Ryszard Kuklinski

He was born in Warsaw in a working class family with socialist traditions. His father was a member of the resistance during World War II--he died in the Sachsenhausen camp. After the war, Kukliński started a successful career in the (communist) Polish People's Army. He took part in the preparations for the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. After the December 1970 massacre of Polish workers in Gdansk by communist forces, he contacted the CIA and offered his services as a spy (according to another version, he was approached by the CIA in Vietnam as early as 1967). Between 1971 and 1981 he passed 35 thousand pages of mostly Russian secret documents to the CIA. The documents described Moscow's strategic plans regarding the use of nuclear weapons, technical data about the T-72 tank and Strela-1 missiles, the distribution of Russian anti-aircraft bases in Poland and East Germany, the methods used by the Russians to avoid spy satellite detection of their military hardware, and many others.

Facing imminent danger of discovery, Kukliński was extracted from Poland by the CIA shortly before the imposition of the martial law in December 1981. Three years later, on May 23, 1984 he was sentenced to death, in absentia, by a secret military court in Warsaw. After the fall of communism, the verdict has been voided. He was able to revisit Poland in April of 1998.

Kukliński remains a very controversial figure for most Poles. He is considered a national hero by some, and a traitor by others.

References

• A Secret Life: The Polish Officer, His Covert Mission, and the Price He Paid to Save His Country, by Benjamin Weiser. ISBN 1891620541

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