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Prime Minister Belka admits he signed collaboration document, but denies spying

Prime Minister Marek Belka made his communist secret police file public in a bid to show that he never collaborated, even though he admits he signed an agreement to spy.

President Aleksandr Kwaśniewski, a former Communist who has packed his government with secret police collaborators, says there is no reason for Belka to resign.

There is no evidence Belka ever served as a secret police collaborator. However, Polish news reports show that Belka did secretly sign an agreement to inform for the Jaruzelski regime.

Balka admits he signed the agreement 20 years ago, but called it a pro forma paper that any scholar or professional who traveled abroad under the Soviet-controlled regime. "I have signed the instruction and I didn't make a secret of it. But I did not treat it as a commitment to cooperate with secret services," he said, according to the Warsaw Business Journal.

Communists forged his file, Belka says

Insisting he is innocent of ever collaborating with the communist secret police, Prime Minister Marek Belka says that the chekists themselves forged the material in his 70-page file.

"The file the media is talking about isn’t mine, its full of documents fabricated by the communist secret service," Radio Polonia reports him as saying. "In legal terms, the whole matter makes a mockery of the law and my vetting case is closed."

The issue is a tricky one for all involved. The Communists were notorious for writing exaggerated and completely false reports in individuals' files, and many people across the former Soviet empire of Central and Eastern Europe were falsely accused when their files were made public.

For well over a decade, Polish politicians - especially the former communists - fought the creation of a lustration process that would handle the secret police archives in a legal and confidential manner, while screening out certain categories of collaborators with the former Soviet-controlled regime.

BBC: Belka lied

The BBC reports that Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka "lied when he said he did not sign anything agreeing to co-operate with the secret services."

Prior to visiting the United States in 1984, according to the Associated Press, Belka signed a document agreeing to inform the Soviet-controlled security and intelligence service if US intelligence officers approached him and to seek "potential informers" for the military regime of Wojciech Jaruzelski.

Poland's state-controlled PAP "news" agency says it saw Belka's classified file and that a final report says Belka gave the regime "no important information." He said he had been cleared of the charge by a special ombudsman and he considered the matter closed.

"It is sure that Belka signed a document agreeing to collaborate," said Donald Tusk of the opposition Civic Platform, According to Tusk, such an invididual "should not hold the post of prime minister."

Collaboration now a 'hot issue' in Poland, BBC says

"Any hint of collaboration with the communist secret police is the hot political issue now," the BBC's Adam Easton reports from Warsaw.

Belka says he might quit politics after secret police allegations

Facing near-certin political minority status after the upcoming elections, Prime Minister Marek Belka tells a radio station that he may resign from politics and withdraw from public life.

The Warsaw Business Journal, citing Rzeczpospolita and Gazeta Wyborcza, offers another insight: "One of the most probable reasons behind such an announcement from the Prime Minister is the issue of his file in the National Remembrance Institute (IPN) which was revealed to the Sejm Orlen Commission last week. Following allegations that Belka signed documents with the communist secret services, IPN president Leon Kieres is now considering whether to reveal the contents of the file to the public."

This blog appears twice in top 20 Google searches

This blog appears twice in Google's top 20 search results for the name "Szlajfer," concerning the controversy about the former communists picking a former secret police collaborator by that name as Poland's next ambassador to the United States.

COLLABORATION CONFIRMED: Szlajfer withdraws ambassador candidacy

Henryk Szlajfer has quit his candidacy to become Poland's ambassador to the United States after the Polish Institute of National Remembrance confirmed he was a secret police collaborator in the 1970s who spied on his friends.

Szlajfer continues to protest the allegations, which our companion blog, Fourth World War, first reported in the US on April 30.

Poland's Wiadomosci TV program reported Szlajfer's withdrawal on June 13, using images from this blog in its story. It also used images of documents from the Institute of National Remembrance, known by its Polish initials IPN.

The IPN announced that Szlajfer was an "operational contact" (kontakt operacyjny) in the 1970s with the cryptonym "Albin."

Szlajfer denies all, saying he would appeal the IPN court ruling. Even so, and despite approval from the Foreign Relations Committee of Poland's lower house of parliament and from the US State Department, he immediately withdrew as ambassador-designate to Washington.

This blog, Polish Collaborators, was created to cover the controversy that followed the original Szlajfer story on Fourth World War.

Institute denied Szlajfer victim status on June 9

Poland's Institute of National Remembrance denied Henryk Szlajfer "the status of a wronged person," or victim of communism, on June 9, according to Rzeczpospolita.

A BBC translation of the Rzeczpospolita article appears here.

