Staging a walk-out from Caransebeș Prison just after the coup of August 23, 1944, Bodnarenko was integrated by the Patriotic Combat Formations and the Siguranța police, while also reuniting with Soviet intelligence and joining a special unit of the SMERSH.

Under the newly formed communist regime, Bodnarenko was exclusively known as "Gheorghe Pintilie" (or variants thereof), being promoted directly to Lieutenant General, and serving in the Great National Assembly.

Pushed into full retirement during the anti-Soviet backlash of 1963, Pintilie then watched as Gheorghiu-Dej's posthumous successor, Nicolae Ceaușescu, proceeded to expose some of the crimes committed by Securitate personnel in previous decades.

"[2] Another historian, Dennis Deletant, reports that Pintilie and a number of other senior Securitate officers were officially presented as Romanians, but notes that all such cases deliberately concealed from the public their true ethnicity.

[30] Câmpeanu then places the future General Pintilie among the paramilitaries manning the PCR front Apărarea Patriotică in Bucharest's Obor neighborhood, during the final days of August;[31] officially, his function was recorded as "Chief of Service No 1 (guarding of buildings and dignitaries)".

[36] Bodnarenko's victim, lawyer-diarist Petre Pandrea, alleges that, by picking out his new surname, the future Securitate chief wanted to pass as a relative of the PCR's hero-activist, Ilie Pintilie.

[42] As noted by Oprea, Dmitri Fedichkin of the First Chief Directorate also made Pintilie his direct assistant, thereby establishing the Soviet MGB in a position of power over Romanian police agencies.

[61] Both Gheorghe and Ana were directly involved in helping Pauker's father Herș Rabinsohn to embark on a Jewish migrant ship bound for Mandatory Palestine—the event was kept secret from others in the party leadership.

[67] Documentarist Lucia Hossu Longin argues that, while still at the Siguranța, Pintilie was partly responsible for the Tămădău framing of July 1947, which saw the political destruction, and judicial repression, of Romania's leading opposition group, the National Peasants' Party.

[75] Georgescu, as Minister of Internal Affairs, simultaneously proposed Pintilie for the rank of Lieutenant General, the highest and only such office to be attained by a Securitate cadre at that time;[76] the suggestion was approved by the MAN on August 28, 1948.

"[80] Among the scholars, Liviu Pleșa argues that the appointment was part of a deliberate move to infiltrate security structures with known Soviet spies—including not just Pintilie and Bodnăraș, but also Nicolau, Nicolschi, Vladimir Mazuru, and Lucian Stupineanu.

[97] As the DGSP's junior Director of Inquiries, Tudor Dincă was disconcerted by his own staff's "frightful" linguistic and literary incompetence—however, as noted by historian Florian Banu, Pintilie displayed similar clumsiness, addressing his colleagues in ungrammatical sentences.

The same source reports that meeting Pintilie in person was disappointing: speaking a language that was "archaic, uneducated, riddled with vulgarities", he also looked "prematurely aged" by chain-smoking and continuously binging on vodka, never going home to his wife before 2 AM.

In 1950, shortly after taking over as junior minister, he signed Order 100, which established a nation-wide system of labor camps, designed to "reeducate inimical elements", preparing them for "social life within a people's democracy".

[103] In July 1952, after consulting with Nicolschi, Pintilie issued arrest warrants for 417,916 people (some of whom were no longer alive or present in the country); over 130,000 of these were solely targeted for their membership in religious organizations, while 100,000 more were divided between the old regime's political parties.

[104] Prosecutor Grigore Răduică reported in 1992 that he considered Pintilie "responsible for many a crime", including the sending of thousands to do work on the Canal;[6] Pacepa sees him as guilty for the deaths in custody of some 50,000 people.

[102] Colonel Ilie Bădică, who was tasked with supervising the labor colonies, claimed in 1968 that improving the living standards of inmates was disallowed by "comrade Pintilie, [...] who said that, if a warden ever gave good food to his prisoners, then he might as well be colluding with the class enemy.

[108] Faced with an increase in the cases of armed anti-communist resistance, Georgescu, Pintilie, and the other figures at Internal Affairs initially relied on input from the regular police force, or Miliția.

[111] During March 1950, at the peak of the "Tito–Stalin split", he introduced speculation that the resistance groups of Timișoara Region were being propped up by a Yugoslav network, and that the Securitate's failures in untangling this conspiracy suggested its own infiltration by the "Titoists".

"[116] As recounted in October by Major Mihail Kovács, who had shot down five peasants near Luduș, "Comrade Minister Pintilie said that we should spare no effort for the timely discovery of conspiracies by the chiaburi against collective farms and yards".

[122] From 1949, Pintilie had insisted on the need to infiltrate Guardist cells formed within Romania's prisons, asking Major Ion Nemeș, and then Lieutenant Colonel Tudor Sepeanu, to oversee the operation on his behalf.

[135] Others suggest that Pintilie himself was relatively lenient toward other party cadres, especially when his former lawyer, Ion Gheorghe Maurer, who had joined the PCR as a Gheorghiu-Dej devotee, expressed his qualms about following Soviet directives.

"[163] Writer Niculae Gheran, who relies on things heard from a political prisoner, defines Nicolschi and Pintilie as the "stage directors" of the experiment, claiming that the two kept photographs and magnetic tapes showing the results, to replicate if needed.

The document he produced in March 1955 described in some detail the poor hygiene, failure to provide basic healthcare, and "miserable food", placing blame for all these on Drăghici; Gheorghiu-Dej took notice, asking for remedial action to be put in motion.

[173] By November, he had intensified Securitate links with the KGB, the Polish Security Service, and other European communist agencies, asking them for reports on the Romanian diaspora, and considering plans for intelligence sharing.

[174] As reported by Pintilie himself, Drăghici was incensed by the "leniency and superficiality" displayed by Securitate cadres from the Magyar Autonomous Region, who had failed to anticipate any local ramifications of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

One such account is provided by novelist Marin Preda, who claims that, during Khrushchev's visit to Bucharest, "Pantiușa" (serving as junior minister under "that imbecile Drăghici") was tasked with staging a pro-Soviet coup.

[188] Nicolae Ceaușescu, who joined Patilineț's commission, reported that Pintilie's spying was confirmed as a matter of public record, and also that, despite the "hard times", the general continued seeing other Soviet agents, including Vasile Posteucă.

Mihai Viorel Țibuleac, who was part of Ceaușescu's security detail during these events, reports that: "Each and every party session had discussions concerning Pantelei Bodnarenko, or Pantiușa, as a traitor to this country, one who was greatly detrimental for Romania.

[212] Câmpeanu suggests that, like Georgescu, Pintilie was Dej's man within the "forces of repression", helping the Caransebeș prison faction (rather than the larger PCR) establish full control over Romania.