A Secret Life (50 page)
Authors: Benjamin Weiser
Tags: #History, #Europe, #Germany, #World, #True Crime, #Espionage
Later, as Ambassador Kozminski drove with Miller to Dulles International Airport for his flight home, they agreed the matter should be resolved quickly. There was to be a NATO summit in Madrid that summer, where official invitations were to be issued to prospective candidates for NATO membership. The Kuklinski case should not become an impediment.
Brzezinski was aware that Kuklinski might balk at the deal, but later, when they spoke by phone, Kuklinski agreed to meet the prosecutors in Washington. He was sixty-six years old and felt it might be his only chance to have his name cleared during his lifetime. “I wanted to witness this moment,” he said.
Over the next few weeks, Brzezinski, Miller, and Kozminski worked out detailed arrangements for the meetings, which would take place in Brzezinski’s office. Brzezinski insisted that the prosecutors treat Kuklinski with respect and address him as “Colonel.”
Meanwhile, in late February 1997, unaware of the efforts being made on Kuklinski’s behalf, former U.S. Ambassador Richard Davies published an essay in the
Washington Times
charging that the administration had relegated Kuklinski “to the memory hole.” He wrote, “We owe it to Col. Kuklinski to help him get back his good name and enable him, without fear of arrest and imprisonment, to visit the homeland he served so valiantly.”
Washington Times
charging that the administration had relegated Kuklinski “to the memory hole.” He wrote, “We owe it to Col. Kuklinski to help him get back his good name and enable him, without fear of arrest and imprisonment, to visit the homeland he served so valiantly.”
Daniel Fried, a senior White House aide who had previously served in the embassy in Warsaw as a political officer, had given the Kuklinski issue much thought. Fried was special assistant to President Clinton and senior director on the National Security Council for central and eastern Europe. He was deeply involved in the effort to expand NATO and knew Brzezinski was pushing for a resolution of Kuklinski’s case. Fried agreed Kuklinski should be exonerated, but felt that too much pressure by the U.S. government could be counterproductive and appear arrogant. The case raised the same question other honorable Poles had faced for hundreds of years as the country’s borders had shifted: Does one serve the occupying power because it has a Polish flag and wait for a better time? Or does one resist? Fried understood why Polish officers had difficulty embracing Kuklinski’s actions as patriotic, because of what that suggested about their decisions not to collaborate with the West. But Fried also believed honest Poles could differ about how to serve one’s country, and the issue ultimately had to be worked out by the Poles. An ultimatum by the U.S. government would not help Kuklinski. Brzezinski’s unofficial efforts seemed to be the best route, Fried felt, and he hoped the case might evolve from being a divisive issue in Poland to one of national reconciliation.
Over the next few weeks, Ambassador Kozminski stayed in touch with Miller in Warsaw and Brzezinski in Washington, working out the details of the interrogation of Kuklinski. Their efforts resembled a clandestine operation: Kozminski, fearing that a leak in Warsaw about their activities could doom their undertaking, put nothing in writing in the official cables he sent home. Instead, he spoke with Miller by phone, and the two men used code words such as “our friend” for Kuklinski, “the travelers” for the prosecutors, “head” for President Kwasniewski, and “the professor” for Brzezinski.
On March 10, 1997, Ambassador Kozminski gave a talk on Poland and NATO to a lunch meeting of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers in Fort Myer, Virginia. During a question-and-answer session, a retired CIA officer asked the ambassador when Poland would resolve Kuklinski’s case.
Saying he was speaking only for himself, Kozminski offered cautious optimism. Afterward, the retired officer took Kozminski aside and asked more bluntly whether the Polish government had the resolve to confront the issue.
The questioner was David Forden. He introduced himself to Kozminski, and they discussed the case further. In their private conversation, Kozminski expressed more confidence about the likelihood of progress. Forden thanked him and said he would take Kozminski’s statements as a pledge that the ambassador would continue to work on Kuklinski’s behalf.
