Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski Museum

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henryk
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Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski Museum

#1

Post by henryk » 01 Jun 2007, 21:05

Polish Radio External Service
http://www.polskieradio.pl/zagranica/gb ... ?iid=53142
Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski Museum
Listen 7,48 MB 29.05.200
Whether you think he is a national hero or a traitor (some do in Poland) he is well worth dedicating a museum to.
Presented by Danusia Szafraniec
The museum in his honor was created in 2006 by the long-time friend and bigrapher of colonel Kuklinski, historian professor Józef Szaniawski. It occupies only two rooms in a tenement house in Warsaw's Old Town but they are filled with unique memorabilia connected with the colonel. Professor Szaniawski says that the exhibits prove that Kuklinski helped Americans defeat Soviet Russia and empire of evil.
You can ckeck our the museum in the Old Town district of Warsaw at Kanonia Square (Kanonia 20/22, tel. + 48 22 831 5980).
Check out more about the Colonel here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryszard_Kukli%C5%84ski
See also:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... c&start=15

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#2

Post by henryk » 20 Jun 2007, 21:38

Polish Radio External Service 19.06.2007
http://www.polskieradio.pl/zagranica/gb ... 4187[quote]
3rd anniversary of Col. Kuklinski's burial in Warsaw
Today marks the 3rd anniversary of the burial of colonel Ryszard Kuklinski in the Powazki military cemetery in Warsaw. He was the first Polish spy in CIA and the man who according to many did more than others to help abolish communism in eastern Europe. Colonel Kuklinski remains a very controversial figure for many Poles. Some consider him a national hero, some a traitor.
Bodgan Zaryn reports
Ryszard Kuklinski was born in Warsaw in a working class family with socialist traditions. His father was a member of the Polish resistance movement of WWII who died in the Sachsenhausen German concentration camp. After the war, Kuklinski began a successful career in the communist Polish People's Army. He took part in the preparations for the Warsaw Pact's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
After the December 1970 masascre of Polish workers in Gdynia by communist forces, Kuklinski contacted CIA and offered his services as a spy. As a result, between 1971 and 1981 he passed 35,000 pages of mostly Soviet secret documents to the CIA. The documents described Moscow's strategic plans regarding the use of nuclear weapons. Facing imminent danger of discovery, Kuklinski was extracted from Poland by the CIA shortly before the imposition of martial law in December 1981. On May 23, 1984 hewas sentenced to death in absentia by a secret military court in Warsaw.
After the fall of communism the sentence was annulled. Aris Pappas spent 28 years working in CIA. He was also Kuklinski's friend. He says that thanks to Kuklinski Americans treated the Russian threat of military intervention very seriously.
There was some very high concentration of Soviet efforts to coerce the Polish government into doing something about Solidarity. In 1980 I think there was some real indications that we received through colonel Kuklinski that led us to believe that the Soviets were considering intervention. The Soviets had a record of taking things into their own hands. The chances of simply dismissing severe threats from the commander of the Warsaw Pact - that's pretty risky business if you ask me.
In 2006 a museum in his honor was created in Warsaw by a long-time friend and biographer of colonel Kuklinski, historian professor Jóózef Szaniawski. It occupies two rooms in a tenement house in Warsaw's Old Town filled with unique memorabilia put together by professor Szaniawski.
All these memorabilia, photographs, come from my private collection. Some of them are of global importance like this huge map that we are facing now - it was a map of planned Soviet invasion on western Europe with the participation of Polish troops and officers from the Warsaw Pact where you can see the confirming signature of general Wojciech Jaruzelski.
According to Szaniawski, the exhibits prove that Kuklinski helped Americans defeat Soviet Russia and empire of evil.
'He was an unusually humble and warm man. While talking to him quite often you could get the impression that he was an intellectual not an intelligence officer. He loved the poetry of Zbigniew Herbert and works of Ernest Hemingway. He also smoked a lot and was of a small frame which probably helped him survive many situations as he didn't look your usual spy. It's a pity that we are only discovering today how important Kuklinski and his work was. He got access to Moscow's confidential plans for the Red Army to initiate Third World War in Europe. Thanks to Kuklinski America was able to prevent that so there is no discussion over whether Kuklinski was a hero or a traitor. If someone does not understand that then they must have their own personal reasons.'
Ryszard Kuklinski died of stroke at the age of 73 in a hospital in Tampa, Florida in 2004. He is buried in the honour row of the Powazki military cemetery in Warsaw and has been given honorary citizenship of several Polish cities, including Krakow and Gdansk. There have also been several incentives by the Polish diaspora since 1995 to nominate Ryszard Kuklinski for the Nobel Peace Prize.
[/quote]


