Ryszard Kukliński
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Ryszard Jerzy Kukliński (June 13, 1930February 11, 2004) was a Polish Army colonel and
Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
spy for
NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...
. He was posthumously promoted to brigadier general by Polish President
Andrzej Duda Andrzej Sebastian Duda (born 16 May 1972) is a Polish lawyer and politician who has served as the sixth president of Poland since 2015. Before becoming president, he served as a Member of the Sejm from 2011 to 2014 and before becoming Member of ...
. Between 1972 and 1981 Kukliński passed top-secret
Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
documents to the
CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...
, including Soviet plans for the
invasion An invasion is a Offensive (military), military offensive of combatants of one geopolitics, geopolitical Legal entity, entity, usually in large numbers, entering territory (country subdivision), territory controlled by another similar entity, ...
of
Western Europe Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's extent varies depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the Western half of the ancient Mediterranean ...
. Former United States National Security Advisor
Zbigniew Brzeziński Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński (, ; March 28, 1928 – May 26, 2017), known as Zbig, was a Polish-American diplomat and political scientist. He served as a counselor to Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1968 and was Jimmy Carter's National Securi ...
described him as "the first Polish officer in NATO."


Biography

Kukliński was born in Warsaw to a working-class family with strong Catholic and socialist traditions. During
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, his father became a member of the Polish resistance movement; he was captured by the
Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...
, and subsequently died in the
Sachsenhausen concentration camp Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners t ...
. After the war, Kukliński began a successful career in the Polish People's Army. In 1964, he began work in Polish
espionage Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering, as a subfield of the intelligence field, is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information ( intelligence). A person who commits espionage on a mission-specific contract is called an ...
and
counterintelligence Counterintelligence (counter-intelligence) or counterespionage (counter-espionage) is any activity aimed at protecting an agency's Intelligence agency, intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering informati ...
operations. In 1968, he took part in preparations for the
Warsaw Pact The Warsaw Pact (WP), formally the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance (TFCMA), was a Collective security#Collective defense, collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Polish People's Republic, Poland, between the Sovi ...
's invasion of Czechoslovakia. Disturbed by the invasion, and by the brutal crushing of the parallel Polish 1970 protests, in 1972, Kukliński sent a letter to the
US embassy in Bonn US or Us most often refers to: * ''Us'' (pronoun), the objective case of the English first-person plural pronoun ''we'' * US, an abbreviation for the United States US, U.S., Us, us, or u.s. may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Albums * ...
describing himself as an army officer from a Communist country and requesting a secret meeting. In 1994, Kukliński said that his awareness of the "unambiguously offensive" nature of Soviet military plans was an important factor in his decision to communicate the details of those plans to the United States, adding that "Our front could only be a sacrifice of Polish blood at the altar of the Red Empire". Kukliński was also concerned that his homeland would be turned into a nuclear wasteland as the Warsaw Pact's superiority in conventional forces would mean NATO would respond to military action with
tactical nuclear weapons A tactical nuclear weapon (TNW) or non-strategic nuclear weapon (NSNW) is a nuclear weapon that is designed to be used on a battlefield in military situations, mostly with friendly forces in proximity and perhaps even on contested friendly territ ...
. Between 1972 and 1981, he passed 35,000 pages of mostly
Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
secret documents to the CIA. The documents described Moscow's strategic plans regarding the use of
nuclear weapons A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either nuclear fission, fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and nuclear fusion, fusion reactions (thermonuclear weap ...
, technical data about the
T-72 The T-72 is a family of Soviet Union, Soviet main battle tanks that entered production in 1973. The T-72 was a development based on the T-64 using thought and design of the previous Object 167M. About 25,000 T-72 tanks have been built, and refu ...
tank and 9K31 Strela-1 missiles, the whereabouts of Soviet
anti-aircraft Anti-aircraft warfare (AAW) is the counter to aerial warfare and includes "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action".AAP-6 It encompasses surface-based, subsurface ( submarine-launched), and air-ba ...
bases in Poland and East Germany, the methods used by the Soviets to avoid spy satellite detection of their military hardware, plans for the imposition of
martial law in Poland Martial law in Poland () existed between 13 December 1981 and 22 July 1983. The Polish United Workers' Party, government of the Polish People's Republic drastically restricted everyday life by introducing martial law and a military junta in an a ...
, and many other matters. He was the first foreign recipient of the
Distinguished Intelligence Medal The Distinguished Intelligence Medal is awarded by the U.S. CIA, Central Intelligence Agency for performance of outstanding services or for achievement of a distinctly exceptional nature in a duty or responsibility. Recipients This list includes ...
.


