It's a President's life. In just one week, the admirers of President Georgi Purvanov sought to cast him as a hero as he welcomed home the Bulgarian medics with a formal pardon; a few days earlier, his detractors sought to cast him as a villain and called for him to resign when his communist-era State Security dossier resurfaced.

That Purvanov had a State Security dossier, under the codename "Agent Gotse" was by no means news. However, events on July 19 deepened the narrative somewhat. The committee on the declassification of communist-era security services records disclosed Purvanov's file and said that 23 current and serving members of the Presidency, as well as current and former ambassadors, had been security services collaborators. The list included a former vice president of Bulgaria, Atanas Semerdzhiev, who held the office from 1990 to 1992.

A few hours after the committee's announcement, Purvanov asked that his dossier be forwarded to his office - and had it posted on the presidency's official website, president.bg.

The document on the website opens with an exchange of correspondence between President's office and the committee, headed by Evtim Kostadinov, requesting the dossier.

The third page of the 29-page document is a copy of the front page of Gotse dossier, file number 19183, dated October 4 1989. Part of the dossier is mundane bureaucracy, recording personal details, even the formal request to open a dossier. At the time, Purvanov was a historian employed by the Bulgarian Communist Party.
It includes a June 2 1989 assessment of the character of Purvanov: "He has the necessary personal and professional qualities to perform tasks in the area of cultural and historical intelligence".

That last phrase is no random choice. As recorded in a recent Bulgarian-language book, "cultural and historical intelligence" was a specific project by State Security, involving the building up and promotion of the careers of selected historians to promote the aims of the Bulgarian communist state. In the then communist bloc, only Bulgaria embarked on a "cultural and historical intelligence" project.

Purvanov's task, according to the dossier, would be "to find historical source materials" and write a manuscript in memoir form on a person code-named in the dossier "Komitata". Subsequently, media reports identified Komitata as Metodi Dimov.

"The person is a foreigner of Macedonian origin, who is in our country, and the book will be about the so-called `Macedonian issue'," the dossier says.

"Purvanov showed interest in the work because he is working in this field and the issue is familiar to him," noted First Lieutenant Tsvyatko Tsvetkov in the dossier. A note says that payment was to be agreed on later.

What emerges from the dossier is that Purvanov, a historian, was being deployed in Bulgaria's grappling against "pro-Skopje" historians. Macedonia then still was a constituent part of Yugoslavia.

Purvanov was assigned to write an article, which was to be published in the Makedonska Tribuna (Macedonian Tribune) newspaper, published by the Macedonian Patriotic Organisation in Canada.

One of the last documents in the Gotse dossier is a proposal to archive the file because of termination of service. The date is July 14 1993 - by which time the post-communist changes were underway in Bulgaria.

On July 20, Focus news agency quoted an interview given to Nova Televisia by Tsvetkov, who is also a former chief secretary of the Interior Ministry, saying that there had been no "official recruiting talk" with Purvanov. Tsvetkov said that in his meetings with Purvanov, he had represented himself as a foreign ministry staffer.

In June last year, Purvanov said that he had a State Security dossier only because of his involvement in editing the Dimov book. He said that he had not been aware that he was getting involved with the intelligence services.

Only July 20, Purvanov's Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) colleague, Interior Minister Roumen Petkov, dismissed the revived controversy about the Gotse file as "an attempt to discredit the Head of State" and criticised the way in which the information had been released. The same day, Ivan Kostov, an old political foe of Purvanov, former prime minister and now leader of the right-wing Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria (DSB), called on Purvanov to resign as President.

DSB deputy leader Ekaterina Mihailova told Parliament: "Today our homeland turns out to have a President, and a presidential administration, filled with cadres of the secret services". While State Security was formally dismantled during the post-communist transition, "leading officers from these structures have maintained a crucial influence in the renamed communist party (a reference to the BSP). They created the grey economy and the organised crime," Mihailova said.

On July 22, Bulgarian-language daily Sega published an analysis article saying that Purvanov had not been an informer, but it noted that the President had "drawn almost all of his ideas about Bulgaria's foreign policy from former State Security agents".

On July 23, interviewed by Bulgarian-language daily 24 Chassa, Bogomil Bonev - interior minister in the Kostov cabinet - said that in 1997 Kostov had seen the Gotse file and had decided that Purvanov had not been a State Security agent.

There was also some public argument, prompted by Kostov, who alleged that the dossier had been "cleaned" by the removal of about 30 pages. Former post-communist intelligence services bosses denied this.

Valeri Katsounov of the dossier commission said that the records clearly refuted Purvanov's claim that he did not know that the people he worked with were from the secret services. However, chairperson Kostadinov said that Purvanov's claim "basically agrees with the records that have been examined. The Gotse file does not contain any signature by Purvanov, so it is possible that he did not know he was working for State Security".