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#3

Post by ToKu » 21 Jun 2007, 10:47

According to latest public opinion poll which I found in Internet (altough pretty old - May 1998)

34 % thinks that he was a traitor
30 % thinks that he was a hero
28 % thinks that it is hard to say whether he was a traitor or hero
7 % never heard of him

http://www.cbos.pl/SPISKOM.POL/1998/K_076_98.PDF

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#4

Post by Musashi » 21 Jun 2007, 18:59

ToKu wrote: 34 % thinks that he was a traitor
30 % thinks that he was a hero
28 % thinks that it is hard to say whether he was a traitor or hero
7 % never heard of him
Regardless if somebody betrayed Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti, Osama Bin Laden, John Paul II, Lady Diana or anybody else, he/she was/would be a traitor.

I don't think it's necessary to open a topic on such a sorry being like Kuklinski was. You could save the bandwith for more important news :roll:

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#5

Post by henryk » 21 Jun 2007, 21:26

A more recent opinion poll. Emphasis in red is mine.
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/20 ... d2f06.html
Friday, February 20, 2004
Eastern Europe: Life In The Shadows -- A Spy's Legacy Is A Complicated One
By Breffni O’Rourke
........................................................
Prague, 20 February 2004 (RFE/RL) -- Little more than a decade after the end of the Cold War, it is sometimes hard to recall the imperatives of those tense days.
Both superpowers and their respective allies stood face to face, and the possibility of nuclear war was seemingly only a breath away. In such a situation, gaining "the inside track" -- obtaining insights into what the other side was doing -- took on a crucial importance.
That required good intelligence, and that meant having people embedded undercover in the very strongholds of the enemy, the closer to the heart the better.
"Undercover" is the word which signals the essential duality of a spy's life. That person is not what he or she appears to be. Every smile, every gesture, every question masks a deeper, hidden reality.
Hence the moral twilight which has always surrounded spying. The person who is a brave hero, or heroine, to the one side, is a traitor to the cause on the other side.
This duality is illustrated by the lives of two famous members of the profession, one a Pole, Ryszard Kuklinski, and the other a German, Johanna Olbricht, both of whom died this month.
Polish Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski passed Warsaw Pact military secrets to the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for more than a decade.
"The official position was that what he did was wrong, because there is a kind of loyalty not only to the political system, which was communist of course, but also to the political community and perhaps to colleagues, soldiers."
When he died in the United States last week at the age of 72, CIA director George Tenet paid glowing tribute to Kuklinski's contribution. He called him a "true hero of the Cold War" to whom all owed "an everlasting debt of gratitude."
Tenet said that it is "in great measure" due to the bravery and sacrifice of Colonel Kuklinski that his native Poland and the other nations of Central and Eastern Europe are now free.
As Alexander Smolar, the head of the Stefan Batory Foundation, a Warsaw research institute, puts it, "His case was one of the most dramatic and divisive issues in public debate in Poland, and thus was very interesting. By some political forces, and by some people, he has been presented as a national hero. One journal referred to him by the title of the 'first Polish soldier in NATO.'"
Of course, the affair looked different from the perspective of Marxist Warsaw. The Communists sentenced Kuklinski in absentia to death for treason in 1984. He had been spirited out of Poland with his family in 1981 shortly before the government there imposed martial law.
The sentence remained on the books in democratic Poland until 1995, six years after the fall of communism. And it took a further two years before Kuklinski was fully rehabilitated.
Analyst Miraslava Grabowska of Warsaw University's Institute of Sociology, probing the reason for the slow rehabilitation, says the communist condemnation of Kuklinski at the time was very strong, and probably influenced the thinking of the Polish public.
"The official position was that what he did was wrong, because there is a kind of loyalty not only to the political system, which was communist of course, but also to the political community and perhaps to colleagues, soldiers, [et] cetera -- so that he breached not only ideological loyalty, but also national loyalty and even group loyalty," Grabowska said.
Grabowska cites a survey of public opinion by the Polish media this week that indicates those attitudes are now changing.
"Forty-nine percent of the Polish population [perceives] him as a hero, 25 percent as a traitor, and 26 percent answered that it is difficult to say. So I think that after some period of hesitation or uncertainty on how to interpret his activity, right now, the positive evaluation of his activities prevails," Grabowska said.


