According to many in the US intelligence community, Polish Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski (1930 – 2004) was one of the best-placed spies in the Eastern Bloc. Between 1972 and 1981, he handed over tens of thousands of pages of secret documents to the CIA. Among the documents were the Warsaw Pact’s detailed war plans for attacks on NATO and Western Europe.
It seemed to be a routine meeting for Colonel Kuklinski. Given that he was a high-ranking officer in the Polish army, for him it was a meeting like many others. But when Kuklinski entered the conference room, he noticed something unusual. His superiors and colleagues were sitting quietly, waiting for him to sit down. The tension in the room was almost palpable. He sat down and after a few moments his boss, General Jerzy Skalski, told him that there had been a leak and that there must be a traitor on his staff. Very few officers had access to the information that had come out.
After years of providing information to the US on Polish and Russian military plans, he was now about to be exposed. At the meeting, he was not named as a suspect, but he was one of the few officers who had access to the leaked information. He knew he was now under scrutiny.
Kuklinski knew this day would come even though he had hoped it would not. Over the years, he had come very close to being exposed several times. Some of his unusual activities had aroused suspicion among several senior officers. If the suspicion could be confirmed, it would undoubtedly carry the death penalty. A large number of other spies in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe had been executed over the years for providing secret information to the United States and the Western powers. Kuklinski knew he would share this fate if he was caught. He wanted to try to survive and, above all, save his family. Time was running out.
Kuklinski, like all officers, had heard that traitors were executed by being taken alive to the crematorium. It was at least a rumour that the KGB and the national security services did not even try to deny. There were reports that students at KGB training schools were told about this method of execution and that a film of such an execution (which was said to be from a real execution) was shown.
Kuklinski was born in 1930 in Warsaw. His childhood was characterised by tragedy. On the day Germany invaded Poland, the then 9-year-old Kuklinski had gone to school as usual and had been shocked by the air raid sirens that sounded throughout the city. During the occupation, Kuklinski witnessed first-hand the many atrocities committed by the Germans on the streets of Warsaw. He was horrified by the building of walls around the Warsaw ghetto and the subsequent destruction of the ghetto and its Jews.
Upset by what he saw, Kuklinski tried to join the Polish Underground Army (‘Home Army’, Polish Armia Krajowa, also known as AK ), but as he was only 13, he was not allowed to join. Despite his young age, he was instead allowed to enrol in the ‘Sword and Plough’ resistance movement. He helped put up recruitment posters in town.
Kuklinski’s life then took a tragic turn. His father had been active in the resistance movement and he was arrested, severely beaten and taken to a concentration camp. It was only after the war that Kuklinski learnt that his father had died in the Sachenhausen concentration camp.
Kuklinski has stated that he himself had been in a labour camp during part of the war. But it is unclear whether this is true. It is possible that he was deported together with his mother as labour prisoners to Germany. He has at some point claimed to have participated in the Warsaw Uprising, but this too has been questioned. After the war, Kuklinski returned to his homeland and worked for a time as a night watchman in a factory. He then joined the Polish army in 1947 at the age of 17. After three years of cadet training, he was discharged from training and forced to serve as a private without being credited for his previous training. The reason for his discharge was that he was suspected of being active in the Armia Krajowa and also in the resistance movement. Only a few weeks after being separated, he was allowed to return to training after intervention from the top defence leadership. Many questions have been asked about his activities during the war and the years immediately after the war. In interviews, he has provided various details.
Over the next 20 years he rose through the ranks and by 1967 he had already become an established and well-known officer holding important positions in the central staffs.
As Kuklinski rose through the ranks, he also became involved as a Polish officer in the Sovietisation of the Polish army. He was the one who often wrote the conditions for various exercises, war games and staff drills. As Kuklinski rose through the ranks, he became increasingly aware of the intense Sovietisation of the Polish Armed Forces. Kuklinski was frustrated by this and constantly questioned whether he was really training himself and his staff for the defence of Poland itself or of the Soviet Union. Despite working for Poland’s own interests, Kuklinski felt he was only a small cog in the grand Soviet military strategy. During his army career, he was a member of the Communist Party.
In 1967, Kuklinski was sent to Vietnam for six months as part of the Polish delegation to a control commission. There he made superficial contact with some American officers and found interest in talking to them. However, he did not have any closer contact because he did not speak English.
When Kuklinski arrived from Vietnam, he was assigned to work on the planning of an operation called Danube. Once he had penetrated the dossier, he realised that it was actually the concrete plan of attack for the Warsaw Pact countries to enter Prague and Czechoslovakia in order to remove the current government. The Soviet Union wanted all or as many as possible of the Warsaw Pact countries to participate in the invasion. The Soviet Union did not want to bear the political responsibility alone, as it had done in the 1956 invasion of Hungary. Kuklinski was thus one of the planners of the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia.
