A Secret Life (2 page)

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Authors: Benjamin Weiser

Tags: #History, #Europe, #Germany, #World, #True Crime, #Espionage

BOOK: A Secret Life
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The person I would hire to research the archive was Peter Earnest, a retired CIA case officer who had worked for thirty-six years in the agency, including more than two decades in clandestine operations. He had also been the agency’s director of media affairs and its spokesman; he knew how the press worked, and was respected by reporters for his straightforward approach. Peter would work on my behalf, although he was of course bound by the agency’s rules.
 
I made my case to agency officials through the public affairs office, and after lengthy consideration, the agency finally gave its approval. In a process that ultimately took more than a year, Peter worked at a desk in the Soviet/East European Division at the CIA’s Langley headquarters, delving into dozens of boxes, and ultimately producing some 750 pages of raw notes and files. These included often lengthy excerpts of cables, memos, transcripts, letters, and his own descriptions of various aspects of the operation. There were about seventy files, each in an orange folder marked with the case name and file number and dates covered. Many documents were on the original flimsy paper, and the files also included photographs, operational site surveys, maps, and sketches of locations where dead drops and other clandestine acts would take place. “There was a little bit of an archeological thrill to this,” Peter recalled. “I knew that no one had touched them for a long time.” But the material was not from a different era entirely. As he immersed himself in the project, he was often visited by people in the Division who had in some way been involved in the case.
 
When the material was ultimately processed for my use, it offered a rare look at a single human intelligence operation, including Kuklinski’s statements and letters to the CIA over the nine years he cooperated with the Americans. This material largely confirmed his earlier oral accounts to me, and offered leads for further questioning.
 
The publications review board made modest deletions before the material was released to me, which I do not believe affected the larger story. Not every document I received placed the agency in a positive light, suggesting that the review was even-handed. I also believe that through extensive interviews with Kuklinski and others, I have been able to fill in many of the holes. Of course, there were some important areas that I could not fully explore, which can be generally categorized under the “sources and methods” of the agency. Peter Earnest, having reviewed the complete file, said that he believes nothing in it contradicts the central theme—that Kuklinski was motivated by his political convictions, acted in a way that he believed would help his country, and did great damage to the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. This book, then, is a bit of an experiment, and joins several others by authors who have sought ways to avoid prepublication review in the interest of writing substantive and independent works based in part on CIA records.
 
There may be no more controversial an institution in America than the Central Intelligence Agency, which has endured justified criticism over the years for assassination plots against foreign leaders, civil rights abuses, bungled operations, intelligence failures, and an inability to root out spies working against the United States. More recently, there has been renewed debate about the effectiveness of the CIA’s human intelligence capabilities, particularly since the September 11 terror attacks, and the Bush administration’s war in Iraq.
 
The Kuklinski case tells a different story, showing how human intelligence operations can succeed when they are handled with scrupulous care and imagination. The operation reveals a side of the CIA that is not often seen—of case officers who joined the agency because they were attracted by the excitement and intrigue of undercover work and by the idea of public service. The CIA is the face America first offers people who, like Kuklinski, are inspired by Western ideals. To the extent the CIA fails to carry out such operations, the United States loses a powerful means of understanding nations, regimes, and groups that are hostile to the West.
 
At a time when the dangers of the Cold War era have receded, and when Russia is struggling to reconcile its Communist past with its halting moves toward a more democratic system, it is sometimes hard to recall what it meant to have Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces poised at Europe’s border. As Kuklinski pointed out, if the Soviets had moved to invade Europe, the United States would likely have responded with nuclear weapons targeting Soviet forces as they passed through Poland. His intelligence offered a critical early-warning system for the West, and, he believed, for Poland, which was doomed to destruction in any Soviet attack. “Even if we win, what do we gain?” he said in one interview.
 
Although Kuklinski had risen to a high and sensitive post on the Polish General Staff, he was in many ways a typical Pole in a country whose heritage includes powerful symbols—of heroic soldiers, the Catholic Church, and a vast empire that once stretched across Central and Eastern Europe. But that heritage remained mostly a myth as Poland’s borders kept changing along with its masters. From the end of the 1700s until 1918, Poland was partitioned out of existence by Russia, Prussia, and Austria. It then re-emerged as an independent country, only to be taken over again in 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded; later the Soviets assumed control. The historian Simon Schama once told me that Poles have a spectral notion of themselves, like a political hologram. “They’re visible; they’re invisible. And they constantly have the sense that their national identity is contingent really on sustaining some inner belief against those who say, ‘We’ll allow you to be a nation, provided you act as our satellite.’” Even during the Communist era, the Poles never fully accepted this subservient role. They attended church. Many kept their private farms, resisting pressure to join the collective farms set up by the state. They listened to Radio Free Europe, and assiduously maintained whatever contacts they could with friends or family in the West. They knew that someday their country would be freed, although they realized that would not be achieved without struggle from within. That was Kuklinski’s conviction, and helps to explain why he acted as he did. His case is a poignant reminder of how hard it was for Communist-era officers who were inspired by Western values to live patriotic lives.
 
