Ryszard Jerzy Kuklinsky ( Polish. Ryszard Jerzy Kukliński ; June 13, 1930 , Warsaw , Polish Republic - February 11, 2004 , Tampa , Florida , USA ) - Colonel (posthumous - Brigadier General [1] ) Polish forces , CIA agent.
Ryszard Jerzy Kuklinsky | |
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Ryszard Jerzy Kukliński | |
Date of Birth | October 13, 1930 |
Place of Birth | Warsaw , Polish Republic |
Date of death | February 11, 2004 (73 years) |
Place of death | Tampa , FL , USA |
Citizenship | Poland USA |
Occupation | Deputy Chief of the Operational Directorate of the General Staff of the Polish Army , CIA agent |
Awards and prizes | Brigade General of the Polish Third Republic of Poland |
Between 1972 and 1981, thousands of secret documents of the strategic importance of the Warsaw Pact bloc were handed over to the American side. Former National Security Advisor to the US President Zbigniew Brzezinski called him "the first Polish officer in NATO" [2] [3] [4] .
Content
Biography
Ryshard Kuklinsky was born in Warsaw on June 13, 1930, to a working-class family. His father was one of the members of the resistance movement, was captured by the Gestapo and died in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . After the end of the Second World War, Kuklinsky joined the ranks of the Polish People's Army. His army career was successful. Kuklinsky participated in the suppression of the Czechoslovak uprising in 1968 . The ways in which the uprising was suppressed, as well as the unrest in Poland (1970-1971) influenced his attitudes and led to the rejection of the Soviet way of life and Soviet politics. Considerable influence was also exerted by the considerations of the Chief of the General Staff of the armed forces of Poland, Boleslav Khokhi , expressed in a private conversation with Kuklinsky about the subordinate position of Poland in relations with the USSR and the danger of being drawn into a military conflict with the West. In 1972, Ryshard Kuklinsky sent a letter to the American embassy in Bonn with a proposal for cooperation [5] .
In 1994, Kuklinsky said that he was frightened by the “aggressively offensive” nature of Soviet military plans. This was an important factor for him to reveal the secret details of these plans to the United States, and in addition, Kuklinsky believed that in those historical circumstances "Polish blood could only be shed for the altar of the Red Empire" ( eng. "Our front could only be a sacrifice of Polish blood at the altar of the Red Empire ” ) [6] . Kuklinsky also, he said, was worried that Poland in the event of a global conflict would have been turned into a nuclear desert after the NATO armies would have been hit by tactical nuclear ammunition against the Soviet ground forces advancing through Poland.
As Kuklinsky himself and the CIA leadership later claimed, the Polish colonel did not charge money for his work for the Americans [7] . The intelligence activities of the colonel were motivated only by internal anti-Soviet ideological attitudes.
Information transmitted
From 1972 to 1981, Kuklinsky transmitted to the CIA a total of 35,000 (according to other sources more than 40,000 [8] ) pages of secret information about the armed forces of the Warsaw Pact countries. The CIA received:
- Documents disclosing plans and conditions for the use of Soviet strategic nuclear forces .
- Tactical and technical documentation on the latest weapons models at that time, including the T-72 tank and the Strela-1 anti-aircraft missile system .
- The locations of the bases of the air defense forces in Poland and the GDR were revealed. The Soviet methods of satellite tracking disinformation were declassified by creating false objects, dummies, etc.
- Soviet plans for the strategic deployment of the armed forces in case of an offensive war against the NATO armies were handed over.
- The mechanism of control of armies of the Warsaw Pact countries in the event of a full-scale conflict is disclosed. Kuklinsky declassified information that in time of war the national armies of the Warsaw Pact countries (with the exception of Romania) would be transferred directly to the Soviet operational control (General Headquarters of the USSR Supreme Soviet). The powers of the Polish command, for example, would be reduced to the status of officers following orders of the Soviet generals. They would be left only with the communication functions (receiving and transmitting orders) and solving logistic tasks (ensuring timely and efficient transportation of large army units).