Escape to the United States

Facing imminent danger of discovery from a denunciation by a secret Communist collaborator known only by his alias "Prorok","Kim był 'Prorok'?" – Do dziś nie wiadomo. Leszk Szymowski utrzymuje, że był to arcybiskup Janusz Bolonek
(see) (February 2, 2009)

reprint from Rzeczpospolita, September 21, 2011 (Aleksander Szumański), Portal Wolyn.
Kukliński, his wife and two sons were spirited out of Poland by the CIA shortly before the imposition of martial law in December 1981. Though Kukliński and his family successfully defected, his past may have followed him to the United States as both of his sons later died in separate incidents. The older, Waldemar, was run over by a truck without a licence plate in August 1994 on the grounds of an American university. His younger son, Bogdan Kukliński, drowned on December 31, 1993, when his yacht capsized on a quiet sea. Ryszard Kukliński did not claim that they were assassinated, but never rejected such a possibility either. On May 23, 1984, Kukliński was sentenced to death,
in absentia ''In Absentia'' is the seventh studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, first released on 24 September 2002. The album marked several changes for the band, with it being the first with new drummer Gavin Harrison and the f ...
, by a
military court A court-martial (plural ''courts-martial'' or ''courts martial'', as "martial" is a postpositive adjective) is a military court or a trial conducted in such a court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of members of the arme ...
in Warsaw. After the
fall of communism The revolutions of 1989, also known as the Fall of Communism, were a revolutionary wave of liberal democracy movements that resulted in the collapse of most Marxist–Leninist governments in the Eastern Bloc and other parts of the world. Th ...
, the sentence was changed to 25 years. In 1995, the court revoked the sentence and said that Kukliński was acting under special circumstances and Kukliński visited Poland again in April 1998.


Death

He died from a stroke at the age of 73 in
Tampa, Florida Tampa ( ) is a city on the Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. Tampa's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and t ...
, February 11, 2004. The funeral mass for Kukliński was held at
Fort Myer Fort Myer is the previous name used for a U.S. Army Military base, post next to Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia, and across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. Founded during the American Civil War as Fort Cass and ...
with CIA honors on March 30, 2004. His remains were transported to Poland and on June 19, 2004, Kukliński was buried in the row of honour in the Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw, Poland, along with the remains of his son Waldemar.