Analyst Smolar says that the Kuklinski case is one which still touches a nerve in the national psyche, mirroring the still-unresolved feelings of Poles toward their recent history.
"Attitudes toward the case of Kuklinsky were extremely complex and painful, just as the attitudes of Poles were -- and still are -- complex and painful toward the Poland of today and to Poland of the past, communist Poland," Smolar said.
...........................................................................

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#6

Post by henryk » 22 Jun 2007, 20:31

From the source given by ToKu:
http://www.cbos.pl/SPISKOM.POL/1998/K_076_98.PDF
My translation of Table 3, which shows an unsurprising correlation between opinion on Kuklinski and political views.

Table 3 in percentages

Do you consider Colonel......................Polititical Views Declared
Kuklinski a hero or..................Leftist.......Centrist.....Rightist.....Hard to Say
a traitor?
A hero......................................13.............26.............56............19
A traitor....................................61.............39.............17............24
Hard to say...............................21.............32.............22............38
Did not hear of him......................5...............3..............5.............19

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#7

Post by Musashi » 25 Jun 2007, 00:41

Grabowska cites a survey of public opinion by the Polish media this week that indicates those attitudes are now changing.
"Forty-nine percent of the Polish population [perceives] him as a hero, 25 percent as a traitor, and 26 percent answered that it is difficult to say. So I think that after some period of hesitation or uncertainty on how to interpret his activity, right now, the positive evaluation of his activities prevails," Grabowska said.
That's true, but it's because mass media brainwash Poles about him and just his supporters have voice. Other option is "politically incorrect" for the current "right-wing" (with a socialistic program) government. I remember K*** visiting Poland at the end of 90s and just very convenient questions were asked to him.
What should I think about such a being? He brought a danger on his countrymen. We liked neither the USSR nor the plans of attacking Western Europe. Nobody should suspect me of being enthusiastic about attacking Danish islands or realizing other "great" Soviet plans if a conflict between Warsaw Pact and NATO had happened. However if the conflict had started I would have done it, trying to survive. K*** made a task of our hypothetical opponents easier, revealing locations of Polish troops, plans of attack, etc.. Moreover he got a plenty of money for that!

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#8

Post by henryk » 25 Jun 2007, 20:54

To the contrary, by revealing the secrets of the Warsaw Pact, he made a hot war less likely.

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#9

Post by Musashi » 26 Jun 2007, 00:11

henryk wrote:To the contrary, by revealing the secrets of the Warsaw Pact, he made a hot war less likely.
Suuuuure.
He did not reveal many WP secrets, but mainly Polish People's Army secrets.
K*** had been cooperating with CIA for quite a long time, before he escaped to the West. It means the Soviets did not know for a long time the secrets had been revealed. What if a conflict had happened then (before the Soviets learned the secrets had been revealed)? :idea: Using a simple logic - nothing good for a common Polish soldier, who in spite of not being enthusiastic about the conflict would have been used in it and paid for K***'s behaviour.

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#10

Post by henryk » 26 Jun 2007, 22:10

He did not reveal many WP secrets, but mainly Polish People's Army secrets.
From the book on his life: "A Secret Life: The Polish Officer, His Covert Mission, And the Price He Paid To Save his Country":
He was a Polish patriot who did what he did out of love for his country, and to hasten its independence from the USSR. He suffered the stress of his actions for this, not for monetary gain. Being a member of the General Staff he had access to all the Warsaw Pact information that Poland had.
From the book:
294 A SECRET LIFE

One day shortly after he arrived in the United States, Kuklinski was
invited to CIA headquarters for a ceremony in the office of Director
William Casey. As Forden and other CIA officials watched, the agency
finally bestowed the Distinguished Intelligence Medal on Kuklinski.
Because Kuklinski's English was still poor and Casey tended to mum-
ble, the CIA had Victor Kliss, the translator, act as an interpreter. Kuk-
linski received a Polish version of the citation on the medal, and Kliss
read it aloud in English:

"While facing great personal danger, Col. Kuklinski consistently
provided extremely valuable and highly classified information about
the armed forces, operational plans and intentions 0f the
Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact members. Having accom-
plished the above, he made an unparalleled contribution to the
preservation of peace, especially in crisis situations. Throughout
all that time, Col. Kuklinski was motivated by the most noble
patriotism, a deep sense of duty and dedication to the ideals of
freedom.
Unfortunately, his dedication and sacrifice must remain a secret
forever. This medal, secret as well, reflects the appreciation-which
he greatly deserves-of the legions of people worldwide who
share his ideals."