Prime Minister: Decision on Szlajfer to come 'soon'

An official decision on what to do about ambassador-designate Henryk Szlajfer is coming "soon," after President Aleksandr Kwasniewski and Prime Minister Marek Belka review the controversy, the Associated Press reports from Warsaw.

According to AP, "allegations of communist-era collaboration have cast doubt over the pending appointment of Poland's new ambassador to the United States, the Foreign Ministry said" on July 14.

Prime Minister Belka told reporters that an official decision on Szlajfer will bome "soon."

Szlajfer asked Foreign Minister Adam Rotfeld to "review" his nomination, in the words of AP, "after public allegations that in the 1970s he was a secret informer for the communist security forces."

IPN: Szlajfer spied on his friends Michnik & others

Disgraced former ambassador-designate Henryk Szlajfer, whose collaboration with the communist secret police was confirmed June 14, spied on his fellow "dissident" friends Adam Michnik, Jacek Kuron, Karol Modzelewski and others, according to Polish television.

Michnik's "dissident" activity was as a Communist of the Leon Trotsky strain, and under which Szlajfer gained his credentials as an opponent of Soviet rule. He and the others later drifted away from Trotskyism.

The Trotskyists opposed Poland's democratic and Christian underground movements that led to the rise of the Solidarity trade union and Pope John Paul II.

Wiadomosci TV program reports that Szlajfer "refused" victim-of-communism status that would have exonerated him of incriminating allegations in the Soviet-era archives.

Critics of this blog, including a former US ambassador, accused the blogger of Soviet-like behavior when breaking the story about Szlajfer and his Trotskyist past. (Editors: Keep in mind that the Soviets used the pejorative "Trotskyite" when describing disciples of Red Army founder Leon Trotsky, whom Stalin assassinated in 1940.)

Szlajfer never used victim status in his defense, and denies everything.

US Embassy in Warsaw wants another left-liberal to replace Szlajfer

Why does the State Department persist in warming to the Left?

With admitted secret police collaborator Henryk Szlajfer quitting his all-but-certain appointment as ambassador to the United States, it appears that the US Embassy in Warsaw is quietly pushing for another left-liberal to take his place: Jerzy Kozminski, who served as Poland's envoy in Washington during the Clinton administration.

Kozminski currently has a cushy job heading a US-sponsored foundation in Poland, raking in a salary of more than $100,000 a year - by Polish standards a fortune - and some doubt that he will accept the post. Others are betting that he will, anticipating an electoral victory of conservative and center-right political parties in the upcoming parliamentary presidential elections. Then, Polish observers say, Kozminski will be out of his foundation job - but if the former Communists can name him ambassador before the elections, he will be set for the next few years.

Documents show Jaruzelski also snitched on fellow officers

After being recruited as an agent of Soviet GRU military intelligence, Poland's future dictator Wojciech Jaruzelski spied on his fellow officers, according to a document from the Stasi of the former East Germany.

As this blog reported on June 8, Jaruzelski joined Stalin's GRU legion in 1946.

This blogger has since learned that a Stasi report generated on March 14, 1986 showed that Captain Czeslaw Kiszczak recruited Jaruzelski in 1952 to snitch on his friends and colleagues at the General Staff Academy.

When ruling Poland under martial law in the 1980s, Jaruzelski named his former recruiter, now-General Kiszczak, to be his Minister of Internal Affairs.

Jaruzelski agreed to betray his military comrades apparently while the Communist military leadership had sought to purge him for his "bourgeous roots." The Stasi material indicates that Kiszczak saved his career by showing proof of Jaruzelski's faithful service to the Soviet Union's Josef Stalin.

Stalin died in early 1953. Russian strongman Vladimir Putin decorated Jaruzelski in May, 2005, for his World War II service to the Soviet cause.

Traitor: Archives show Jaruzelski was Soviet GRU agent

Former Polish dicator Wojciech Jaruzelski, the military general whose imposition of martial law in 1981 failed to snuff out the pro-freedom movement in his country, was an agent of Soviet GRU military intelligence, archives show.

News of his secret collaboration with Stalin comes after the 81 year-old Jaruzelski said he wanted to set up a "truth commission" with former Solidarity leader and Polish President Lech Walesa to serve as an "independent" and "objective" platform for researching the country's troubled history.

He didn't like Walesa's proposal to have a commission under the control of the National Remembrance Institute, which looks unfavorably on the decades of Soviet rule.

Jaruzelski became a GRU agent shortly after World War II ended but before his country was under total Soviet control, according to remnants of his file which Polish researchers recently discovered.

