A former Securitate police file is shown open along with others in a shelf at...

A former Securitate police file is shown open along with others in a shelf at one of the Romanian Intelligence Service archives. In its half century of operations, the Securitate amassed an estimated 20 km (12 miles) of documents -- 1.5 million files, each an average of 200 pages in length-- from which most of them survive stored at locations throughout the country, in varying degrees of security and preservations. A law passed last year by the ruling centrist coalition allows Romanians to see their own secret police files. On all the files shown is written: "The operative archive".