At 23:00 on 20 August 1968, the Warsaw Pact states invaded Czechoslovakia. They were the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Poland and Hungary. The whole of Czechoslovakia was occupied with around 250 000 troops and over 2 000 tanks. However, Romania and Albania refused to send troops. The GDR was to have made a token contribution of a few troops, but these plans were cancelled just hours before the invasion. On the Polish side, 28 000 Second Army troops from the Military District of the Silesian Voivodeship participated.
Later, the military strength in Czechoslovakia was increased to over 500,000 men. In the Czech resistance, 137 people were killed and almost 500 seriously wounded.
Two years after the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Poland was plunged into a serious economic crisis. In response, the Polish communist government decided to drastically raise food prices and cut wages. This came as a huge shock to Poles. The large price increases left many people unable to buy the necessities of life. The price hike therefore led to unrest across the country, especially in the north.
Given that this was only two years after the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Polish government feared unrest. The government realised that if it did not immediately put down any uprisings, this would have a clear destabilising effect on the whole society. The government was absolutely convinced that it was in the country’s interest to put down rebellions. It did so in some parts of the country. The crackdown resulted in 40 deaths and around 1 000 people having to be hospitalised. There was a general feeling among Polish officers that the measures were necessary and justified, but Kuklinski did not think so.
It seems that for a long time Kuklinski was very dissatisfied with the Polish Army’s war planning and coordination with the Soviet Army. In particular, he objected to the ‘Sovietisation’ of the Polish army. Kuklinski was of the opinion that the Polish army in its planning (doctrine) was in fact working against the interests of the Polish people. He concluded that what threatened world peace was the aggressive Russian planning for war and how the war would play out.
Kuklinski was interested in sailing all his life. In August 1972, he and other Polish officers sailed a leisure boat to West Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, and in another summer season to southern Sweden. The boat’s crew was tasked with measuring the depth and mapping the navigability of certain harbours and waters.
While abroad in 1972, he wrote an anonymous letter, in very broken English, to the American Embassy in Amsterdam (although the Embassy was in The Hague). His message stated that on one of three specified days in August 1972 he wanted to meet with US Army officers of the rank of Lieutenant Colonel or Colonel. He also indicated two days when he could alternatively meet them in Ostend. The American intelligence service provided two men to meet Kuklinski in Amsterdam. They pretended to be army officers, but they were CIA officials. When they met him, they realised his motives and his keen interest in cooperating with the US. When they asked what information he could provide, he told them that he worked in the Polish Defence Staff and had access to classified material that could be of great help to the CIA and thus to NATO. He informed them that he had access to the Soviet war plans for attacks on Western Europe. He also had access to documents of the latest military exercises (with the evaluations) and also information on new material projects. He stated that he had information on the new Soviet T-72 tank as well as on some anti-aircraft missiles (including Strzała-2). Mr Kuklinski declared that he was prepared to hand over all the secret information he could possibly obtain. He made no demands for financial compensation.
Kuklinski returned to Poland after meeting the American agents, who were not army officers as Kuklinski thought. Kuklinski, of course, did not inform his wife or anyone in the family about his first contact with the Americans.
At the first meeting with the Americans in Poland, Kuklinski was able to hand over 18 rolls of film with photographs of secret documents. These rolls of film contained photos of highly classified Soviet documents. The US later provided him with a so-called Tubka camera built into a cigarette lighter. Kuklinski was a heavy smoker.
It was also at this first meeting that the actual handover of documents was discussed. It would be done through so-called dead-drops (hidden letterboxes in the terrain). Great care was taken to ensure that all of this was done clearly, so as not to jeopardise the operation.
The Polish military security services had suspected early on that there was a leak high up in the central staffs, but these suspicions were not previously directed at Kuklinski. Mr Kuklinski was considered trustworthy and had had a highly successful career.
It was during 1980 that the political movement Solidarity grew dramatically to over a million members. The government seemingly accepted the opposition movement, while preparations were made to crack down on the opposition with harsh methods if necessary. Kuklinski himself was tasked with drawing up plans for a state of emergency and the arrest of all leading figures in Solidarity. However, Mr Kuklinski informed the CIA of the plans in an attempt to prevent a crackdown on Solidarity and also the threat of military intervention by the Soviet Union. Soon after Kuklinski provided the information about the plans for martial law, he was summoned to a meeting where he was told that the defence leadership knew for sure that there was a leak of the plans. As a result, Mr Kuklinski quickly contacted his American handlers to request that both he and his family (wife and two sons) be helped out of the country as soon as possible. The escape plan had been prepared by the CIA for a long time.
Mr Kuklinski and his three family members went to a designated secret address in Warsaw, where they were picked up by a car and driven to the US Embassy. From there, they were immediately driven in a larger car (a van) directly to East Germany and then to West Berlin. The four people were hidden in large cardboard boxes in the car. It is likely that the route was chosen because it was common for US Embassy staff to drive cars to and from West Berlin. The distance from Warsaw to Berlin is 574 kilometres.
