A Secret Life (17 page)
Authors: Benjamin Weiser
Tags: #History, #Europe, #Germany, #World, #True Crime, #Espionage
Daniel added a P.S.: “Please destroy this letter in the usual manner.”
On September 20, 1973, Kuklinski was promoted to deputy chief of the operational training section of the General Staff. The job was created for him by General Jerzy Skalski, deputy chief of the General Staff, who was increasingly relying on Kuklinski for consultation and assignments. The new post would give Kuklinski more access to the leadership of the Polish and Soviet armed forces.
In an exchange on November 6, Kuklinski passed a letter to the CIA describing his new job, offering “hearty greetings” to Daniel, and thanking the CIA for its efforts to assure his and his family’s security. He said he would also soon send along photographs and biographical data for his wife and sons, which the CIA needed to prepare false passports and other travel documents for the family. As the CIA car drove by for the exchange, Kuklinski handed over three roses along with his package.
But Kuklinski soon had renewed concerns about his security. One day, while visiting northwest Poland for a top-secret military exercise, he misplaced a document that contained the briefing program. His anxiety was compounded when he and others in attendance were told that a French diplomat had been detained nearby as he was taking photographs of the exercise. Over the next few months, the Polish counterintelligence officers conducted an extensive investigation at the General Staff into how the diplomat had learned of the exercise. A list was drawn up of all officers who had had access to the date and location of the event, and each person was questioned. “Somebody is transmitting here, but his days are numbered,” one investigator had declared. Kuklinski had no idea how the French diplomat had learned of the exercise or why he had been in the area, and he wondered whether his missing document had somehow made its way into the diplomat’s hands. Kuklinski barely slept for days.
Meanwhile, General Skalski was again trying to promote him, to be chief specialist for operations. And Jaruzelski had approved his nomination to attend the Voroshilov Academy in Moscow, an elite school where the Soviet Union trained the members of its General Staff. For a Warsaw Pact officer, a stint at the academy was an honor and was seen as a prerequisite for serving in military leadership positions. In early December, Kuklinski was appointed chief author of a major military exercise called “Summer 1974,” which would be managed by Jaruzelski. The exercise, scheduled for early June, was to test the functioning of wartime field communications, and it would include senior officials of the Warsaw Pact Supreme Command in Moscow and air forces of the northern group of the Soviet Army. In writing up the exercise, Kuklinski would work closely with Russian officers in Legnica, where Soviet troops were based in Poland.
On another front, Kuklinski was invited to join a group of officers who were building townhouses on Rajcow Street, a quiet block on a slight hill in the Old Town, overlooking the Vistula River. They had formed a cooperative to complete the project, assisted by loans from the Defense Ministry. All members of the cooperative were to receive financial assistance equal to the value of their current apartments, plus long-term loans at little or no interest from the government. Kuklinski’s current apartment was cramped, and he remained concerned that the Russian who lived above him would hear the sounds of his camera as he photographed documents. He needed more space and privacy. There were some risks, as his neighbors would include a deputy chief of army counterintelligence. In any case, the project would take several years to complete.
On December 31, 1973, Kuklinski invited his longtime friend Roman Barszcz and his wife, Barbara, to spend New Year’s Eve with him, Hanka, and Waldek, their elder son. Their other son, eighteen-year-old Bogdan, who had joined him on the first voyage to Europe in the summer of 1972, was in the country with his girlfriend, Grazyna, whom he had been dating for about a year. Her father was General Wladyslaw Hermaszewski, a military colleague of Kuklinski’s and a member of the cooperative of officers building homes on Rajcow Street. After their guests had left and his family was asleep, Kuklinski wrote a letter to the CIA, for delivery on January 2, 1974.
