ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author talks about Romanian friends and acquaintances about their views of the organization past and present, learning more about how it worked in late socialism and examines how the conversations about it moved out into the larger system in which past and present officers did their work. Throughout the communist period in Romania, the Securitate was the most feared institution in the state. The chapter suggests how the study of the secret police files helps us better understand this deeply hidden institution and what anthropology can bring to that process. People professed to be able to identify "the boys with blue eyes," as they were sometimes known; Romanians adopted a variety of behaviors to avoid them, though some citizens found it advantageous to enter into closer relations with them. Human existence the sort of sensibility anthropology cultivates and would bring to the study of policing.