In the months after his arrival in the United States, Kuklinski
became a valuable consultant to the government on Soviet and War-
saw Pact issues, writing a critique of the Pentagon's AirLand Battle
doctrine and preparing a lengthy paper, written from the perspective
of the Soviet General Staff, on how Moscow might react to the new
doctrine. He also prepared a report on Soviet and Warsaw pact arms
PATRIOT OR TRAITOR? 295

planning, Aris Pappas, the CIA analyst who had specialized in martial
law debriefed him regularly. Kuklinski was given an office near Langley
with a computer and a secretary, and one officer's wife took him
shopping for supplies like a Selectric typewriter ball with Polish letters
and symbols.

Key defense and intelligence officials in the United States were
informed of Kuklinski's arrival. One of them, Les Griggs, a colonel in
the Pentagon, joined the debriefing team. Kuklinski was delighted to
learn that he finally would be working with a military officer. "I've
been looking for you-we need to talk," Kuklinski said when they were
introduced.

Griggs, Pappas, and other officers, with Kliss as the interpreter,
debriefed Kuklinski for six months on Soviet and Warsaw Pact issues.
It soon dawned on me that I'd been reading his stuff for years,"
Griggs recalled later.

A small team of analysts in the Pentagon supplied questions
through Griggs, who would summarize the debriefing sessions in
memos to the group. The analysts went back through the tens of
thousands of pages of material Kuklinski had sent in the previous nine
years, trying to clear up ambiguities and questions they had long had.
The CIA continued to keep Kuklinski's arrival a secret within the
larger intelligence community. But in December 1982, the first account
his role in clandestine activity became public. Newsweek magazine
reported that the CIA had obtained the martial-law plans before
Poland's crackdown on Solidarity had occurred. "In fact, the CIA had a
longtime secret agent who by 1981 had risen to the rank of colonel at
Polish Army headquarters," the article said. It quoted one unnamed
source as saying, "For a very long time there were very few things that
went on at the upper levels of the Polish military that the CIA didn't
know about."
Yes, in a Warsaw Pact attack, on the short term, Polish soldiers would suffer more, because of plans being known. On the long term they would suffer less, and the likelihood of Warsaw Pact success would be significantly smaller. And Poland would be free again!
Musashi, I recommend that you read the book to obtain a true appreciation of him, and not one coloured by the Communist media. I recommend the book to all, to view the unselfish, heroic actions of a true patriot.

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#11

Post by Musashi » 27 Jun 2007, 08:41

henryk wrote:
He did not reveal many WP secrets, but mainly Polish People's Army secrets.
He suffered the stress of his actions for this, not for monetary gain.
But he got a plenty of money for that and had some things, that the richest Polish generals could not afford to have, for example a yacht.
henryk wrote:Yes, in a Warsaw Pact attack, on the short term, Polish soldiers would suffer more, because of plans being known. On the long term they would suffer less, and the likelihood of Warsaw Pact success would be significantly smaller. And Poland would be free again!
I love your logic. Are you trying to say "if an American plane had dropped napalm on my son and his mates, because K*** had informed CIA where my son's unit was deployed, it would have been unimportant, because it would have been just short term consequences and Poland would have been free again. I can sacrifice my son for freedom."?
BTW,
There would not have been anything like Poland after a conflict, just a nuclear desert. According to NATO plans Poland would have been the most nuked WP country, apart from the USSR.
henryk wrote:Musashi, I recommend that you read the book to obtain a true appreciation of him, and not one coloured by the Communist media. I recommend the book to all, to view the unselfish, heroic actions of a true patriot.
The "true" information has been written by K***'s lovers, who claim we should worship him. It's just a panegyric, not a book.
Last edited by Musashi on 27 Jun 2007, 23:05, edited 1 time in total.