According to the file, the GRU formally recruited Jaruzelski, whose cryptonym was "Wolski," on March 23, 1946.

As with many Soviet files, the name is misspelled, but according to Polish sources the file is definitely that of the former dictator. Jaruzelski's name is misspelled According to a biographical note compiled by an intelligence officer, Jaruzelski "Jeruzelski Wojciech."

The GRU termed Jaruzelski "a good secret collaborator, fit to be a resident" (dobry tajny współpracownik, nadający się na rezydenta).

A "resident" or rezident, in Soviet jargon, is head of a "residency" (rezidentura), the chief of a KGB or GRU station abroad. The use of the word in the Jaruzelski file appears to refer to him as a potential leader of other secret collaborators.

The Soviets physically ran Polish military intelligence (Informacja Wojskowa) at the time, using GRU and Chekist officers, and essential documents in the nominally Polish service were generally written in Russian.

Despite the enthusiasm with which the US wishes to embrace Poland as one of the most reliable of NATO allies, the failure of Poland to de-Sovietize the current WSW military intelligence service presents continued, if unspoken, confidence problems.

It is unclear when - if ever - Jaruzelski stopped being a Soviet GRU agent.

Jaruzelski angry that Poles question his patriotism

"Suggestions that [Jaruzelski] is anything but a [Polish] patriot provoke a quick and angry reaction" from the longtime Soviet collaborator, the Associated Press reports.

Before the recent news that Jaruzelski's communist-era archive show that he became a secret collaborator with Stalin's GRU military intelligence in 1946, the former dictator made headlines of his own in Russia when

Since his seizure of power in 1981, Jaruzelski claimed he acted not as a repressor of his people or traitor to his country, but as a selfless patriot to prevent a Soviet invasion during the political disintegration of the Polish communist party.

Jaruzelski joined the Soviet-controlled Polish resistance army during World War II after he and his family were deported to Siberia, where his father died. Despite what the Soviets did to his family, Jaruzelski continued after the war as a servant of Stalin.

Patriotic Poles joined the democratic resistance army allied with the British and the United States.

AP reported on May 23 that "lashed out at the most recent attack against him – a threat by right-wing politicians to strip him of his general's rank and pension for behavior they deemed too pro-Moscow during his visit to Russia for the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II."

In the mid-1990s, the Polish parliament cleared Jaruzelski of having violated the constitution by overthrowing the civilian communist regime and placing the country under his military rule. The parliament was dominated by former communists who had their own Soviet collaboration to account for. It passed laws making it a crime to reveal the identities of people who secretly collaborated with Stalin and his successors during the Soviet occupation.

Jaruzelski is now on trial - stalled in a legal system that remains corrupted by collaborationist judges - for the 1970 killings of shipyard workers, when he ran the military as defense minister.

Putin gave medal to Jaruzelski for collaborationist service

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin presented former Polish dictator Wojciech Jaruzelski with a World War II service medal during the celebration of the 60th anniversary of V-E Day.

While in Moscow receiving the Kremlin award, Jaruzelski gave interviews with the Russian media recalling his family's deportation to Siberia during the Stalin years, and, according to AP, "was quoted recalling the 'warmth of the Siberian soil.'"

AP reported on May 23, "Jaruzelski says he was quoted out of context, his voice quivering with anger at accusations that his loyalties were and remain with Moscow rather than with his own people."

"'This is such wickedness,' he said, his voice rising with emotion. 'Such a big problem was made of this, that I am not worthy of the name of a Pole.'"

Warsaw mayor calls on Jaruzelski to be stripped of his rank as a traitor

The mayor of Warsaw has called on former dictator Wojciech Jaruzelski to be stripped of his rank for his collaboration with the Soviet forces that invaded and occupied Poland, and condemned the country to two generations of communist rule.

Lech Kaczynski made the call after Russian President Vladimir Putin decorated Jaruzelski for his former services, and after Jaruzelski was quoted as warmly recalling the years he spent in Siberia.

Jaruzelski bitterly denounced the Warsaw mayor's allegation of treason, calling it "very painful" and a "moral punishment."

It's good to see that Poland still has truth-telling leaders like Kaczynski who won't cover up for the treason and other crimes of their countrymen.

"This is very painful," Jaruzelski said after Kaczynski's comment in May. "I have grown used to the [attacks] for martial law and the other things," he said, but added that it is intolerable to hear Lech Kaczynski say that "Russia is more my motherland than Poland and his brother calls me a traitor."

"Let them charge me for martial law, for other things, but this. . . ." AP quoted Jaruzelski as saying. "If someone is considered a traitor of the nation, this is not a physical, but a moral punishment."

It's about time.