That day in the hotel room in Virginia, Kuklinski emphasized that he did not see himself as an American spy or mole; he always felt that he had acted on behalf of his own country, and that he had in effect “recruited” the United States to work against Poland’s Communist leadership and the Soviet Union.
 
“In the beginning I asked myself if I had the moral right to do this,” he said. “I was a Pole. I understood that Poles should be free and that the United States was the only country that might support the fight for freedom for Poland. On the other hand, I was providing so much important information, and there always will be this question of whether a human being has this right, based on his own individual decision, particularly if the interests of the whole country and maybe the lives of millions are involved. It was a dilemma, my moral dilemma, but I became convinced that I not only had the right, I had the moral obligation.”
 
 
Benjamin Weiser
November 11, 2003
 
Benjamin Weiser has been a metropolitan reporter on the
New York Times
since 1997, where he has covered legal issues and terrorism. Before joining the
Times
he spent eighteen years as a reporter for the
Washington Post,
where he served on the investigative staff. His journalism has received the George Polk and Livingston awards.
 
PROLOGUE
 
Thursday, December 4, 1980, 10:00 p.m.
 
Snow had been falling heavily on Warsaw for hours, and Colonel Ryszard J. Kuklinski drove cautiously, squinting to see beyond the pelting flakes in the reflected glare of his headlights as he struggled to keep his car from veering out of control. Warsaw dimmed its streetlights in winter to conserve energy, but he had committed this route to memory and did not need maps or signs. Still, he had to pay close attention to his driving, because the wipers barely cleared the snow from the windshield before it was covered again.
 
He wore a thick woolen cap and a heavy overcoat, which concealed his closely cropped blond hair and his army uniform. As he drove, he encountered few cars or pedestrians, but the snowy calm was deceptive. Poland was in the midst of a revolution. Just five months earlier, factory workers in Polish cities had begun organizing wildcat strikes, which spread quickly to hundreds of factories across the country. In August, Lech Walesa, a thirty-six-year-old electrician with a handlebar mustache and a fierce, charismatic personality, climbed over an iron fence at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, and led thousands of workers in a historic strike that inspired the creation of Solidarity, Poland’s first independent trade union.
 
The Communist leadership of Poland, under intense pressure from Moscow, had been trying to crush the workers movement. The Polish Interior and Defense Ministries had developed plans to impose martial law, to arrest activists across Poland, and to restore order. The secret police, Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa, known as the SB, would carry out the assault with support from the army. With tanks and hundreds of thousands of soldiers, the crackdown would be swift and brutal.
 
The heart of the army’s planning for martial law was being conducted in the Polish General Staff, where a small cell of officers worked under tight secrecy in an imposing four-level sandstone building in central Warsaw. They had been entrusted with coordinating the Army’s role in crushing Solidarity. Only two sets of the full plans existed, and each was locked in a General Staff safe.
 
One copy was held by Colonel Kuklinski, a highly respected officer on the General Staff who was part of the select group working on the army’s role in martial law. Kuklinski had more than thirty years of experience in army operations, war planning, and military exercises. He had become a valued staff officer for General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the defense minister, and he worked closely with senior members of the Warsaw Pact Supreme Command in Moscow.
 
Kuklinski appeared to be the embodiment of the loyal officer, but he was privately repulsed by the planned crackdown and the army’s involvement. As a Pole, he resented the subservience of Poland’s military leaders to Moscow. He admired Walesa’s determination and courage and knew that many Solidarity members had served in the Army, along with their sons and brothers. But a confrontation seemed inevitable. For days, Soviet troops had been massing on the Polish border. The only question was whether the suppression of Solidarity would be carried out by the Poles themselves or come from the outside.
 
Kuklinski gripped the wheel of his blue Opel Rekord and concentrated on the circuitous series of back roads he was following to reach his destination, which was just a few hundreds yards from his house. He had been driving for more than an hour, and wanted to be certain that he was not being followed by the SB.
 
He turned down the Wislostrada, the broad boulevard that ran parallel to the Vistula, the largest river in Poland, and one of the few thoroughfares where the streetlights stayed on in the winter. Kuklinski began to count the lampposts that lined the street. He gradually slowed and then hit the brake forcefully, causing the car to skid into the curb. He switched off the engine and picked up a tightly wrapped cellophane package from the seat beside him. The package contained two sheets of paper on which Kuklinski had outlined, in carefully hand-printed lettering, Moscow’s plans to have eighteen Soviet, Czech, and East German divisions ready to cross the border into Poland in four days. These were the deepest secrets of the Warsaw Pact countries, and Kuklinski, one of only a few men with access to them, was prepared to give them away. Kuklinski trudged to the front of his car and with one hand began brushing snow from his windshield. With the other, he dropped the small package on the ground beneath the streetlamp.
 
He drove home, parked, and walked behind his house to a wooded area in Traugutt’s Park. He hid behind a clump of trees. In the distance, he could see the Wislostrada and the spot where he had left the cellophane package. He knew his footprints would soon disappear in the falling snow, but he prayed that his friends would arrive before the package was completely buried. He waited for some time, shivering as an occasional car drove by.

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