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#12

Post by henryk » 27 Jun 2007, 20:53

I love your logic. Are you trying to say "if an American plane had dropped napalm on my son and his mates, because K*** had informed CIA where my son's unit was deployed, it would have been unimportant, because it would have been just short term consequences and Poland would have been free again. I can sacrifice my son for freedom."?
A single loss of life is tragic. I believe that the total killed, with no information from Kuklinski, would be greatly more than with information provided by Kuklinski.

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#13

Post by Musashi » 30 Jun 2007, 23:33

henryk wrote:
I love your logic. Are you trying to say "if an American plane had dropped napalm on my son and his mates, because K*** had informed CIA where my son's unit was deployed, it would have been unimportant, because it would have been just short term consequences and Poland would have been free again. I can sacrifice my son for freedom."?
A single loss of life is tragic.
"...and a few million of killed is just statistics" - said Joseph V. Stalin.
henryk wrote: I believe that the total killed, with no information from Kuklinski, would be greatly more than with information provided by Kuklinski.
Could you elaborate?

Besides I expect a direct answer for the following sentence: "I could have sacrificed my son for freedom and I'd have been nothing wrong if my son had been killed because of K***'s betrayal."

Do you agree with the sentence above or not?

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#14

Post by henryk » 02 Jul 2007, 22:14

Besides I expect a direct answer for the following sentence: "I could have sacrificed my son for
freedom and I'd have been nothing wrong if my son had been killed because of K***'s betrayal."

Do you agree with the sentence above or not?
I am not sure what you mean by that statement, but I will try to answer.
I was the Systems Manager for the Cl-289 Surveillance Drone System purchased by the West Germans and French to provide surveillance in case of a Warsaw Pact attack. It would permit identifying and locating targets for attack. Should the fathers of sons killed in that attack curse me for indirectly causing the deaths of their sons. Should they curse the developers of the missiles that directly killed their sons. Should they curse Kuklinski for providing the information that facilitated that attack.
No, of course not!. They should curse the communist lackeys in their government that acquiesced in supporting their Overlords of the Evil Empire on the aggressive invasion.
But Poles did not die in an invasion of Denmark. Kuklinski helped to keep the Cold War Cold, and not to become Hot.
I remember the words from the old song of Polish Knighthood “W Krwawem Polu Srebrne Ptaszę”: "Niechaj Polska zna, jakich synów ma !" “Let Poland Know What Kind Of Sons It Has.” Kuklinski’s father served in the Warsaw Uprising and his son served in the battle against the Evil Empire.
Here is more support of my position, including the words of prominent Poles. Emphasis in red is mine.
http://www.nationalreview.com/books/sik ... quote]June 01, 2004, 9:08 a.m.
Pride of Poland
From the April 19, 2004, issue of National Review.

