Ryszard Kukliński | |
|---|---|
 Colonel Ryszard Kukliński | |
| Birth name | Ryszard Jerzy Kukliński |
| Born | (1930-06-13)June 13, 1930 |
| Died | February 11, 2004(2004-02-11) (aged 73) Tampa, Florida, U.S. |
| Allegiance |  Poland |
| Branch | Polish People's Army |
| Rank |  Colonel |
Ryszard Jerzy Kukliński (June 13, 1930 – February 11, 2004) was a Polish Army colonel andCold War spy forNATO. He was posthumously promoted tobrigadier general by Polish PresidentAndrzej Duda.[1]
Between 1972 and 1981 Kukliński passed top-secretSoviet documents to theCIA, including Soviet plans for theinvasion ofWestern Europe.[2]
Former United StatesNational Security AdvisorZbigniew Brzeziński described him as "the first Polish officer in NATO."[3]
Kukliński was born in Warsaw to a working-class family with strong Catholic and socialist traditions. DuringWorld War II, his father became a member of thePolish resistance movement; he was captured by theGestapo, and subsequently died in theSachsenhausen concentration camp. After the war, Kukliński began a successful career in thePolish People's Army. In 1964, he began work in Polishespionage andcounterintelligence operations.[4] In 1968, he took part in preparations for theWarsaw Pact'sinvasion of Czechoslovakia. Disturbed by the invasion, and by the brutal crushing of the parallelPolish 1970 protests, in 1972, Kukliński sent a letter to theUS embassy in Bonn describing himself as an army officer from a Communist country and requesting a secret meeting.[5]
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".[6] 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 withtactical nuclear weapons.
Between 1972 and 1981, he passed 35,000 pages of mostlySoviet secret documents to the CIA. The documents described Moscow's strategic plans regarding the use ofnuclear weapons, technical data about theT-72 tank and9K31 Strela-1 missiles, the whereabouts of Sovietanti-aircraft bases in Poland and East Germany, the methods used by the Soviets to avoidspy satellite detection of their military hardware, plans for the imposition ofmartial law in Poland, and many other matters.
He was the first foreign recipient of theDistinguished Intelligence Medal.[7]
Facing imminent danger of discovery from a denunciation by a secret Communist collaborator known only by his alias "Prorok",[8] 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. It has been suggested that his younger son, Bogdan Kukliński, drowned on December 31, 1993, when his yacht capsized on a quiet sea. The weekly "Wprost" however suggests in a 2009 issue, citing three independent and undisclosed sources, that the younger son, Bogdan, is probably still alive under the witness protection program. According to the author of the article, Leszek Szymowski, he was not murdered by the KGB. Ryszard Kukliński did not claim that they were assassinated, but never rejected such a possibility either.[9]
On May 23, 1984, Kukliński wassentenced to death,in absentia, by amilitary court in Warsaw. After thefall of communism, 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.
He died from a stroke at the age of 73 inTampa, Florida, February 11, 2004. The funeral mass for Kukliński was held atFort Myer 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 thePowązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw, Poland, along with the remains of his son Waldemar.[10]
In June 1986, a spokesman for the Soviet-backedJaruzelski 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" inSolidarity. When the journalKultura 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 withStanislaw 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.[11]
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 inMoscow, Kukliński could infer much from his contacts at the Moscow high command headquarters.
According to President Carter'snational security advisor,Zbigniew Brzeziński, "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."[12]
In January 2013,Władysław Pasikowski began shooting a movie about Ryszard Kukliński. WithMarcin Dorociński in the lead role, the script forJack 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 includingDavid Forden, the former CIA operations officer who was the liaison with Colonel Kukliński.[13]
During his term as Poland's first freely elected president, a Solidarity leader,Lech Wałęsa, 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.[14][verification needed] The administration of US President Clinton nonetheless took the stance that it would oppose Polish membership in NATO unless Kukliński were exonerated.[15]
When all charges were dropped against Kukliński in 1997, the left-leaningTrybuna 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."[16] In a 1997 survey conducted by theCBOS, 27 percent of Poles considered Kukliński a hero and 24 percent a traitor (compared to 12 and 24 percent, respectively, in 1992).[17]
According to some historians, it was possible that Kukliński was adouble agent, of the SovietGRU, used in an operational game with the CIA.[18][19] A Polish Minister of Internal Affairs during communist times,Czesław Kiszczak, revealed such a theory in a later interview,[18] while a former Soviet military attaché, Yuriy Rylyov, claimed so directly in an interview.[19] Historians likePaweł Wieczorkiewicz [pl] andFranciszek Puchała [pl] (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.[18] 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.[18] 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.[18]
Kukliński is buried in the row of honour in thePowązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw, and he has been given honorary citizenship of several Polish cities, includingKraków andGdańsk. The Polish political groupCentrum (at the time headed byZbigniew Religa) requested in 2004 that thePresident of Poland 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 ofmartial law in Poland), and the second on February 11, 2012 (the anniversary of Kukliński's death);[20][21] in both cases, terms such as "traitor", 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.[22]
Notes: Warsaw PAP in English, 2148 GMT, 27 September 1992
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