A Secret Life (33 page)
Authors: Benjamin Weiser
Tags: #History, #Europe, #Germany, #World, #True Crime, #Espionage
On September 23, top White House national security officials met to review the current intelligence on Soviet troop movements. CIA director Turner gave a briefing, noting that worker strikes were spreading and that Moscow feared a ripple effect, in which the prodemocracy movement could threaten the entire Communist system. Most of those attending agreed that the Poles would resist any invasion. Brzezinski, who was leading the meeting, suggested that a Polish resistance, along with a powerful Western reaction, would be the best means of deterring the Soviets.
Kuklinski and the CIA, after two failed attempts, made a successful exchange on September 25. About a week later, Polish workers staged a one-hour national strike as a warning that the regime was moving too slowly in carrying out the reforms promised in the recent agreements. “Solidarnosc” banners hung in factory windows, and demonstrators marched, shouting, “Solidarity today, bread tomorrow!” On October 12, Polish Armed Forces Day, Polish generals, who usually received a flurry of congratulations from their counterparts in Moscow, got only a few messages. Kuklinski noticed that Soviet officers who were in regular touch with the General Staff were appearing less frequently, and when they did appear, they were reserved and distrustful. One day, during an airport ceremony for a Polish military delegation returning from Prague, Kuklinski listened as a Russian general, who was Kulikov’s representative in Poland, openly disparaged the workers movement. “Democracy, yes! But only as dictatorship of the proletariat while adhering to the principles of democratic centralism. What you are doing is pure, rotten, and compromised liberalism,” he said.
On October 22, Kuklinski was summoned to the office of General Skalski, who said Jaruzelski had an urgent request. The General Staff had to begin secret preparations for imposing martial law. It appeared that Moscow was in the final stages of planning an invasion, and an internal crackdown by the Poles was the only way to forestall outside intervention.
Kuklinski, who was already leading the group monitoring events in Poland, listened as Skalski asked him to oversee another small cell of officers who would plan the military’s involvement in martial law. Skalski knew Kuklinski would be troubled by the request. “This order you have the right to refuse,” he said solemnly.
Kuklinski had always admired Skalski, a slim and powerfully built man with deep blue eyes and a noble face. He felt certain that Skalski, who clearly hated the Soviets, was as troubled as he was by the idea that the Polish Army might be directed to move against the Polish people.
When Kulikov and his patronizing entourage visited Warsaw, Skalski could barely hide his anger. Spending as little time as possible with the Russian visitors, he stood with his jaw clenched and his faced flushed and tried to dispatch them as quickly as possible to Kuklinski’s office.
Skalski had been fifteen years old in September 1939 when the Soviet Army entered Poland. He awakened that morning on the veranda of his home outside Grodno (in what is now Belarus) to the sound of a heavy storm. Then he realized he had been hearing the thunder of Soviet troops marching in the street. For the first time, Skalski saw Russian soldiers, who wore gray uniforms and conelike hats with a red star in the center and carried rifles with exceptionally long bayonets. The local schools were quickly transformed into Russian schools. Skalski and his classmates had to study Russian several hours a day and were indoctrinated in Moscow’s version of history that condemned Poland’s prewar past to oblivion. Eventually, Skalski’s father, a prewar Polish officer, was taken prisoner by the Soviets and never returned to Poland. Skalski saw him only once more, after the war. Skalski’s older brother, a Polish military academy graduate, had been captured and was one of thousands of Polish soldiers ordered massacred by Stalin in the Katyn forest in 1940.
As for Skalski, he joined the so-called Berling Army of Polish soldiers created in the Soviet Union and led by a Polish officer. Skalski became an antitank artillery officer―a job requiring the ability to make quick mental calculations about distance, elevation, and wind speed―and he was awarded the highest Polish military order of merit for destroying a German self-propelled gun. Skalski gradually rose in the Polish Army. Kuklinski knew him to be demanding and impatient, and at times he made subordinates cry. But he was decisive, and he knew what he wanted.
Skalski relied increasingly on Kuklinski, whom he found tireless and meticulous, a man of imagination who had the “outstanding ability to transform ideas into written form.” He was also adept at dealing with the Soviets. “He had all the features which enabled him to gain the trust of people, to conciliate people,” Skalski recalled years later. “His subordinates had great esteem for him. He was a good and friendly boss. I have to tell you that his positive features made him very popular among the party ranks―whenever delegates to party meetings were elected, he was chosen unanimously.”
Kuklinski could not imagine assisting in a plan to suppress Solidarity. He admired the strikers and their supporters. “They were my heroes,” he said later, “starting from Walesa and ending with the last lady on the line yelling slogans.” He had also not forgotten the experiences of his friend in the army who had been ordered to shoot at striking workers to put down the 1970 demonstrations on the Baltic coast, an incident that contributed to Kuklinski’s decision to collaborate with the West. But he realized that if he took on the task, he might be able to influence events and perhaps prevent violence―and, of course, keep the CIA informed. “If you see nobody better, I agree,” Kuklinski told Skalski.
In Washington the next day, October 23, Brzezinski led a meeting of the Special Coordination Committee, a small cabinet-level group that was monitoring events in Poland. Among those also present were CIA Director Turner, Secretary of State Edmund S. Muskie, and Secretary of Defense Harold Brown. “Participation was restricted because of the sensitivity of the meeting,” Brzezinski wrote later in an account of the meeting. “The agenda was how to respond in the event of a Soviet intervention in Poland.”