By Radek Sikorski
A Secret Life: The Polish Officer, His Covert Mission, and the Price He Paid to Save His Country, by Benjamin Weiser (PublicAffairs, 400 pp., $27.50)
The subject of this remarkable book, Col. Ryszard Kuklinski, died in a Tampa military hospital on February 10. His had been one of the most dangerous —— and successful —— intelligence careers of the Cold War. Recipient of the CIA's Distinguished Intelligence Medal, he was the West's most important source in the Warsaw Pact between the time of Oleg Penkovsky's reports during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the end of the Cold War. Although only a colonel, Kuklinski was more valuable than several generals put together: He was director of the operational-planning directorate of the Polish general staff and liaised between Warsaw and Moscow. Over nine years, he delivered 40,265 pages of documents, including plans of Soviet exercises of the invasion of Western Europe, the location of Soviet wartime command bunkers, plans for the imposition of martial law in Poland, and the details of numerous weapons. He gave successive U.S. administrations a direct insight into the planning of Warsaw Pact militaries and became the standard by which other intelligence from behind the Iron Curtain was judged. Kuklinski avoided detection. He was exfiltrated from Poland, with his family, only after being compromised by a leak from the U.S. government.
Sentenced to death by the Communist regime, Kuklinski lived to see a free Poland quash all charges against him, and to return to his native land in triumph in 1998. He was hosted to lunch by the prime minister and showered with the honorary citizenships of several Polish cities, all during the very week that the U.S. Senate voted to allow Poland into NATO. Given the fate of most defectors from the Soviet bloc —— some of them still face criminal sentences in their native lands —— this is a story of heroism and accomplishment with a remarkably happy end. Yet it is not an entirely happy story and Kuklinski did not die a satisfied man. Acceptance of his deeds came late, grudgingly, and still divides public opinion in Poland, testifying to the resilience of the Communist canon of Poland's recent history.
His diminutive figure casts in sharp relief all the dilemmas that are spared the lucky citizens of free countries that have never been occupied. If your country has been taken over by a regime that is an agent of a foreign power, is it legitimate to use treachery to topple that regime? Is a country run by a repulsive ideology still your country —— right or wrong —— or do you owe loyalty to the nation rather than to the alienated state? Does patriotism have to be rooted in higher values or does tribal solidarity trump all? Finally, can one man be so sure of his moral compass and the consequences of his actions as to take it upon himself to judge that a normally distasteful act will serve the greater good? Kuklinski provokes all these questions in Poland and depending how you answer them you fall into the post-Communist or post-Solidarity camps. Tell me about Kuklinski, they say, and I will tell you who you are.
The great value of Benjamin Weiser's thorough book is that, for the first time, we can follow Kuklinski's story not just from reminiscences many years after the events, but from contemporary documents. Weiser obtained access to virtually the entire CIA file on the Kuklinski operation, and we can therefore be confident that little of substance will be added in future accounts.
What comes shining through in Weiser's story is not just Kuklinski's idealistic motivation but the kind of selfless patriotism that is usually felt by men from nations that have just faced the abyss of extermination. A witness to Warsaw's wartime martyrdom —— his father had been murdered by the Nazis —— Kuklinski was in many ways a typical Pole of his generation. He tried to lead a normal life after the war, accommodating himself to the new Communist Poland by joining the army and the Party. He contacted the Americans only in the early 1970s, partly out of disgust at the invasion of Czechoslovakia and partly because he was alarmed at what Soviet invasion plans against Western Europe would mean for Poland. Because the Warsaw Pact enjoyed superiority over the West in conventional arms, NATO planned to respond to an attack with nuclear weapons —— but because an attack against the USSR would provoke a full-blown strategic nuclear retaliation, NATO planned to nuke the Second Strategic Echelon of Soviet forces as they streamed West: across Poland. Kuklinski told me on one occasion that Soviet maps even showed areas —— tails broadening east with the prevailing wind —— that would be contaminated after hundreds of warheads struck. Was it treasonous for a Polish officer to try to preempt such a scenario, or was it treasonous to go along with it? One can't help agreeing with the 30 Communist generals who wrote —— in a public letter protesting Kuklinski's exoneration —— that "if he is a hero, then we are traitors."
Kuklinski did not see himself as a spy at all, but rather as an officer making contact with the U.S. army in furtherance of a potential conspiracy that could upset Soviet invasion plans. The CIA's involvement was kept a secret from him for a while and he only reluctantly agreed to act alone by passing information. In case of war, his contribution could have been decisive: By supplying the U.S. with details about the wartime command bunker he made it possible to stop the Soviets by liquidating the Soviet leadership instead of liquidating Poland. As Zbigniew Brzezinski —— one of the few U.S. officials who had access to raw Kuklinski data —— told Marshal Kulikov, the former Warsaw Pact supreme commander, many years later, the entire Soviet command, including Kulikov, would have been dead within three hours of a Soviet attack on NATO.
While increasing the odds of a Western victory, Kuklinski also helped preserve the peace. The insight he gave Western decision makers, often almost in real time, prevented the kind of miscalculation that could have sparked an uncontrollable escalation. In the fall of 1980, for example, Brezhnev was planning to crush Solidarity with a full-scale invasion of Poland. Kuklinski's information on the plans helped President Carter make pointed, well-timed warnings to the Soviets, which arguably prevented the invasion and what would have been a major East––West confrontation.
Kuklinski was hurt by the early lack of recognition from his countrymen for what he did, particularly from Solidarity veterans. President Lech Walesa, whom Kuklinski worshipped, failed to lift a finger in his defense. Adam Michnik, the left-wing dissident, befriended General Jaruzelski, the martial-law dictator, instead of Kuklinski. But the mood is shifting. As Poland takes its place among Western allies and the effects of Communist brainwashing wane, Kuklinski is seen less and less as a foreign spy and more and more as "Poland's first officer in NATO." Now that he does not have to appease Communist-era generals, Walesa has relented and calls Kuklinski a hero. He will be buried in Poland with military honors. Kuklinski joins Claus von Stauffenberg in the pantheon of tragic heroes who betrayed their state to try to save their country. Benjamin Weiser's book —— lucid, authoritative, and unputdownable —— is a must-read for scholars of the Cold War, and for all of us who lived in the shadows of totalitarianism and enjoy the fruits of the ultimate triumph of liberty.
—— Mr. Sikorski is executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative at the American Enterprise Institute.

