The Romanian diplomat who was friends with two American presidents. Richard Nixon, excited by the reception in Romania

Radu Irimescu was the ambassador of the Kingdom of Romania in Washington during the interwar period and a friend of the American president Dwight Eisenhower, through whom he met another American head of state – Richard Nixon, with whom he had close relations.

Radu Irimescu was born in Galați on December 9, 1890 and began his education at the military high school in Iași, later attending the Artillery and Engineering School (1907-1908) and then the courses of the Naval Academy in Kiel completed by a military internship in the imperial navy German (1908-1912).

He enrolled at the “Technische Hochschule” in Charlottenburg (Berlin), but interrupted his studies to take part, as an officer, in the 1913 campaign in Bulgaria during the Second Balkan War.

In step with the preferences of the technical elite of society, he attended the Baneasa Pilot School (October 1915 – August 1916), obtaining his pilot’s license, and from January 1, 1918 he was appointed commander of the 1st Aviation Group.

After resigning from aviation, Radu Irimescu declared in the press of the time: “Aeronautics is today strangled in its life in the pincers of formalism and endless forms that could only come into existence from the desire to cover with documents, facts. (…) At the moment of separation, I declare loud and clear that aeronautics will not be able to progress unless it is freed and unshackled from the straitjacket in which it is held by bureaucracy and administrative formalism, which prevents it from training, operating, maintaining, repair and equip”.

After the First World War, in the years 1919-1920 he attends the School of Mines at the University of Columbia (USA) obtaining his engineering degree. Thanks to his skills, he will become the director of the New York Branch of the Crissoveloni Bank, director of the Reșița Plants and commercial director of the General Gas and Electricity Company of Bucharest.

It supplied the US military with tires in World War II

He seems to have enjoyed the sympathies of the Carlist chamber, a fact suggested by the previously mentioned functions (no. Reșita-Călan domain being a “appropriation” of King Charles II), but especially for his seven-time appointments in the government as undersecretary at the Ministry of National Defense, appointed senator, and later even appointed minister of the new Ministry of Air and Navy.

Installation of another Minister of Air in place of Radu Irimescu PHOTO VA Urechia Library

As a peak of his professional career in 1939 he was appointed ambassador of Romania to the USA, a position from which he resigned when Ion Antonescu came to power.

After resigning from diplomacy, he opened a tire factory, with which he supplied the American army during the Second World War.

After the war, his company merged with the Fierrseton factory, being appointed the new general manager of the company. In the newspapers of the time appeared the news that Radu Irimescu, a former minister, obtained the citizenship of the United States and as a result, according to article 36, paragraph 1 and article 37 of the law regarding the acquisition and loss of Romanian nationality, starting from January 19, 1939, he automatically lost his citizenship Romanian

As a result of gaining his new citizenship, his citizenship of the Romanian state was withdrawn, and his fortune, valued at around 500,000,000 lei, consisting of various shares, was seized at the beginning of 1942.

Conspiracy name-“Irinel Pop”

At the presidency of the Council of Ministers, there are notes since 1940 regarding the Galați diplomat. In a report this appears as “was extraordinary envoy and plenipotentiary minister of the country to Washington who did not return to Romania”.

Although in “Notice” for the year 1943 of the Romanian Jockey Club, the figure as a permanent member along with two other Romanian personalities, Ernest Urdăreanu and Constantin Laptew, the report provided to the Ministry of Internal Affairs showed that their “their Romanian citizenship was withdrawn, a fact that no longer gives them the right to be part of a Romanian club and to appear alongside the other personalities of the Romanian state”.

Official meetings attended by Radu Irimescu PHOTO VA Urechia Library

From the checks of the archives of the National Council for the Study of Security Archives (CNSAS), the researcher Emilian Tilibaşa determined that Radu Irimescu’s name appears later, in 1970, this time in the notes of the Security.

Thus, it was reported that on September 7, 1970, he landed in Bucharest to visit his birthplace, Galațiul, and old friends from Bucharest. Through a source close to Radu Irimescu, who had received the conspiratorial name “Irinel Pop”, the Securitatea was able to learn a lot of the former Romanian politician’s thoughts.

Three hours of dinner table talk with Richard Nixon

Thus, the former diplomat reported that he was a friend of Secretary of State Forster Dulles and former US President Dwight Eisenhower, through whom he met President Richard Nixon. From the accounts of the Romanian diplomat we learn that Richard Nion visited him “serving the evening meal at Irimescu, where he talked for 3 hours”.

The researcher Emilian Tilibaşa revealed from the CNSAS archives the fact that Richard Nixon spoke to Radu Irimescu about the enthusiasm he felt after the reception given by the Romanian people, but also about the lucidity and sincerity of the leaders of our state.

Nixon also mentioned that Romania was the only independent communist country, something for which the Romanian leaders deserved all the admiration.

Radu Irimescu also had this opinion, appreciating this as a special achievement of Romania in the difficult circumstances in which it was at that time. Radu Irimescu highlighted the fact that Romania has never enjoyed greater prestige abroad than at that moment.

He further appreciated
“especially the constructions in Bucharest that he was able to see, as well as the cleanliness of Bucharest. Instead, he criticized the totally defective way of serving foreigners in hotels, giving himself as an example, in addition recounting another unpleasant fact when in the hotel lobby an English citizen, who had been informed that she had a room reserved, was not dat and was seen crying sitting on the luggage in the hotel lobby. This was also confirmed by an article in the newspaper QUIK from the Federal Republic of Germany, which showed how Romanian waiters on the coast change the labels on wine bottles, cheat on payment lists, and hotel staff steal from the rooms.”