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Nicolae Plei was a Romanian intelligence official and secret police investigator. From 1980 to 1984, he led the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Securitate, the secret service of Communist Romania. He was described by the New York Times and Associated Press at the time of his death as a diehard Communist and ruthless chief of the Securitate secret police.

Plei was born in Curtea de Arge, a town in Arge County, southern Romania. According to Gheorghe Florescu, a black marketer of coffee and memoirist who met Plei during communism, the future general had exceptionally lowly origins, being the son of a farm hand with a two primary classes education and an illiterate peasant woman, who hailed from a family of outlaws in Trgovite area. A worker at the Moroieni Lumber Factory in his native city and head of the industrys trade union by the age of 18, he joined the Communist Party in 1947, the year when the communist regime was set up, and became active in party affairs.

Source: Wikipedia