The Săptămâna magazine, directed by Eugen Barbu and Corneliu Vadim Tudor, was considered "the main platform for manipulative pseudo-nationalism during the late years of the Ceaușescu regime".
Those identified as involved in the regime's propaganda apparatus are Matei Socor (head of the Agerpres news agency), Paul Niculescu-Mizil, Leonte Răutu, Eugen Florescu [ro] and Ion Iliescu.
[3] The report also contradicts President Băsescu's earlier assertion (a thesis also supported also by the Left-wing and nationalist groupings of the Romanian political spectrum) that the communist secret police, the Securitate, can be divided into two distinct sections: one serving the regime and the other ensuring the nation's security.
[citation needed] Vladimir Tismăneanu was quoted by Adevărul as saying: We [the Commission] reject on a scientific basis the existence of two kinds of Securitate, one of before 1965, for the Comintern and anti-patriotic, and the other one devoted to the people and to the patriotic values.
[5]Critics of the report of the Tismăneanu commission do not deny that it does have a considerable merit: it contains factual, informative parts, based on studies conducted by experts and is an important source on the history of the totalitarian Communist Romania.
Historians Péter Apor, Sándor Horváth and James Mark write that the Commission has "interpreted collaboration in the context of discrediting postcommunist socialists through a militant anti communism.
[7] The anticommunist dissidents Victor Frunză and Ionel Cana published a protest letter criticising the fact that the report failed to mention Bessarabia and Bukovina, which were the main target of Soviet expansionism.
A similar position has been taken by other personalities such as Victor Roncea, president of the Civic Media Association, who denounced the crimes committed by the communists in Soviet-occupied Bessarabia and Bukovina before, during and after the Second World War.
[13] Some believe thaf President Traian Băsescu's choice to declare the communist regime as illegitimate on the basis of the report is also dangerous because it may be interpreted as an annulment of all international treaties in which it took part.
[13] The volume Iluzia Anticomunismului[14] summarises a number of critiques, including lack of narrative continuity, poor organization and failure to engage the problem at more than symbolic level.