This undated photo provided by Juan Carlos Arévalo shows Katherine Verdery, an American anthropologist and professor. Verdery's memoir "My Life as a S...
This undated photo provided by Juan Carlos Arévalo shows Katherine Verdery, an American anthropologist and professor. Verdery's memoir "My Life as a Spy: Investigations in a Secret Police File" recounts her experiences doing research in Romania during the Cold War. Years later, she discovered the Romanian government believed she was a spy. The government's file on her was nearly 3,000 pages long, and included images shot by secret cameras and information provided by ordinary people she'd thought of as friends. (Juan Carlos Arévalo via AP)
This undated image provided by Duke University Press shows the cover of the memoir "My Life as a Spy: Investigations in a Secret Police File," by Kath...
This undated image provided by Duke University Press shows the cover of the memoir "My Life as a Spy: Investigations in a Secret Police File," by Katherine Verdery. The book recounts Verdery's experiences as an American anthropologist in Romania during the Cold War and how, years later, she discovered the Romanian government believed she was a spy. The government's file on Verdery was nearly 3,000 pages long and included surveillance images like the one on the cover of the book, taken with a secret camera. (Duke University Press via AP)
FILE - In this March 10, 2005, file photo, Romanian military staff prepare to unload files of Romania's former communist regime's Securitate secret po...
FILE - In this March 10, 2005, file photo, Romanian military staff prepare to unload files of Romania's former communist regime's Securitate secret police from a truck at the headquarters of the National Council for Studying the Securitate Archives (CNSAS) in Leordeni, Romania. Some 70 informants and spies secretly recorded the life of Katherine Verdery, now an Anthropology Professor at the University of New York, when she worked periodically as an anthropology graduate in Communist Romania. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda, File)
FILE - In this July 29, 2009, file photo, a man who refused to be identified by name reads a communist era secret police file at the headquarters of t...
FILE - In this July 29, 2009, file photo, a man who refused to be identified by name reads a communist era secret police file at the headquarters of the National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives in Bucharest, Romania. Some 70 informants and spies secretly recorded the life of Katherine Verdery, now an Anthropology Professor at the University of New York, when she worked periodically as an anthropology graduate in Communist Romania. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda, File)
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — Romanian secret police agents eavesdropped on her conversations, persuaded friends to snoop on her and filmed her in her underwear.
Some 70 informants and spies kept tabs on Katherine Verdery, now an anthropology professor at City University of New York, when she visited communist Romania in the '70s and '80s as a postgraduate doing research on an anthropology thesis on Romanian village life.
No other U.S. citizen was so closely scrutinized by the Securitate secret police of communist leader Nicolae Ceausesu.
After the collapse of communism in 1989, she obtained her 2,781-page dossier and transformed the material into a 344-page book, "My Life as a Spy." The book was recently translated into Romanian, opening old wounds but also challenging Romanians to confront a dark chapter in their history.
