Communists Irradiating Dissidents

One hideous practice to control speech during Ceausescu's communist regime was inviting outspoken anti-communists and dissident writers and poets to meet with a Securitate colonel at the Secret Police headquarters. The invitees would show up out of fear and were shown into a bare waiting room painted in drab and depressing gray.  

After waiting patiently for a few hours in total silence, the person in question was told that the colonel was not available and the appointment had to be rescheduled. 

Six months and sometimes a year later, depending on their genetic makeup and the length of irradiation, most of those invited to Securitate headquarters came down with cancer of unusually large tumors. Few made the connection between their visits to Securitate headquarters and their devastating illnesses. 

We learned this horrible truth in 1988 from Gen. Mihai Ion Pacepa, the head of the Romanian Securitate police who defected to the west and spent the rest of his life in a secret location in the U.S. 

Gen. Pacepa revealed the existence of the evil program to kill opponents of the communist regime with lethal doses of radiation. The scary waiting room where the dissidents had been waiting for the invisible colonel to arrive was equipped with a cobalt device that radiated them.