- The planning documentation of the military exercises of the ATS countries gave the West an understanding of how the enemy would conduct a mobilization campaign in the event of a conflict.
- Albatross project. Kuklinsky transmitted data on three secret underground bunkers designed to house command and control centers for command and communication of army groups in the event of a global conflict built on the territory of Poland, the USSR and Bulgaria. On the Polish bunker, in addition to the location of the object, he revealed the exact data on the construction of the bunker (technical characteristics, security class, etc.) and data on the sensitive communications equipment used for the Polish complex.
- Information was provided on several dozens of other modern Soviet weapons systems and electronic warfare manuals.
- Plans for the introduction of martial law in Poland (1981-1983) .
and much more [9] .
Escape to America
From the moment he started working for the CIA, Kuklinsky was well aware of what would have threatened him if he were disclosed. In 1981, Kuklinsky could already have been uncovered, since the Soviet counterintelligence began to roughly understand where massive strategic information leaks occurred from. Kuklinsky learned that the circle of search for a high-ranking mole narrows. Ryshard Kuklinsky contacted the curator at the CIA and began requesting relocation to the United States with his family. At the end of 1981, an operation to export Kuklinsky with his family was successfully carried out.
The CIA could not underestimate everything that Kuklinsky did to ensure the superiority of the forces of the Atlantic Alliance against the Soviet Union and its satellites during the Cold War. CIA leaders called him the second most useful American agent after Penkovsky . CIA director William Casey wrote in a letter to President Ronald Reagan in 1982:
"Over the past forty years, no one has done more damage to communism than this Pole."
Original Text (Eng.)"In the last forty years, there has been more damage to communism than that of Pole."- cia.gov "A Look Back ... A Cold War Hero: Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski" [10]
Kuklinsky was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal which was awarded only for outstanding services to the CIA and the United States. Moreover, Kuklinsky became the first non-citizen of the USA to receive this award [10] .
In May 1984, Kuklinsky was sentenced in absentia by a military court to the death penalty. In 1989, the death sentence was commuted to 25 years in prison. In 1995, the Warsaw court fully acquitted Kuklinsky, concluding that the Polish colonel acted in accordance with the conditions of the Cold War and for the sake of the interests of his country. In spring 1998, Kuklinsky was able to come to Poland.
On February 11, 2004, Ryshard Kuklinsky died of a stroke at the age of 73 in Florida. The CIA organized a funeral mass held March 30, 2004 at Fort Myer at Arlington National Cemetery . The colonel's body was transported to Poland, where he was buried with honors at the Warsaw military cemetery on June 19, 2004 [10] [7] .
Possible work on the GRU USSR
There is a version that Ryshard Kuklinsky was a double agent who worked for the Main Intelligence Directorate of the USSR . [11] This was directly stated by the former USSR military attache in Poland, Yuri Rylev . [12] A similar opinion was shared by the historian Pavel Vechorkevich and General Franziszek Pukhala, deputy chief of the General Staff of the Polish Army [13] . This possibility was indicated by Cheslav Kischak, the former Minister of Internal Affairs of the Polish People’s Republic. [14]
Politician and lawyer Vladislav Sila Novitsky predicts that the PNR special services deliberately released Kuklinsky from the country in order to inform the US authorities about plans to impose martial law and the possibility of Soviet intervention in order to avoid unpredictable US behavior in the situation that had arisen.
The work on socialist intelligence is indirectly indicated by the good material security of Kuklinsky during his service in the Polish Army, as well as the fact that after his escape, the Soviet side did not take measures regarding Cheslav Kyszczak, who was responsible for the activities of Polish intelligence.
A number of historians emphasize that Kuklinsky’s awareness is greatly exaggerated. In particular, he could not have known the plans of the USSR, since Polish officers did not have access to them.
Attitude towards Kuklinsky in Poland
Having become perhaps the most famous Polish CIA agent, Ryszard Kuklinsky caused and causes the most contradictory feelings in his historic homeland. A 1998 poll, for example, showed that at that time 34% of Poles considered the colonel a traitor, 29% were a hero, and the rest could not decide their opinion [15] .
