There are conflicting accounts of what caused Stelescu's dissidence. According to the Legion's version (published much later by Codreanu's successor, Horia Sima) Stelescu was motivated by envy of Codreanu, and had even plotted to assassinate him; moreover, through his wife's relatives, he had made contact with political operators close to King Carol II, who, as the foremost opponent of the Legion, encouraged and supported his action. Other sources have alleged that Stelescu had even been an agent of Siguranța Statului, a hypothesis relying on a statement of the writer Panait Istrati, who was a sympathiser of "Cruciada Românismului"; he reportedly told the writer Alexandru Talex that Stelescu was "the man of those who keep me under surveillance" (a likely reference to Romanian authorities, suspicious of Istrati's earlier communist activism).