Legacy

In June 1986, a spokesman for the Soviet-backed Jaruzelski regime, Jerzy Urban, revealed Kukliński's existence to the world in order to make the argument that the Reagan administration had been informed by Kukliński of the plans to install martial law but had betrayed the Solidarity movement by not passing that information on to its "friends" in
Solidarity Solidarity or solidarism is an awareness of shared interests, objectives, standards, and sympathies creating a psychological sense of unity of groups or classes. True solidarity means moving beyond individual identities and single issue politics ...
. When the journal Kultura interviewed Kukliński, he said that planning for martial law had begun in late 1980 and that the Jaruzelski group planned to crush Solidarity regardless of the outcome of negotiations with the trade union and the Polish church. He also rejected the regime's claim that declaring martial law was an internal decision by describing how the Soviets had applied pressure on Polish authorities to impose martial law. When asked whether Jaruzelski was a hero or a traitor, Kukliński replied:
My view has been consistently that in Poland there existed a real chance to avoid both Soviet intervention and martial law. Had he, together with Stanislaw Kania, proved capable of greater dignity and strength, had they honestly adhered to the existing social agreements, instead of knuckling under to Moscow, present-day Poland would undoubtedly look completely different.
Kukliński was the chief of a military strategic command planning division of the Polish army. He was very familiar with the layout of the Polish forces within the Warsaw Pact. While details of the general plans for the Warsaw Pact forces were known only in
Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...
, Kukliński could infer much from his contacts at the Moscow high command headquarters. According to President Carter's NSA,
Zbigniew Brzeziński Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński (, ; March 28, 1928 – May 26, 2017), known as Zbig, was a Polish-American diplomat and political scientist. He served as a counselor to Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1968 and was Jimmy Carter's National Securi ...
, "Kukliński's information permitted us to make counterplans to disrupt command-and-control facilities rather than only relying on a massive counterattack on forward positions, which would have hit Poland." In January 2013,
Władysław Pasikowski Władysław Pasikowski (; born 14 June 1959 in Łódź, Poland) is a Polish film director and screenwriter. He made his debut film, Kroll, in 1991, which was honored with the Polish Film Festival prize for his debut and the Special Jury Prize. P ...
began shooting a movie about Ryszard Kukliński. With Marcin Dorociński in the lead role, the script for '' Jack Strong'' (title taken from Kukliński's CIA secret-agent pseudonym), written by director Pasikowski, is based on new material from the Polish Institute of National Remembrance archives, CIA operating documents and statements by eyewitnesses including David Forden, the former CIA operations officer who was the liaison with Colonel Kukliński.


Opinions in Poland

During his term as Poland's first freely elected president, a Solidarity leader,
Lech Wałęsa Lech Wałęsa (; ; born 29 September 1943) is a Polish statesman, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who served as the president of Poland between 1990 and 1995. After winning the 1990 Polish presidential election, 1990 election, Wałę ...
, refused to pardon Kukliński and a poll taken in 1998 found that more Poles (34%) considered Kukliński a traitor than a hero (29%), with many undecided. The administration of US President Clinton nonetheless took the stance that it would oppose Polish membership in NATO unless Kukliński were exonerated. When all charges were dropped against Kukliński in 1997, the left-leaning Trybuna lamented that "Colonel Ryszard Kukliński—a spy, deserter, and traitor—has been turned into a model of virtue and a national hero of the rightists." In a 1997 survey conducted by the CBOS, 27 percent of Poles considered Kukliński a hero and 24 percent a traitor (compared to 12 and 24 percent, respectively, in 1992). According to some historians, it was possible that Kukliński was a
double agent In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organi ...
, of the Soviet
GRU Gru is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the ''Despicable Me'' film series. Gru or GRU may also refer to: Arts and entertainment * Gru (rapper), Serbian rapper * Gru, an antagonist in '' The Kine Saga'' Organizations Georgia (c ...
, used in an operational game with the CIA. A Polish Minister of Internal Affairs during communist times,
Czesław Kiszczak Czesław Jan Kiszczak (; 19 October 1925 – 5 November 2015) was a Polish general, communist-era interior minister (1981–1990) and prime minister (1989). In 1981 he played a key role in imposing martial law and suppression of the ''Solidari ...
, revealed such a theory in a later interview, while a former Soviet military attaché, Yuriy Rylyov, claimed so directly in an interview. Historians like and (a general in the Polish Army during communist times) suggest that the knowledge Kukliński had was exaggerated, and while he had a lot of information about the Polish Army and the organization of the Warsaw Pact in general, he could not have had detailed information on Soviet plans, since no one in Poland had it. Puchała supported his opinion in official hearings of Kukliński by Polish prosecutors during his revised trial. Revealing plans about the enforcement of martial law in Poland, which would make a Soviet invasion unnecessary, could have been profitable for the Soviet side, ensuring that the US would not be surprised by martial law and would not undertake unpredictable actions against the Soviets. It is noteworthy, that despite Kukliński's revelations, the US did not warn Solidarity about martial law. The Soviets took the escape of such an important spy nonchalantly and did not demand any consequences from the Polish politician responsible for intelligence, namely Czesław Kiszczak. Also, the matter of Kukliński's sons' deaths is unclear and they may have been part of a protection program; besides, according to Wieczorkiewicz, such revenge on a defector's family would be quite unusual for Soviet intelligence. Kukliński is buried in the row of honour in the Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw, and he has been given honorary citizenship of several Polish cities, including
Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...
and
Gdańsk Gdańsk is a city on the Baltic Sea, Baltic coast of northern Poland, and the capital of the Pomeranian Voivodeship. With a population of 486,492, Data for territorial unit 2261000. it is Poland's sixth-largest city and principal seaport. Gdań ...
. The Polish political group '' Centrum'' (at the time headed by Zbigniew Religa) requested in 2004 that the
President of Poland The president of Poland ( ), officially the president of the Republic of Poland (), is the head of state of Poland. His or her prerogatives and duties are determined in the Constitution of Poland. The president jointly exercises the executive ...
posthumously promote Kukliński to the rank of general. Since its unveiling in 2006, his monument in Kraków had been vandalized three times. The first instance was on December 13, 2011 (the anniversary of
martial law in Poland Martial law in Poland () existed between 13 December 1981 and 22 July 1983. The Polish United Workers' Party, government of the Polish People's Republic drastically restricted everyday life by introducing martial law and a military junta in an a ...
), and the second on February 11, 2012 (the anniversary of Kukliński's death); in both cases, terms such as "
traitor Treason is the crime of attacking a state (polity), state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to Coup d'état, overthrow its government, spy ...
", the CIA's name (crossed out) and " Death to the USA" were sprayed. On February 11, 2014, his statue was found splashed with brown paint or oil.