Dear Friends,Today’s meeting (if it goes smoothly) will start another year of our effective collaboration. This fact is highly satisfactory to me. To all with whose activities I am allowed to include my modest forces against militant communism, its utopian philosophy and aggressive practices, I express great esteem and thanks.On the occasion of the new 1974 year I express my best wishes for all happiness to all those with whom I had the honor to get personally acquainted or met in those short contacts. At the same time I express my hope that the coming year will be good for the American nation and that the ideas which this nation has will have a beneficial influence on the formation of the world’s face, including progressive and freedom-oriented changes in my own fatherland.
Kuklinski recounted his recent concerns, including the story of the lost document, the French diplomat’s arrest, and the counterintelligence investigation in the General Staff. “Work conditions are very tense. I constantly live on my nerves,” he said. He described being assigned to prepare the Summer 1974 exercise and how he would work closely with Soviet officers, “which I shall exploit for the purpose of obtaining information on the strength of their forces in Poland,” he added.
Kuklinski asked for the CIA’s advice on whether to attend the Voroshilov Academy, which would keep him on track for future promotions but would take him out of the General Staff, beginning in the fall.
“Please mark with a white chalk a slanted line on the electric box on Krzywickiego Street,” Kuklinski wrote. “I shall await this sign between the 20th and 30th of January. If there is no such sign, I will start efforts to remove my name from the list of candidates for study.”
Kuklinski said that another yacht trip was planned for the following summer, with possible stops in Denmark and West Germany. “According to initial plans, it is supposed to be a trip with families,” he said, and Hanka would join him. Kuklinski concluded with a clarification about his request for a cyanide pill.
“In one of the initial messages I took up a rather unpleasant but difficult problem to avoid: of how, under conditions which would allow no way out and after careful consideration, to end my life.” If he was arrested for espionage, he would be executed. “I would have no chances whatsoever,” he wrote. But he did not want the Americans to misinterpret his dwelling on the issue as a sign of depression.
“This is not any obsession,” he wrote. “I love life, and without [the most extreme reason] and utmost purpose, I would never part with it. I also believe that I will be saved by the almighty from such a final solution.” He signed the letter with his pseudonym, Jack Strong.
He began a second letter. For some time, Kuklinski had wanted to reply to the letter Daniel had sent after their meetings in Europe, and he wrote that Daniel’s words had brought him great joy. “I regret that it is only now that I can take up some of its threads,” he said. He described the holiday with the Barszczes and Bogdan’s desire to marry Grazyna, which Kuklinski said he supported “from the bottom of my heart.”
Clocks and bells in a nearby church announced midnight and the beginning of the new 1974 year. In this beautiful elation, reciprocal cordiality and endearments, I thought about you, your great country, and the cause which I want to serve with all my strength. My thoughts were running fast. I made a quick summing-up. Yes, it is already a year when in a dark cemetery alley I spotted the expected car. A friendly “good evening” greeting. A year! It certainly is not a long period of time but long enough to take a breath and gain greater self-confidence. While toasting success, I already had a more realistic basis to see it.In spite of dark clouds, which are not lacking, I endeavor to look at the world with my head raised high. I am happy about each success, even though some of them might not be that important. Great joys grow from small ones. Tomorrow I go to a sanatorium for a rest. There will be a possibility to do some interesting reading for which there is never time. I am looking forward to our eventual summer meeting. Perhaps fate will prove more generous, will spare us some sweat and make our thoughts more efficient. Accept a hearty handshake.
Kuklinski changed his signature when writing to Daniel. He signed the letter P.V.
At CIA headquarters, David Blee, who had helped end the agency’s paralysis in the recruitment of Soviet spies as chief of the Soviet Division, was succeeded by John Horton, who had been Station Chief in Mexico City. Daniel also returned to headquarters and was soon placed in charge of clandestine operations inside the Soviet Union and East bloc. In that capacity, Daniel would be directly overseeing the Gull operation.