Forden, also then sixty-six years old, was no longer in the CIA. He and Aurelia had spent four years in Greece, after which Forden retired in 1988. He had been with the CIA for thirty-five years.
Within weeks of meeting Ambassador Kozminski, Forden learned from Kuklinski about the coming visit of the Polish prosecutors. He also learned that the CIA was not providing security. Forden was concerned, because it would be the first time since Kuklinski’s exfiltration that Polish officials would know the colonel’s precise location in the United States. Forden called another retired officer, Jack Platt, who had served with the agency in Europe and Asia. They decided to devise their own rudimentary security plan. They scouted the K Street building where Brzezinski’s offices were located. They found a stocky six-foot retired FBI agent, whose forearms seemed as large as Platt’s thighs, to serve as a bodyguard for Kuklinski. Forden and Aurelia (who had learned surveillance detection techniques during their four-year tour in Greece) and Platt’s daughter Michelle, a private investigator, would remain on the street. They would drive Kuklinski to and from the meetings, ensure that he entered and left the building through a different door each day, and watch for suspicious activity, such as cars that might be parked with their engines running.
Ambassador Kozminski, following the plan, had kept the prosecutors’ visit secret from even his Polish Embassy colleagues. On Sunday, April 20, he drove to Dulles Airport to pick up the prosecutors and took them for a drink at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Washington’s Embassy Row neighborhood. The prosecutors, Major Bogdan Wlodarczyk and Captain Jerzy Kwiecinski, were polite but reserved. Despite his anxiety, Kozminski was excited―he had never met the colonel.
Shortly before 4:00 P.M. on Monday, April 21, 1997, Kuklinski arrived at Brzezinski’s office, accompanied by an elderly Polish-American lawyer and the retired FBI agent, who bustled around and maintained radio contact with the rest of the security team outside. Brzezinski escorted them straight to a sixth-floor seminar room and planted the retired FBI agent outside the door. Brzezinski then went to his office, where he met Ambassador Kozminski and the two prosecutors, Major Wlodarczyk and Captain Kwiecinski.
The prosecutors seemed nervous and stiff. As they shook hands with Brzezinski, Captain Kwiecinski clicked his heels. Before escorting them to the seminar room, Brzezinski discussed with them the significance of the proceedings. “They nodded their heads but they were not very communicative, each of them conveying a great deal of unease,” Brzezinski wrote in notes he kept of the session.
The group convened in the seminar room, and introductions were made. Captain Kwiecinski shook Kuklinski’s hand, clicked his heels again, and bowed his head. As promised, he and the other prosecutor addressed Kuklinski as “Colonel.” Kozminski and Brzezinski, as the official witnesses to the proceeding, sat at opposite ends of a large table. Kuklinski and his lawyer sat on one side, facing the prosecutors on the other.
After a few words of introduction from Ambassador Kozminski, Major Wlodarczyk began to read the formal allegations―desertion and flight and transmitting classified information to NATO. Kuklinski sat impassively as the prosecutor reviewed the earlier 1984 trial, the conviction, the reduction of Kuklinski’s death sentence to twenty-five years, and the 1995 military appeals court decision voiding the conviction and sending the case back for more investigation.
Major Wlodarczyk said that for the previous accusations to be invalidated permanently, Kuklinski would have to offer evidence and testimony that he had acted out of higher necessity. To Ambassador Kozminski, the notion of Kuklinski’s acting out of “higher necessity,” a concept in Polish law, seemed a reasonable way to allow him to be exonerated.
The two prosecutors stressed that they had been required to review the history of the case in order to make the proceedings formal. They continued, one interrupting the other, as they emphasized that the procedure was voluntary, that Kuklinski did not have to answer all their questions, and if he decided to remain silent, that would not be held against him. Then Captain Kwiecinski sighed loudly, as if he was embarrassed to have to explain this to Kuklinski.
They asked Kuklinski to sign a document acknowledging that he was willing to go forward with the interrogation. Kuklinski, feeling a surge of disgust, was hesitant at first, but went ahead and signed.