See also

* List of Eastern Bloc defectors *
List of Poles This is a partial list of notable Polish people, Polish or Polish language, Polish-speaking or -writing people. People of partial Polish heritage have their respective ancestries credited. Physics *Miedziak Antal * Czesław Białobrzesk ...
* Marian Zacharski


References


External links


The Political and Moral Dilemma
by Jolanta JABŁOŃSKA-GRUCA -, Oslo, Norway, in (polish) Dylemat polityczny i moralny.

* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110904025158/http://www.annarborpolonia.org/newsletters/Newsletter77.doc Wojciech Jaruzelski and consisting of 20 other high-ranking military officers – WRON declared Martial Law]
Cause of death of Colonel Kukliński
(polish)
CIA Release of 83 Documents on Kuklinski and Martial Law in Poland 1981–82
from the Cold War International History Project
A Secret Life By Benjamin Weiser (Reviewed by Thomas M. Troy, Jr.)
from the Central Intelligence Agency

from the Central Intelligence Agency * ttps://web.archive.org/web/20061214234056/http://info-poland.buffalo.edu/classroom/RK/bookrev.html A SECRET LIFE: The Polish Officer, His Covert Mission, and the Price He Paid to Save His Country
The Spy Who Really Came in From the Cold
by David R. Stokes
SPY
podcast from Culture.pl's ''Stories From The Eastern West'' about Kukliński. * Jack Strong (film), Polish political thriller. Also available in Frenc

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuklinski, Ryszard 1930 births 2004 deaths Military personnel from Warsaw People from Warsaw Voivodeship (1919–1939) Polish Army officers Polish People's Army personnel Recipients of the Medal of the 10th Anniversary of the People's Republic of Poland Polish spies Cold War spies Eastern Bloc spies for the West Spies for the United States Polish defectors to the United States People sentenced to death in absentia Burials at Powązki Military Cemetery