A Secret Life (46 page)

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Authors: Benjamin Weiser

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

BOOK: A Secret Life
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“There are moments in a person’s life, when your heart almost stops beating,” he began, “and you can’t find the words to express your feelings.” He recalled the thrill of seeing the American flag outside the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw during his nine years of cooperation. Today, he said, he was proud to call that flag his own. “I take the oaths, the obligations, related to this.”
 
He paused briefly. “But forgive me,” he said, his voice beginning to break. “In my heart, my body, I will always remain a Pole.”
 
 
 
 
Kuklinski’s first years in the United States after the exfiltration were not easy for him or his family. Hanka and their sons had to adapt to life under new names and identities. Hanka had left her elderly mother without saying goodbye. They had abandoned friends and had left behind virtually all of their possessions, including Waldek’s entire library. The family had to take intensive English, as none of them knew the language. With the CIA’s assistance, Kuklinski’s physical appearance was altered. He grew a beard and mustache, and a doctor removed the “Atlantyk” tattoo that he had imprinted on his arm as a teenager during the war. There was concern for Kuklinski’s safety in the United States: Poland’s embassy in Washington, D.C., and its consulates around the country were staffed with agents of the SB, and Poland had issued a warrant for Kuklinski’s arrest. If caught, he would face execution. Of course, there also was the KGB, whose officers in the United States were undoubtedly interested in the Polish colonel.
 
Bogdan tried to stay in touch with Iza, calling her at the homes of trusted friends in Warsaw, but they missed each other desperately. Kuklinski, longing for another dog, saw a classified advertisement in
The Washington Post
for bichon frise puppies shortly after his arrival. The breeder in Maryland had one white-haired puppy left. Kuklinski and Hanka named her Gemini.
 
Forden and his colleagues and their spouses tried to alleviate some of the burden on the Kuklinskis, seeing them regularly, inviting them to dinner, offering pep talks.
 
One day shortly after he arrived in the United States, Kuklinski was invited to CIA headquarters for a ceremony in the office of Director William Casey. As Forden and other CIA officials watched, the agency finally bestowed the Distinguished Intelligence Medal on Kuklinski. Because Kuklinski’s English was still poor and Casey tended to mumble, the CIA had Victor Kliss, the translator, act as an interpreter. Kuklinski received a Polish version of the citation on the medal, and Kliss read it aloud in English:
 
 
While facing great personal danger, Col. Kuklinski consistently provided extremely valuable and highly classified information about the armed forces, operational plans and intentions of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact members. Having accomplished the above, he made an unparalleled contribution to the preservation of peace, especially in crisis situations. Throughout all that time, Col. Kuklinski was motivated by the most noble patriotism, a deep sense of duty and dedication to the ideals of freedom.
 
Unfortunately, his dedication and sacrifice must remain a secret forever. This medal, secret as well, reflects the appreciation―which he greatly deserves―of the legions of people worldwide who share his ideals.
 
 
 
In the months after his arrival in the United States, Kuklinski became a valuable consultant to the government on Soviet and Warsaw Pact issues, writing a critique of the Pentagon’s AirLand Battle doctrine and preparing a lengthy paper, written from the perspective of the Soviet General Staff, on how Moscow might react to the new doctrine. He also prepared a report on Soviet and Warsaw Pact arms planning. Aris Pappas, the CIA analyst who had specialized in martial law, debriefed him regularly. Kuklinski was given an office near Langley with a computer and a secretary, and one officer’s wife took him shopping for supplies like a Selectric typewriter ball with Polish letters and symbols.
 
Key defense and intelligence officials in the United States were informed of Kuklinski’s arrival. One of them, Les Griggs, a colonel in the Pentagon, joined the debriefing team. Kuklinski was delighted to learn that he finally would be working with a military officer. “I’ve been looking for you―we need to talk,” Kuklinski said when they were introduced.
 
Griggs, Pappas, and other officers, with Kliss as the interpreter, debriefed Kuklinski for six months on Soviet and Warsaw Pact issues. “It soon dawned on me that I’d been reading his stuff for years,” Griggs recalled later.
 
A small team of analysts in the Pentagon supplied questions through Griggs, who would summarize the debriefing sessions in memos to the group. The analysts went back through the tens of thousands of pages of material Kuklinski had sent in the previous nine years, trying to clear up ambiguities and questions they had long had.
 
The CIA continued to keep Kuklinski’s arrival a secret within the larger intelligence community. But in December 1982, the first account of his role in clandestine activity became public.
Newsweek
magazine reported that the CIA had obtained the martial-law plans before Poland’s crackdown on Solidarity had occurred. “In fact, the CIA had a longtime secret agent who by 1981 had risen to the rank of colonel at Polish Army headquarters,” the article said. It quoted one unnamed source as saying, “For a very long time there were very few things that went on at the upper levels of the Polish military that the CIA didn’t know about.”
 
The
Newsweek
article suggested that the CIA, having obtained the martial-law plans from Kuklinski, could have warned Solidarity’s leaders, which would have given them time to go underground before they could be arrested. But it went on to note that “Solidarity was riddled with government spies,” and a specific warning would have risked Kuklinski’s life. The article said: “One of the legends of World War II is that Churchill decided not to defend the cathedral at Coventry against a Nazi air raid in order to protect the Ultra secret: that the Allies had broken the German code. In the Cold War of the 1980s, Solidarity may have served as Coventry.”
 
Kuklinski’s name appeared nowhere in the article, but it didn’t matter. He feared the article would be used against him by his enemies, as propaganda, even as evidence in the Polish military court. He saw the disclosure of his role by unnamed American officials as a betrayal, and he was angry at being described as an “agent” for the CIA. He had always seen himself as an agent working for Poland. Using a tape recorder, he dictated a one-hour monologue, which he called his life’s confession. He wanted to make contact with a Polish church in Maryland and ask the priest to present the tape someday, if Kuklinski was not alive, to whoever was elected as Poland’s first free president.
 