In four years as national security adviser to President Carter, Brzezinski had regularly asked the CIA to provide him with raw intelligence reports, from which he could make his own assessments even before the analysts processed them. Brzezinski was one of the few people in the administration who knew the agency had a vital source in the Polish Defense Ministry. From the earliest stages of the crisis, Brzezinski felt, the White House had to take an unambiguous stand against Soviet intervention in Poland. In 1968, he recalled, the White House had indications the Soviets would invade Czechoslovakia, but failed to act. He believed Washington’s passivity had contributed to the Soviet decision and had encouraged further Soviet control throughout Eastern Europe. Brzezinski told Carter it was important not to make the same mistake with Poland.
On October 26, Kuklinski began a six-page letter to the CIA distilling the events of the past month. Within the General Staff, he noted, there was a widespread view that only the CIA was capable of formulating “a reliable prognosis” concerning further developments in Poland.
This opinion reflects not so much esteem for the U.S. intelligence services, which have called the attention of world opinion to the concentration of Soviet Armed Forces in the vicinity of the Polish borders, as a conviction that Polish authorities are incapable of directing the destiny of the nation, and particularly of standing up to possible U.S.S.R. intervention.
As to the plans that were under way in the Polish Army in case Moscow sent troops across the borders, Kuklinski wrote:
I am embarrassed to confirm that nothing is planned. This topic belongs to the taboo subjects, which prevent everybody from taking any kind of action. The leadership of the Polish General Staff recognizes the gravity of this threat....As of today, the Polish Armed Forces General Staff has not undertaken even the slightest steps intended to oppose military intervention by the U.S.S.R.
Just a few days before, he wrote, “a small group of us began preparations of a plan for introducing a condition of wartime readiness on Polish territory”―martial law.
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He included a memo and a draft of the resolution and decrees of the government pertaining to martial law and other details:
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He included a memo and a draft of the resolution and decrees of the government pertaining to martial law and other details:
The plan proposes that, because of national security, a condition of wartime readiness will be introduced only as a last resort, after exhausting all options for cooling off social unrest. In addition to suspension of civil rights and granting the authorities extraordinary powers, a decree on labor relations will be issued. Also the provision of the law on compulsory military service will go into effect, along with partial mobilization, broad militarization, and service in civil defense as well as services rendered in the interests of defense. It is proposed that troops be used for protection and defense of special installations and for patrolling the cities. The allies will be notified of the introduction of a condition of wartime readiness
ex post facto
. . . .Everybody fears this step. Among people in the know, there is a rather popular belief that introduction of a condition of wartime preparedness could signal the beginning of the end.
Kuklinski said there was increasing anger in the Polish military. “Accusations against the present leadership of the Ministry of National Defense are more and more openly and loudly voiced,” while the Defense Ministry “is doing everything it can to calm the troops, to hold them on a tighter leash.” He warned of the possibility of a Russian takeover of the military in Poland and said somewhat scathingly that some Polish generals had acknowledged to one another that their positions would probably be taken by Russian generals. “Their apathetic posture makes organization of any kind of resistance impossible,” Kuklinski wrote.
He and his colleagues had little direct knowledge of Soviet deployments at the borders. “I would like to emphasize that the question of martial law in Poland at this time is in a planning stage, and the plan may be implemented only as a last resort,” he wrote.
On October 29, the day before the next exchange, Kuklinski received a visit from two Soviet officers from the Warsaw Pact command. Kuklinski asked about any invasion plans. They knew of none, the officers said, although a “psychological conditioning” of Russian officers had begun. At meetings of Russian generals, there was talk of providing “military assistance to Polish communists.” And recently, Russian officers had been told they would serve alert duty during nights and weekends. In Moscow, the Soviets told Kuklinski, officers often gathered to listen to Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe, and many expressed anger at Solidarity’s assertiveness.
On October 30, Kuklinski wrote to the CIA describing his conversation with the two Russians as well as recent talk among General Staff officers about the need for massive arrests of trade union leaders across the country.
“Once more I ask you to use the data I send very sparingly,” he wrote. “Recently in my institution we were commended for safeguarding the secrecy about the [wartime] statute because ‘if the West knew about it, they could strike at a very sensitive spot, and they would certainly do it.’”
In an exchange that night, Kuklinski delivered his letters and five rolls of film, which contained 215 pages of documents. These included the first documents pertaining to martial law that were sent to the United States.
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In Washington, National Security Adviser Brzezinski believed the crisis was escalating dangerously. He had special access to the detailed satellite photographs of Poland and other intelligence that had documented the large concentration of Soviet troops on the border, Soviet transport planes at airports in the region, and military convoys lining the roads. But it was difficult to be certain of Moscow’s intentions. For one thing, the ability of U.S. spy satellites to monitor events in Poland and the western Soviet Union was hindered by a vast cloud cover over the region. Brzezinski asked the CIA for another assessment of the chances of an invasion. “I am becoming increasingly concerned that this is likely,” Brzezinski wrote in his diary on October 29.
In early November, the group working with Kuklinski on developing the army’s preparations for martial law sent its report for review to the KOK, a special committee in the Defense Ministry chaired by Prime Minister Jozef Pinkowski. Details were kept vague because of the fear of leaks. But the central theme was this: Because of the disastrous events of 1970, when Polish soldiers shot at striking workers, the army would be restricted to large cities and industrial centers and would avoid direct confrontations with workers. That task would be left to the Interior Ministry and the SB. The army would maintain “internal law and order in the cities”and protect critical buildings and installations. To ensure that the Interior Ministry was equipped to carry out its tasks, the army would provide it with the necessary weapons, ammunition, armored transports, and helicopters.
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