http://www.friends-partners.org/friends ... lish,,new)
POLISH GOVERNMENT TO COMPENSATE FORMER CIA SPY. Poland will pay some $366,000 to Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski, the CIA's spymaster within the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War, to compensate him for property confiscated in communist-era Poland, Reuters reported on 26 October. That sum will come from the government's budget reserve. Kuklinski passed some 35,000 top secret documents to the CIA between 1972 and 1981 before defecting to the West with his family. A communist court sentenced him to death in 1984 and confiscated all his property. That sentence was lifted in 1995, and Kuklinski was fully rehabilitated in 1997. According to Kuklinski, he received no money for his espionage activities. JM

http://intellit.muskingum.edu/cia_folde ... 0skuk.html
Grajewski, Marcin. "Spy for U.S Gets Mixed Reception in Poland." Reuters, 27 Apr. 1998. [http://dailynews.yahoo.com]
Ryszard Kuklinski returned to his native Poland on 27 April 1998. After meeting with the Cold War spy, Polish Premier Jerzy Buzek told reporters: "Kuklinski was a witness of history. He took his decision at moments that were very difficult for Poland. I have a right to suppose that these decisions saved our country from bloodshed."

http://www3.law.nyu.edu/eecr/vol6num4/c ... oland.html
On September 2, the Warsaw prosecutor’’s office dropped charges against Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski. In the 1970s, Colonel Kuklinski worked for the CIA and passed to them extremely sensitive information on the Warsaw Pact, including operational plans and information about the plans to impose martial law in Poland. Under martial law, the colonel was sentenced to death in absentia. After 1989, efforts were frequently made to find a way out of the case. But it was embarrassingly difficult to say when a soldier has a right to decide on his own if his superiors act in accordance with his country’’s interests. In justification of the September decision to dismiss the case, Major Bogdan Wodarczyk stated that Kuklinski was not actually working on behalf of a foreign power, since the real purpose of his work was the good of Poland. Paradoxically, the dismissal of the case against Kuklinski owes a lot to ex-minister Leszek Miller, who believes that, as a candidate for NATO, Poland cannot consider someone who acted on behalf of this alliance to be a traitor to his country.

http://www.ambasciatapolonia.it/Files/A ... 004.06.htm
But present were U.S. ambassador Christopher Hill, former PMs Jerzy Buzek and Jan Olszewski, former foreign minister Wldadyslaw Bartoszewski, former Sejm speaker Maciej Plazynski. During a requiem mass bishop Slawoj Leszek Glodz described Col. Kuklinski as "one of the fathers of Polish freedom." Head of the National Remembrance Institute Leon Kieres said that "what Ryszard Kuklinski did helped Poland regain independence and bring about world peace. It was an act of the highest heroism and I came here to show him my gratitude for that." He said that this official funeral may be considered to be "some form of the Colonel's social rehabilitation."
(This site presents, in more detail, the words of Bishop Slawoj Leszek Glodz, Wldadyslaw Bartoszewski and Lech Kaczynski at the funeral:)
http://dzis.dziennik.krakow.pl/public/? ... 10/10.html

