A Secret Life (48 page)

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Authors: Benjamin Weiser

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

BOOK: A Secret Life
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Inside, he approached an election official.
 
“Do you have a Polish passport?”
 
No, Kuklinski said.
 
“Some ID?”
 
“I have,” Kuklinski said, pulling out his old General Staff photo ID, which he had taken with him from Poland.
 
“Ah, Kuklinski,” the official said, recognizing him.
 
The official said that it would be impossible for him to grant Kuklinski permission to vote. Did Kuklinski want to see a higher consulate official?
 
Kuklinski decided not to risk it; he hurried out of the building in tears.
 
 
 
 
In the second round of voting in December, Walesa was elected president of Poland with nearly three-quarters of the votes. That year, as part of a general amnesty for political prisoners, Kuklinski’s death sentence was reduced to twenty-five years, but little else changed for him. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former U.S. national security adviser, made appeals through the Polish news media for Walesa to invalidate Kuklinski’s conviction and decorate him as an officer. Walesa refused, writing to Brzezinski in January 1991: “I am deeply concerned with this matter, but it will take time and preparations to resolve it. I hope you understand this.”
 
In July 1991, Polish television broadcast a documentary on Kuklinski’s case. Among the Poles interviewed was Jacek Szymanderski, a member of the Polish parliament, who staunchly defended Kuklinski.
 
 
I do not consider Kuklinski to be a traitor because what he [did] was not directed against the Polish state and the Polish Army. That army was not a sovereign army. At that time, it was a Polish-language-speaking unit of the army of the Soviet empire, acting on the latter’s behalf and following the latter’s orders. I do not deny patriotism of the Polish officers, entangled in that army, but the army as such did not act in a sovereign manner.
 
 
Szymanderski concluded, “I am convinced that Kuklinski is a Polish patriot.”
 
But others on the program described Kuklinski as a traitor, such as Colonel Wieslaw Gornicki, a hard-line Communist journalist and former speechwriter for Jaruzelski.
 
 
The discussion about ex-Colonel Kuklinski is a little bit embarrassing. It indicates that there exists what I would call a revolving loyalty. If Kuklinski had worked for the Soviet military intelligence, he would have been considered a traitor, but because he had worked for the Americans there are attempts to make him a saint.
 
I do not share this point of view. Not everybody could or should be a pilot, a train driver or a professional soldier. The latter professions require certain traits of character, such as loyalty and honesty beyond doubt.
 
 
 
Gornicki said that Kuklinski had “acted against the well-being of his fellow citizens,” adding, “I do not see any reason to seriously think about absolving that man from his infamy. . . . If he returns, I would certainly not shake his hand.”
 
Waldek read the news accounts with concern, and after the Polish weekly
Polityka
published a particularly negative article about his father, Waldek sent a letter to the editor, which was published.
 
Waldek cited Kuklinski’s warning about Moscow’s 1980 invasion plans and said it was time to recognize his contributions and those of like-minded Poles. “In my opinion, this is a matter of paying back a debt of honor to all those who fought for the independence of Poland, perhaps in an unconventional but effective manner,” Waldek wrote in March 1992.
 
Brzezinski, in a speech to the Polish American Congress in October 1992, argued that the debate about Kuklinski showed Poles’ continuing confusion about what their country stood for during Communist rule: “Was it an authentic Polish state or an imposed satellite? Was opposition to it therefore legitimate or illegitimate? The recently highly publicized case of Colonel Kuklinski I think reveals confusion and hesitation on this issue even by the best people,” Brzezinski said.
 
He added, “The failure to recognize that opposition by Solidarity to the Communist and Soviet imposed regime, an opposition financially supported by America, was one form of resistance, and that the deliberate undermining of Soviet war plans and the forestalling of the Soviet military intervention in Poland by collaboration with America was another form of resistance, with both dedicated to the same goal: elimination of Poland’s subordination to the Soviet Union.”
 
Public opinion surveys in Poland suggested that the criticism of Kuklinski was having an effect. In one poll, 46 percent of those surveyed said they believed Kuklinski had “betrayed the interests of the Polish nation,” whereas 16 percent responded that he had “behaved like a Polish patriot.” The poll showed that 59 percent of the respondents felt Jaruzelski’s martial-law crackdown had been a patriotic act; 15 percent saw it as betrayal of Poland’s interests.
 
Some of Kuklinski’s friends remained loyal. Roman Barszcz repeatedly defended Kuklinski. One November 11, on Polish Independence Day, he and a group of supporters visited the Tomb of the Unknown Solider in Warsaw and left a wreath bearing Kuklinski’s name.
 
 
 
 
In 1992, I requested an interview with Kuklinski for an article I was writing for the
Washington Post.
Describing his new home in America, his garden, and his sailing on Chesapeake Bay, Kuklinski grew wistful. “I love this country, but I don’t think I deserve to live in this comfort,” he said. He recalled that he often stood on the shore of the Bay and looked east, toward Poland. “I deserve only what the Polish people have,” he said. “If they have only bread, I want to share the bread. If they can also afford butter or sausage, I want to eat butter and sausage.”
 
He added: “I struggled for what they have today, and I want to share their everyday burdens, their struggle for survival. Maybe, someday, my name will find its place.”
 
I traveled to Warsaw to interview the generals Kuklinski had worked for. Florian Siwicki, the former chief of staff who became Poland’s defense minister in the last days of Communist rule, told me bitterly: “We had full trust in Kuk linsk i. . . . He was also a man for whom loyalty, being loyal to his friends, to his duty, to his superiors above all, was a routine and daily issue. That is why his betrayal came as such a surprise to us.”
 
