“I am not resigning because I have no reason to,” the State Secretary at the Interior Ministry, László Tasnádi, has told a spontaneously organised press conference. “Before the political change I have only written reports on people who were charged with spying or terror crimes.”
Tasnádi thought it was necessary to declare his view because a day earlier left-liberal weekly newspaper hvg had disclosed information about his being a department leader in the former State Security Agency in the last years before the collapse of the communist system.
His job was primarily preventing “inner reactions”, namely stopping people from practising “activities which are against the state” of a cultural or religious nature. Some of his tasks were the “operative observation” of diplomats and the protection of “economic properties”. Tasnádi was on duty at the reburial of Imre Nagy, prime minister during the 1956 Uprising, in June 1989, attended by tens of thousands of people, working as an operative officer with two other secret agents (under the pseudonyms “Amur” and “Vera”).
He categorically denied the information published in hvg, explaining that he was dealing with spying and later with fighting terrorism at the Stasi. After the political turn he had continued his latter task at the Authority of National Security. “I have not written reports about anything and anyone, only from people who were accused of spying and terrorism.”
Asked whether he was performing any kind of secret service activity for the State Security Agency during the Nagy reburial, he answered no. Did he accept reports from the two other agents? No, again: “That is stupid. I have never been part of such actions.”
Tasnádi said: “There are agents everywhere fighting off spies and terrorism as well. The fact that I have cooperated with agents at that time is in consequence the most logical thing in the world.” As he stressed, this is a profession that “is part of the politics only in Hungary”. Was he considering resigning due to the media pressure: “There is nothing to consider because I have not done anything wrong.”
Only the Interior Minister, Sándor Pintér, might decide about his resignation, Tasnádi said. Both Pintér and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had known about his past career. He had been Cabinet Leader for Pintér in the previous legislative period. Before that he had worked for several of Pintér’s private security companies.
District VIII mayor Máté Kocsis, of governing party Fidesz, said Tasnádi was not working in a political, rather a professional field. He recalled that Tasnádi worked in state security for a long time, and Pintér had good reasons to appoint him as his closest colleague.
Another Fidesz politician, László L. Simon, said that morally the Tasnádi case was not unpleasant for the party. Former prime minister Péter Medgyessy (2002-2004) had been sharply criticised by Fidesz and his resignation demanded because he had not only kept secret being an agent of the Stasi but had denied it, Simon said. However, you could clearly see in Tasnádi’s curriculum vitae that he had once worked for the State Security Agency. Tasnádi had never tried to cover up his past.
The social president of the parliamentary commission for national security, Zsolt Molnár, said Fidesz is using double standards, having attacked Medgyessy but claiming Tasnádi’s work in the Stasi is considered as “professional experience”. It shows the falsity of Fidesz’s anti-communist rhetoric, Molnár said.
András Schiffer, the leader of the green-liberal party LMP said it appears that Fidesz is making a difference between “good communists”, who belong to the governing party, and “bad communists”, who belong to the opposition.
Schiffer said it is “cynical and unacceptable” that the Prime Minister celebrates himself as the hero of the reburial of Nagy, and on the other hand agrees that a former Stasi officer, who was still on duty at the 1989 celebration, becomes a state secretary.
The opposition is demanding Tasnádi’s resignation in unison.
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