Forden, learning of Kuklinski’s anguish, rushed to his home and found him overwhelmed by despair. He had shaved off his beard and mustache, and he told Forden he wanted to return to Warsaw and offer himself up to Polish military authorities. Forden said that made no sense. In the United States, the press was free, he explained; it was not controlled by the government or by the political parties. A few days later, Kuklinski received a two-page letter from Casey, which he was told was written on behalf of President Reagan, in which the CIA director promised that “everything legally possible will be done to find and hold accountable the person who leaked information for this article.”
 
Casey said the article was “unwanted, unfortunate, and yet, in a certain way, it was well-meaning. Let me explain: America has had many heroes in its history. The American people are constantly seeking more heroes to help add positive meaning and strength to our democratic creed. Those of us who know you personally regard you as a friend, a man of high character and courage, as a Polish patriot―a hero.”
 
Forden persuaded Kuklinski to stay in the United States. Kuklinski increasingly relied on Forden for advice on personal matters, and Forden looked for ways to ease the family’s transition. At one point, aware of Bogdan’s depression at being separated from Iza, Forden and John Stein, the CIA’s deputy director for operations, had dinner at Kuklinski’s home. The discussion centered on the possibility of carrying out another secret operation, this time to bring Iza out of Poland. A plan was eventually developed and run through the CIA station in Bucharest, Romania.
 
 
 
 
In early September 1983, a group of Polish tourists flew south for a week to the Romanian resort of Mangalia on the Black Sea, not far from the Bulgarian border. Iza, then twenty-seven years old, was among them.
 
One morning, she slipped out of the hotel, leaving behind her luggage and clothes. She wore red pants and a T-shirt and carried a tiny leather pocketbook and a passport. She walked several blocks to a corner near a bowling alley, where she had been told to look for an American couple. She saw two people who seemed to fit the description. They smiled, and one held out a photograph. Iza looked at it and saw herself.
 
The two―they were the chief of Bucharest Station and his wife―led Iza to a nearby van. The rear seat had been replaced with a rectangular box in which Iza was to hide. She climbed in and lay on her back, with her face almost touching the closed lid. Although there was an airhole, she felt as if she were in a coffin.
 
She lay in the dark, her body taut. It took less than twenty minutes to reach the Bulgarian border, and when the van stopped at the border, Iza could hear the guards talking and dogs barking. The driver and his wife got out of the van. An hour passed, and she began to hyperventilate. She could hear the dogs circling the van. Finally, the Americans returned to the van and started the motor, and they drove off through Bulgaria. Iza called out that she had to pee. The officers pulled to the side of the road and allowed her to get out of the box, but not out of the van. They handed her a plastic bottle. After several hours, the van reached the Turkish border, where they were again stopped before being allowed to cross into Turkey. The van soon pulled off the road and into a wooded area. There, Iza finally got out of the van and was welcomed by a group of CIA officers and their families, who had set up a picnic in her honor. Iza spent the night in a hotel in Istanbul, where she was given new identification documents and a change of clothing that had been flown in from Britain. Iza had to laugh as she examined the new outfit: The bra seemed several sizes too big.
 
Iza was flown to Frankfurt, where Bogdan and his mother were anxiously waiting for her. The reunion was tearful and joyous, and when she arrived in Virginia, she received a hearty welcome from Kuklinski, who later drove her through the countryside, showing her the scenery as the fall colors changed. In October, Iza and Bogdan were married in the family’s home in a ceremony attended by Forden and other new friends of the family from the agency and the Pentagon.
 
Kuklinski’s other son, Waldek, began to collect new books to replace those he had left in Poland, and he retreated once again into his reading and writing. He also grew close to a graduate student at Georgetown University, and eventually they moved in together. In November 1983, he finished a manuscript, which he dedicated to his father. It was a highly allegorical 200-page account of the family’s life. Waldek wrote the manuscript under a pseudonym and omitted details that could reveal he was Kuklinski’s son. Nonetheless, as Kuklinski read the work, he could see Waldek was still distressed about the uprooting of the family.
 
In the final chapter, “Fulfillment,” the narrator enters a large used bookstore and discovers every book he has ever wanted. He approaches the shelves labeled “History”: “Twenty centuries stared at him. . . . Each title captured his attention.... He found himself at a loss as to which book he should reach for first. And so he came to the letter ‘P.’”
 
He grasps a book and embraces it. Nobody would take it from him. But he finds that he cannot buy it. He asks why, and where he is, and how he arrived there. And why can’t he take the book?
 
Waldek ended his story with a poem, titled “Postscript,” in which he described a book lying open, its pages caught in a gust of wind.
 
 
The wind turned over only one page
And your city disappeared
And you are left with the cold night in your eyes
And the echo of footsteps in your ears
And a handful of air in your palms.
Even though the streets of the city are in your blood
And the stones of the walls are in your bones
And the sky is like a protective shield.
The diary of your mind stops abruptly
And only a river of memories remains.
Over, over and over again, until your face is buried in the ground.
 
 
 
Waldek had titled his book “Dog in the Ruin of the City.”
 
 
 
 
Polish officials said nothing publicly about Kuklinski’s disappearance, but in May 1984, Kuklinski was tried in absentia in a secret proceeding in a Warsaw military court. The military had conducted an extensive investigation, obtaining statements from at least a half dozen witnesses ranging from senior military officials to Czeslaw Jakubowski, the elderly friend whom Kuklinski had asked to care for Zula.

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