In 1997, the left-wing newspaper of the Trybuna wrote directly that “Colonel Ryszard Kuklinsky is a spy, deserter and traitor whom the right-wing forces have turned into a national hero” [16] .
In the same 1997, US President Bill Clinton put forward the rehabilitation of Ryszard Kuklinsky as one of the conditions for the admission of Poland to NATO. [17]
After his death, Kuklinsky became an honorary resident of several large Polish cities, including Gdansk and Krakow . The Polish political association “Center” appealed to the president in 2004 with the proposal to assign Kuklinsky the rank of general posthumously. On September 2, 2016, the President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda on the proposal of the Minister of Defense Anthony Matserevich posthumously awarded Kuklinsky the rank of brigadier general [1] .
Since 2006, Kuklinsky’s bust in Kraków has been vandalized three times [18] [19] [20] .
On the biography of Kuklinsky in 2014, the film “ Jack Strong ".
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 Andrzej Duda nominował pośmiertnie płk. Ryszarda Kuklińskiego na stopień generała
- ↑ Benjamin B. Fischer. The First Polish Officer in NATO . Central Intelligence Agency (April 14, 2007). - “ Notes: Warsaw PAP in English, 2148 GMT, September 27, 1992”. The appeal date is October 16, 2012.
- ↑ Rodney Carlisle. books.google.com "Encyclopedia of Intelligence and Counterintelligence" . The appeal date is June 25, 2015.
- ↑ pacwashmetrodiv.org "Keynote address by Zbigniew Brzeziński at the Memorial Evening honoring Col. Ryszard Kukliński » . The appeal date is June 25, 2015.
- Per Rupert Cornwell, Ryszard Kuklinski: Cold War spy for the West Archive dated June 24, 2010 on The Wayback Machine The Independent 13 February 2004. Cached by info-poland.buffalo.edu.
- ↑ Marat Miklszewski, “Colonel Kuklinski Speaks!”, Tygodnik Solidarność , 9 December 1994, p. 12
- ↑ 1 2 coldwarsites.net “The Baltic initiative and network” . The appeal date is June 25, 2015.
- ↑ by Radek Sikorski. nationalreview.com "From the April 19, 2004, issue of National Review." (June 1, 2004 9:08 AM). The appeal date is June 25, 2015.
- ↑ The Vilification and Vindication of Colonel Kuklinski (English) . The appeal date is June 20, 2015.
- 2 1 2 3 cia.gov "A Look Back ... A Cold War Hero: Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski" (Eng.) . The appeal date is June 20, 2015.
- ↑ Kukliński: fakty przeczą mitom
- ↑ Mazurka ... to the battle of the Kremlin Chimes
- Franciszek Puchała: Pułkownika Kuklińskiego udział w grze wywiadów wielkich mocarstw, Przegląd Historyczno-Wojskowy nr 4 (242) z 2012 r., S. 164-184.
- ↑ Paweł Wieczorkiewicz, Justyna Błażejowska: Przez Polskę Ludową na przełaj i na przekór. Poznan: Zysk i S-ka, 2011.
- ↑ Jane Perlez, "Spy Records Passing Data to CIA," The New York Times , April 30, 1998
- ↑ Mieczyclaw Wodzicki, “Treason Rewarded; 'Learn from This, Poles,' » Trybuna , September 25, 1997, p. five
- ↑ Benjamin Weiser, His Covert Mission, His Country Conversion (PublicAffairs, 2005).
- ↑ Kukliński's monument devastated once again. Prosecutors are helpless Unsolved . Wprost (February 13, 2012). The appeal date is August 17, 2012.
- ↑ Kukliński's monument in Krakow devastated once again! Rmf24 . The appeal date is August 17, 2012.
- ↑ Kraków: zdewastowano popiersie płk. Ryszarda Kuklińskiego
Links
- The Political and Moral Dilemma by Jolanta JABŁOŃSKA-GRUCA -, Oslo, Norway, in Dylemat polityczny i moralny. (polish)
- cia.gov "The Vilification and Vindication of Colonel Kuklinski" Benjamin B. Fischer (Eng.)