Gheorghe Pintilie was a Soviet and Romanian intelligence agent and political assassin, who served as first head of the Securitate (1948–1958). Born as a subject of the Russian Empire in Tiraspol, he was briefly employed as a manual laborer, and trained as a locksmith, before joining the Red Army cavalry and seeing action in the Russian Civil War. The NKVD shortlisted him for espionage missions in the 1920s, and in 1928 sent him on for such clandestine work in the Kingdom of Romania. Bodnarenko was apprehended there some nine years later, and sentenced to a twenty-years' imprisonment. While at Doftana, he became the ringleader of imprisoned Soviet spies, together with whom he joined the Romanian Communist Party (PCR). He expressed his loyalty toward Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, the jailed communist and emerging factional leader; their tight political camaraderie lasted into the late 1950s.

The Securitate was the popular term for the Departamentul Securității Statului, the secret police agency of the Socialist Republic of Romania. Previously, before the communist regime, Romanian secret police was called Siguranța Statului. It was founded on 30 August 1948, with help and direction from the Soviet MGB. Following the Romanian Revolution in 1989, the new authorities assigned the various intelligence tasks of the DSS to new institutions.