- Ilez juz lat trwa spor o plk. Kuklinskiego? Ilez ksiazek, audycji, polemik, przeciwstawnych opinii... Moze dzieje sie tak, bo spor o plk. Kuklinskiego jest czyms wiecej niz sporem o niego samego - jest sporem o Polske. Toczy sie nie tylko na plaszczyxnie moralnej, takze prawnej, politycznej, historycznej. To spor o Polske, ktorej ksztalt i przyszlosc zostaly zadekretowane w Jalcie" - mowil bp Glodx w homilii mszy zalobnej.
- Czesto stawia sie plk. Kuklinskiemu zarzut, ze zlamal zolnierska przysiege. Przysiega dla zolnierza to rzecz swieta. Ale co sie dzieje, kiedy konsekwencje przysiegi wchodza w konflikt z zasadami prawego sumienia? - pytal biskup. Uwaza on, ze w zyciu plk. Kuklinskiego zdarzyla sie ta chwila, kiedy potrafil powiedziec stanowcze nie. - Wiedzial, jakie moga byc tego konsekwencje dla niego i dla najblizszych - dodal biskup. Biskup nazwal zmarlego "jednym z ojcow polskiej wolnosci".
Urny z prochami plk. Kuklinskiego i jego syna przewieziono nastepnie na wojskowe Powazki. Tam zebralo sie kilka tysiecy ludzi, chcacych towarzyszyc Kuklinskiemu w ostatniej drodze.
Bartoszewski porownal natomiast postac plk. Kuklinskiego, do Romualda Traugutta. - Z tym, ze jego sytuacja byla bardziej oczywista, a Kuklinski stal sie bardziej postacia tragiczna - dodal. Wedlug Kieresa, "bez dzialalnosci Kuklinskiego Polska nie odzyskalaby niepodleglosci tak szybko".
Lech Kaczynski wspominal w oficjalnym wystapieniu, jak w czasach, gdy byl szefem Biura Bezpieczenstwa Narodowego, owczesni generalowie III RP mowili mu, ze skoro Kuklinski jest bohaterem, to oni sa zdrajcami. - Odpowiem im teraz, ze nie sa zdrajcami, ale bohaterem jest Kuklinski - powiedzial. Dodal, ze zmarly "ryzykujac zyciem, podjal samotna walke i odniosl w niej zwyciestwo".
- Wedlug owczesnych planow, gdyby wojna swiatowa wybuchla, gdyby sowiecka Rosja ruszyla na Europe, nasz kraj w sensie fizycznym, doslownym przestalby istniec. I to jest miara zaslug pulkownika Ryszarda Kuklinskiego - jestesmy dzisiaj. Istniejemy. I mozemy powiedziec pulkownikowi: spij spokojnie, dobrze zasluzyles sie ojczyxnie - dodal Kaczynski.
(My translation of Kaczynski’s words: "According to the plans at that time, if world war broke out, if Soviet Russia invaded Europe, our Country, in the physical sense, would be no more. And that is the standard to judge Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski by. But we exist today. And we can say to the Colonel: sleep in peace, you served the Fatherland well." )
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ToKu
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Location: Olsztyn, former Allenstein,Warmia (Ermland), Poland

#15

Post by ToKu » 03 Jul 2007, 10:17

I don't know if You noticed but Poles were a part of evil empire.

During WW II we were active part of Allies. We sacrificed a lot, and got communistic regime as a "thank you note".

Now I'm also interested why You are so sure that in case of cold war turning into hot one: "Poland would be free again!"

During WW II we were on side of the winners from the begining till the end, we were not swapping sides, no surrender was signed by polish government, and yet we were not a free country after the war end.

In case of hipotetical west - east conflict we were sacheduled to be a part of bad guys. So theoretically our chances for getting good peace conditions were lower then after WW II. I remind You that after WW II we've got what we've got - communistic regime, unwanted change of borders, loss of land. And we were on the side of winners!

So to sum up. Kukliński betrayed evil empire, empire that consisted also of Poles. He gone straight to the guys who had missiles and bombers. Missiles aimed at Poland, bombers planned to bomb our cities. And he told them: "wait a minute, I know how to aim them better - it will kill a lot of Poles but they are part of evil empire, so it will be even better for them to be dead! Their bones will be burried in free country at least, after we liberate Poland!"

But the fact is: he gave information to our enemies.

Yes, enemies. I wonder if during hot conflict NATO solidiers would be ordered to aim at legs, cause guys who opposite them are Poles and they don't really want to be there. I doubt it. They were rather told to kill all the red bastards.

He gave information that led to higher casualties among polish solidiers. Poland lost TOO MANY of its sons already during XX century.

When he was giving this information he had no idea how the other side is going to use them.
He probably also had no guarantees for Poland.
Well to be hones, I don't know, maybe CIA promised him that after the war, doesn't matter what the outcome will be like, Poland would be a free country, it is possilble of course, but the fact that he was given quite comfortable life in USA is certain.

Sorry for being too sarcastic, but I simply can't understand how the hell he could be treated as hero.
If he was so f**** heroic he should have quit the army and join Solidarity or some other peacefull movement. Movement that was not selling our boys to their enemies and fought for democracy without using violence.

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