Word: secretion
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...lack of central control was an obvious problem last week. Under Ceausescu's paranoid purges and the vigilance of his secret police, no significant resistance movement was able to form. The explosion that ended his reign resulted from spontaneous combustion, and the people who powered it were only beginning to get organized. Nobody had a plan for the revolution; the participants only knew what they were against. Said Iliescu: "It was not the movement that led to the overthrow, but the overthrow that created the movement...
...could the caretaker government be certain of security. It appealed "for an end to acts of revenge," but Securitate gunmen sniped intermittently from Bucharest's rooftops; others were believed to be hiding out in a maze of tunnels and secret passages Ceausescu had constructed under the capital's streets. Fighting around the city's international airport forced the frequent interruption of flights. There were ongoing firefights in Timisoara, Arad and Brasov...
...seemed to know where most of them were. The provisional government issued an ultimatum: "If they surrender voluntarily with their weapons, they will be tried and the death penalty will not be applied." If they did not, they would be "tried and condemned" by special tribunals. Few secret policemen accepted the offer. With thousands of them, armed and perhaps defiant, unaccounted for, it remained unclear whether they would vanish in the general confusion or carry on some form of guerrilla warfare against the shaky government...
Governments East and West cheered the overthrow of Ceausescu, but there were murmurs of distaste at the secret trial and execution of the 71-year-old dictator and his wife. "We would have preferred it if there had been a public trial," said White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater. Nevertheless, like other Western countries, the U.S. speedily recognized "the new legitimate government" and offered its support. Said the British Foreign Office: "Although one may regret a secret trial, at the time it was not really surprising." Gorbachev congratulated Iliescu on taking charge "at a difficult moment when Rumanian patriots resolutely came...
When the revolt erupted, many Securitate members slipped into an elaborate network of tunnels, whose existence was a well-guarded secret. The underground passageways link security headquarters, Communist Party headquarters, the presidential palace in central Bucharest and other key government buildings. The tunnels made it possible for Securitate members to escape the initial onslaught by soldiers and armed civilians and then regroup to attack the revolutionary forces. Securitate assaults in Bucharest and elsewhere in the country were carried out with arms and ammunition stored in caches secretly assembled outside the force's official camps...