Daniel and his staff were delighted to hear that Kuklinski had been chosen for the academy in Moscow. It would also allow Kuklinski to slow down, a kind of “operational sabbatical,” Daniel and his staff said in a cable to Warsaw Station. Because Kuklinski would be away from Warsaw for some time, he would need instructions on how to dispose of compromising materials, such as his camera and film, and how to resume contact with the CIA when he returned on holidays. Warsaw Station was told to leave a signal for Kuklinski indicating approval of the Moscow trip by making a chalk mark on the electrical box.
Kuklinski’s recent security concerns had convinced Daniel and his staff that they needed firmer contingency plans for exfiltration. The issue of the suicide pill was finally resolved after continued internal debate. Warsaw Station opposed providing Kuklinski with a pill, but Daniel disagreed, and in a cable to the field, the Soviet Division wrote:
Gull has repeatedly come through as an exceptionally well-disciplined individual of strong military character. We definitely do not view him as considering terminal measures because he doesn’t believe or understand that we can help....We see in his talk of possible self-termination the expression of a military man with a deep sense of honor who wants to guard against the possibility that he might be seized without warning and forced physically or psychologically to act in a way that would destroy his sense of self-respect and honor.
The CIA ultimately gave Kuklinski the pill, placing it inside a one-and-a-half-inch capsule that was hidden in a fountain pen.
In Warsaw, Kuklinski was working with a group of Soviet officers one day on a military exercise when he looked up and was astonished to see a man approaching him with the build, hair, face, and complexion―even the glasses―of Colonel Henry. Kuklinski got up and almost embraced the man before he realized this “twin” was a Soviet officer. Kuklinski walked straight by the officer, stealing a final glance as he realized his mistake.
Eager to learn the CIA’s recommendation on whether he should accept the Moscow assignment, Kuklinski drove by the electrical box on Krzywickiego Street in late January looking for the CIA’s chalk mark. He did not see it and assumed this meant he should not go to Moscow. (The CIA later concluded that the mark had been washed away by rain or cleaned off.)
Soon afterward, Kuklinski was relieved to learn that the mystery of the missing document had been solved. A colonel had borrowed it and forgotten to return it.
In a message to the agency in early March, Kuklinski told the CIA that he had removed his name from the list for the Voroshilov Academy. He noted that his decision “coincided” with General Skalski’s view; Skalski was happy to have Kuklinski remain in Warsaw. Kuklinski expressed pleasure at the “unchanged character of our relationship,” which he described as “warm, and marked with genuine personal concern.” He also expressed satisfaction at the “flexible” and “very carefully considered instructions” by which he was to carry out communications and exchanges. He said the clandestine operation was “above all, a source of faith in the meaning of existence, and the purposefulness of my activities.”
In an exchange with the CIA in early March 1974, Kuklinski received a letter thanking him for his latest package and letters. As for the mix-up concerning Voroshilov Academy, the agency said the result was probably for the best: “Although attendance at the academy is probably a good thing for your military career development, perhaps you can be considered for it again sometime in the future. In the meantime, as you point out, your access to information of great value to our mutual endeavors will certainly be enhanced in your new assignment.”
At eight o’clock one rainy morning in early May, Kuklinski arrived at work and was called to see General Florian Siwicki, chief of the General Staff. Siwicki said that he was about to brief high level officials in the Polish leadership on “Project Albatross,” one of the Warsaw Pact’s most sensitive undertakings. Albatross involved the construction of three underground bunkers that would exclusively hold Soviet officers for command and control of Warsaw Pact troops in wartime. One such bunker was being built in southwestern Poland as a Soviet command post for the western theater of military operations in Europe. A second was being built in Bulgaria for the southwest theater of military operations. A third, near Moscow, would be for strategic command and control of the war. The locations and depth of the bunkers and the specifications of their walls, ceilings, and shock absorbers were closely held secrets. If the West was able to target these installations in wartime, Warsaw Pact military operations could be paralyzed. The project was so secret that when General Viktor Kulikov, chief of the Soviet military General Staff, went to inspect the bunker being built in Poland, he flew to a nearby base and changed into civilian dress before driving to the site.
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