On the territory village of Stare Kiejkuty,

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

, is a restricted military area that is the seat of (postal service name, simply) ''Jednostka Wojskowa 2669'' (military unit 2669), ''Ośrodek Szkolenia Agencji Wywiadu'' (Intelligence Agency Training Center). Since 2005 it has attracted scrutiny as being a

black site In military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black operation or black project is conducted. According to the Associated Press, "Black sites are clandestine jails where prisoners generally are not charged with a ...

involved in the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

's program of

extraordinary rendition Extraordinary rendition is a euphemism for state-sponsored Kidnapping, forcible abduction in another jurisdiction and transfer to a third state. The phrase usually refers to a United States-led program used during the War on Terror, which had t ...

History

The facility's military uses go back at least as far as

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, when it served as an outpost of the

Nazi German Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

SD (the intelligence service of the SS) and

Abwehr The ''Abwehr'' (German for ''resistance'' or ''defence'', but the word usually means ''counterintelligence'' in a military context; ) was the German military-intelligence service for the ''Reichswehr'' and the ''Wehrmacht'' from 1920 to 1944. A ...

. It was a part of Germany then,

Ostpreussen East Prussia ; german: Ostpreißen, label=Low Prussian dialect, Low Prussian; pl, Prusy Wschodnie; lt, Rytų Prūsija was a Provinces of Prussia, province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itse ...

. The airstrip served

Luftwaffe The ''Luftwaffe'' () was the aerial-warfare branch of the German ''Wehrmacht'' before and during World War II. Germany's military air arms during World War I, the ''Luftstreitkräfte'' of the Imperial Army and the '' Marine-Fliegerabtei ...

planes in bombing raids on

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

. In 1968, it was used by the

Soviet Army uk, Радянська армія , image = File:Communist star with golden border and red rims.svg , alt = , caption = Emblem of the Soviet Army , start_date ...

to plan operations to crush the

Prague Spring The Prague Spring ( cs, Pražské jaro, sk, Pražská jar) was a period of political liberalization and mass protest in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Alexander Dubček was elected First Sec ...

, and it was later expanded into the modern

Szczytno-Szymany International Airport Olsztyn-Mazury Airport ( pl, Port lotniczy Olsztyn-Mazury) is an international passenger airport in the North-East of Poland, branded as the gateway to the Masurian Lake District. It is located near Szymany, some 10 km from the centre of ...

, 20 km away. Its use by

Polish intelligence This article covers the history of Polish Intelligence services dating back to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Commonwealth Though the first official Polish government service entrusted with espionage, intelligence and counter-intelligence w ...

dates to the third quarter of 1971; in the

Communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

era, it appeared on maps as a nondescript holiday resort. It had a very special status, however, having been the only intelligence training facility in the

Eastern Bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...

located outside the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

. On December 15, 2005,

Zbigniew Siemiątkowski Zbigniew Siemiątkowski (born 8 October 1957 in Ciechanów, Poland) is a Polish politician and political scientist. He was Minister of Internal Affairs, 1996–97, and head of the Intelligence Agency (''Agencja Wywiadu'', or ''AW''), 2002 – Ap ...

, the former head of the current Polish national intelligence agency,

Agencja Wywiadu The Foreign Intelligence Agency ( pl, Agencja Wywiadu (; or ) is a Polish intelligence agency tasked with the gathering of public and secret information abroad for the Republic of Poland. It was created in 2002 from the reform and split of , whi ...

, confirmed that in the Stare Kiejkuty facility there are two "internal zones" to which CIA officers have access; one of these (referred to as ''Strefa B'') is officially the home of OSAW. Other Polish intelligence officials have confirmed that American personnel associated with the facility have been known to reside in the area for several months at a time, going back five or six years. In February 2010 Polish officials admitted that at least six CIA flights passed through Szymany airport in 2003, recanting previous denials. After the release of the

Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture The Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program is a report compiled by the bipartisan United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)'s Detent ...

in December 2014, the

President of Poland The president of Poland ( pl, Prezydent RP), officially the president of the Republic of Poland ( pl, Prezydent Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej), is the head of state of Poland. Their rights and obligations are determined in the Constitution of Polan ...

between 1995 and 2005,

Aleksander Kwasniewski Alexander is a male given name. The most prominent bearer of the name is Alexander the Great, the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia who created one of the largest empires in ancient history. Variants listed here are Aleksandar, Al ...

, admitted that he had agreed to host a secret CIA black site in Poland, but that activities were to be carried out in accordance to Polish law. He said that a U.S. draft memorandum had stated that "people held in Poland are to be treated as prisoners of war and will be afforded all the rights they are entitled to", but due to time constraints the U.S. had not signed the memorandum.

References

{{coord, 53, 38, 05, N, 21, 04, 02, E, type:landmark_region:PL_scale:1000, display=title Stare Kiejkuty Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship 53.635083519995895, 21.06728276717611

History

See also

References