General Czeslaw Kiszczak, the minister of interior during martial law, said he was still shocked at Kuklinski’s betrayal and was convinced Kuklinski did not cooperate with the United States because of ideology. “He was a product of the Communist system, and everything valuable and positive that he possessed was derived from it,” Kiszczak said. “This system had given him all of life’s opportunities, education, and opened a career for him. Only this system could promote him and push him up in the sense of social promotion and status. He had no ideological motivation to oppose the system because he directly benefited from it.”
 
Kiszczak remained unforgiving. “Kuklinski has betrayed the Polish state,” he said. “It is not significant which adjective we attribute to Poland. If Poland is socialist, capitalist, social-democratic―it is always our Polish state, our country. We had no other land. We haven’t and won’t have in the future.”
 
General Jaruzelski, who had retired, called Kuklinski’s actions “a painful, personal disappointment.” He suggested that Kuklinski was blackmailed into cooperating with the Americans, perhaps during his service in Vietnam. “We concluded that he must have found himself in some specific situation which made blackmail possible,” Jaruzelski said.
 
He cited the case of a Polish sergeant who had been blackmailed into spying for a foreign government. “Some women were involved. History knows of many such cases.”
 
Jaruzelski cited what he called the “moral issue.” “If we shall say today that what Kuklinski did was right, we can simply then dissolve the Polish Army. All these officers were loyal and were carrying out orders and doing their military duty. And today, the same people are serving loyally in the army of the new, democratic Poland. And they are also Polish patriots.”
 
He said he took personal affront at Kuklinski’s actions: “He knew the secrets of the k itchen. . . . I had full confidence in him. . . . His lifestyle, behavior and manners gave no hint that he could be a spy. I even liked him. So what occurred was a double disappointment for me, first of all because of the military and political consequences, and secondly, because of my personal disappointment: Someone you trust is betraying you.”
 
He concluded: “Agents and spies were, are, and always shall be―let’s accept the fact―but don’t make it more beautiful than it is. Don’t spray it with perfume.”
 
On Rajcow Street, where Kuklinski had once lived in the housing cooperative, there was a diversity of opinion. His former neighbor, General Hermaszewski, was critical: “If he would have been an American placed in this country as a resident of intelligence working for his country and organization, I would have respect for such a man, respect and credit for his courage and for his professionalism. I would accept such a game. But if someone says and affirms that he is a Pole serving in the Polish Army and wears a Polish uniform, and in the same time he serves some foreign master secretly, I see it negatively. This is unacceptable.”
 
Another former neighbor, Colonel Kazimierz Oklesinski, was supportive. “I would welcome him as my friend,” he said, recalling the paranoia of everyday life under Communist rule. “At home we were normal Poles. In the office, we were afraid of the shadows. . . . In this difficult and complex situation, he made the right choice―and a brave choice too.”
 
Colonel Czeslaw Poltorak, who ran the Army Medical Corps, said, “From the point of view of the law, and principles of army morale and ethics, . . . it was betrayal.” But should Kuklinsk i be condemned? he asked. “Should he have acted
against
his conscience, obeying communist rules and principles? I was a member of the Communist Party too, but after bitter experience I sometimes regret that I so naively believed in communist ideology, and that I was active in its ranks. . . . At some historical moments, betrayal is heroism, a heroic act. In the case of Kuklinski, this is my personal view.”
 
In September 1992, I first wrote about Kuklinski’s activities in an article published in the
Washington Post,
which was followed by more debate in the Polish press, on radio call-in shows, and on street corners.
Trybuna,
the successor to Poland’s Communist Party newspaper, declared, “In our opinion, a spy stays a spy. A traitor stays a traitor.”
 
Another writer declared that Kuklinski had forced the Poles to confront a basic question: “In the face of total evil―that is Communism―could just about any activity directed against it be justified?”
 
 
In other words, having passed the secrets of the Polish communist state to American intelligence, did he in fact pass them to “us” or did he pass them to a foreign power, the power which we may like but which nevertheless remains foreign? Are “we” a community of nations and states that have fought against the evil of Communism for years, or are “we” a community of this society which has lived in our country and shared its history in the last fifty years? In other words, it is a question of identity: Who are we? Where are we?
 
Kuklinski is a deeply tragic figure, split internally in a way. He has been burdened with charges which are very difficult to repel. It may never be possible. Neither is it possible to give a short answer to a question―what was Poland during those 50 years?
 
 
 
Kuklinski refused to seek clemency or a pardon. He thought the Polish government should simply void his conviction and his sentence, along with all other political convictions from the Communist era.
 
The
Post
articles generated new political support for Kuklinski’s case. In January 1993, a retired American diplomat, Richard Davies, who had served as ambassador to Poland from 1973 to 1978, began an energetic letter-writing campaign to persuade American officials to press for the clearing of Kuklinski’s name. Davies found it incongruous that Poland, which wanted to join NATO, still considered Kuklinski a traitor. He wrote to members of Congress and other officials and received some sympathetic responses, but Kuklinski asked him to stop.
 
Writing to Davies on March 8, 1993, Kuklinski said his goal had been achieved: Poland was free. Although he saw no justification for the failure of Polish leaders to invalidate his sentence, he believed his rehabilitation had to result from initiatives of people and institutions in Poland. “It would be a great tragedy for me and a personal defeat,” he wrote, “were the eventual postponement of my rehabilitation, even in the smallest degree, to complicate the efforts of Poland in its admission to NATO.”

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