Mircea that if he ever got out of Romania, to reach out to me.  That was in 1979.

Sometime in the early 1990s, after the Berlin Wall was down and Nicolae Ceausescu’s reign of terror in Romania was over, I was sitting at my desk in the San Diego FBI.  I received a phone call from an agent in Detroit, who told me a man had just come into their field office.  He said he knew me, and his name was Mircea.

I was overjoyed and, on a secure telephone line, I briefed the agent about what had happened in Washington more than a dozen years before.  So, Mircea and his family were assisted by the Federal Government and they made a life for themselves in Michigan.  Finally, it was their complete family together, father, mother, daughter, and now their son, too, in America.

Last summer, I accompanied my son to Detroit to attend a funeral service of a fellow U.S. Marine he had served with in Afghanistan.  After I dropped him off at the airport, I drove to the Căpăţina residence.  For the first time in forty-years, I saw my friend.  It was a wonderful occasion, and his children, now grown, had small children of their own. 

As they all sat around, I took centerstage and told them much about what Grandpa Mircea had done so many years ago.  He was a great hero of mine and always would be.  He was an American patriot and they should all be very proud of him.

Now, with his passing, it is a very sad time.  But he did what he needed to do, for his family and to soothe his soul.  Mircea was a player in the great game, and an important piece of the puzzle for the victory over the Romanian dictator and communism in the Soviet Union.  He was a true Cold Warrior.  I am proud to have known him and considered him my friend. 

And one last thing.  Each FBI case of consequence is issued a codename.  It is meaningful because it is the word you would always use in the office, instead of the true name of the subject of the case.  Because of his honesty, and the way he approached so many things, Mircea Căpăţina-Raţă was given the code name UPRIGHT, so fitting for how he lived his life.

The first reunion in forty years! Mircea Căpăţina-Raţă, Wayne Barnes, and Ruxandra Căpăţina-Raţă, August 16, 2019