At that moment, Major Wlodarczyk, smiling broadly, handed Kuklinski a piece of paper that said the Ministry of Defense had restored his rank as colonel and considered him to be a colonel in retirement.
Kuklinski appeared surprised and then relaxed. He told the prosecutors that he assumed they would be objective, and that he wanted the issue resolved.
The prosecutors assured Kuklinski that neither of them had participated in the earlier trial or the investigation of him, nor were they involved in the martial-law crackdown. Kuklinski said he would answer any question, but he considered the allegations to be “repulsive.”
At 5:00 P.M., the formal interrogation began with a series of questions. They asked for his current employment. Before Kuklinski could respond, the major spoke up. “If you do not mind, we will simply say that you are ‘retired.’”
Brzezinski continued to take careful notes. At one point, he observed, both prosecutors burst into laughter, as the questionnaire asked whether Kuklinski was a Communist Party member. With some embarrassment, the prosecutors explained they were using old questionnaires. Because of costs, the government had not printed new ones.
According to Brzezinski’s notes:Kuklinski was then asked formally whether he wishes to offer any explanations. He responded by saying yes, and addressed first the question of “desertion.” He said that his departure was not made by his free choice, but he was compelled by circumstances. He wanted to deprive the regime of the opportunity to put him on trial, and to use him in order also to embarrass the Solidarity movement, which he felt would have been the case had he been arrested and placed publicly on trial.With respect to the more important accusation, he wishes to stress that Poland was dominated by an imperial Soviet Union, the Soviet Union subordinated the Polish armed forces to itself; the world was divided and Poland was not given the opportunity to choose freely its own place in a divided world. But the Polish nation never abandoned its aspiration for freedom. Polish soldiers always desired independence from Soviet command, and his efforts involved an attempt to establish some connection between the Polish Army and the U.S. Army.
Kuklinski then offered a detailed description of Moscow’s war plans for Europe and how they posed “a major threat to Poland’s survival.”
He described the role of the Second Strategic Echelon. “The Soviets were calculating that any nuclear counterattacks by the West against the second echelon of the Soviet forces would occur on Polish soil,” Kuklinski explained. He said he was convinced that “Poland would perish” in such a sequence of events. He explained that other officers on the General Staff shared his view, but had no idea what to do. He mentioned his long-ago conversation with General Boleslaw Chocha, when he had suggested a “direct approach should be made to the American side regarding that danger and the Polish concerns over it.”
The meetings resumed the next day at 8:10 A.M. Kuklinski recalled how he had first contacted the United States, sending his letter to the American military attaché in Bonn and asking to meet with a colonel of similar rank. In the first meetings, he had believed he was talking with American Army officers. He had told them he represented a group of about ten Polish officers who shared his views about the need to establish communication with the West in order to prevent the outbreak of war in Europe, although none was aware of his decision to reach out to the Americans. “These officers feel that Poland did not choose the Warsaw Pact, that Poland was not independent, and that they should do what can be done for Poland,” Kuklinski said, according to Brzezinski’s notes. “If the Warsaw Pact was attacked by the West, Poland would defend itself within the Warsaw Pact, but it was not in Poland’s interest to participate in an aggression against the West.”
Kuklinski criticized the West’s reliance on nuclear deterrence, which had placed Poland in such jeopardy. He explained how he had hoped some form of cooperation could be secretly negotiated between the Poles and the American Army, perhaps to “exclude Poland’s participation from the very beginning of the war, or to act jointly to disorganize and paralyze the Soviet strategic operation, particularly the Second Strategic Echelon and to disrupt its system of command, once war has broken out,” Brzezinski wrote.
Kuklinski said that when he had proposed his “conspiracy,” the Americans had not agreed to it, saying the “best Polish officers” would lose their lives. The Americans had wanted to work with him exclusively, Kuklinski said. He described how he had shown up at the first covert meeting in Warsaw in full uniform, appalling his American contact, who asked that he dress less conspicuously the next time.
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