On leaving Poland, the border police demanded to search the car even though it had diplomatic plates. A heated discussion broke out when the staff from the American embassy vigorously argued that the car could not be searched as it was a diplomatic car. After half an hour, however, it was all cleared up. The American car was simply new and the licence plate had not been registered with the Polish border police. Once it was confirmed that it was indeed an embassy car, it was let through without being searched. This apparently saved Mr Kuklinski’s life. He and his family were immediately flown over to Virginia, USA. The day after his arrival in the US, Kuklinski was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal by the CIA. This is the highest honour that the CIA can bestow on someone and is proof that the person performed exceptionally valuable services for the United States under extremely difficult circumstances.
His spying for the US over nine years was considered to have been of the highest value. In total, he had photographed over 43,000 classified documents. Kuklinski had simply taken the documents home in his briefcase, photographed them in his home with a handheld camera supported by the back of a chair. After taking the photographs, he brought the documents back to the workplace. He left the rolls of film in dead drops at various secret locations around Warsaw.
The Polish military security service knew that his marriage was deeply flawed and that Kuklinski often met mistresses at a summer house outside Warsaw. This activity apparently made it easier for him to visit the various hidden ‘letterboxes’ where he left his films at odd hours.
Kuklinski did not report to the defence staff and it was not long before the military leadership realised that he had fled the country. A few years after his escape, a Polish court sentenced him to death in absentia for espionage. The actual offence was ‘treason against the fatherland’. Several years after the fall of the communist regime, the sentence was commuted to 25 years in prison. A few years later, however, a Polish court fully acquitted him on the grounds that he had acted under special circumstances in pursuit of a higher goal.
In 1998, 18 years after his escape, he was authorised to visit his home country. He was greeted by cheering crowds, choral singing, parades and vigils. He was hailed by both the people and the authorities as a true hero. At the end of his visit, he gave a speech in Krakow, which was broadcast on the radio.
Mr Kuklinski died in the United States in 2004 of a brain haemorrhage. Shortly after his death, the Polish government promoted him to General in the Polish Army. After his death, Kuklinski was also made an honorary citizen of several Polish cities and is also a statue.
During the time when he was photographing secret documents, the Americans had given him a small radio transmitter (transceiver). It allowed him to transmit and receive coded short messages, which were transmitted in compressed bursts at very low power. The technology relied on the US having a highly sensitive receiver near the location from which the transmissions were made.
Kuklinski also requested that the Americans provide him with a small pistol that he could keep hidden in his uniform pocket. However, they refused to give him a gun because they thought it would be too dangerous for him to go armed like that. He did not arm himself in any other way either.
Mr Kuklinski also asked the Americans to give him a vial of poison, which they did. It was explained to him that death would occur immediately when he crushed the ampoule in his mouth.
Various accounts of Colonel Kuklinski’s espionage reveal that the CIA informed and received information continuously in contacts with the Polish Pope John Paul II. There are serious suspicions that someone within the Vatican deliberately or carelessly provided information that made the Russians and Poles realise that the plans for martial law were known to both the Pope and the Western powers.
Kuklinski got his two sons out to the United States, where the family later lived. Both sons later died under mysterious circumstances. One son was studying at a university and was hit several times by a car on campus. The car and the driver escaped and it was never established who the driver was. The other son disappeared without a trace while he was on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico diving for sport. He was an experienced diver, but no explanation has ever been given for the accident. His body was not recovered.
After Kuklinski’s death, his body was taken to Warsaw where he was buried with honour in the military section of a cemetery. He was buried with the remains of his son, who was killed by a car.
It has been speculated that the car collision was carried out by the KGB as revenge against Kuklinski. It is known that the NKVD and the KGB often organised traffic accidents to murder people. It has also been speculated that the drowning accident was not a drowning accident but a way for the CIA to give the other son a completely new identity, which would protect him against feared attacks by the KGB. It is well known that the KGB tries to eliminate people who have betrayed their obligations to the Soviet Union, even if they have taken refuge abroad. According to the KGB, traitors should never escape death. However, it is not known whether Mr Kuklinski himself was the target of an assassination attempt.
When Kuklinski was given sanctuary in the United States, he did not immediately ”retire”, but was hired by the CIA and the armed forces to help analyse intelligence information and to act as a teacher and lecturer. He served in the US Armed Forces for many years. He was obviously very useful to the US and NATO during that time. He was one of the people who helped write the Warsaw Pact’s attack plans. It was in this way, among other things, that NATO received confirmation that the Soviet planning was that tactical nuclear weapons would be deployed at an earlier stage and that the advance over northern Germany would take place at very high speed. Sweden and Finland also had access to this information.
Thorulf Arwidson 