Warsaw Pact - Treaty of Friensdhip, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance

7/31/2019 Warsaw Pact - Treaty of Friensdhip, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance

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1955 - 1991

SOVIET - EAST EUROPEAN

MILIARY RELAIONS IN HISORICAL PERSPECIVE

SOURCES AND REASSESSMENS

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Soviet Union

albania

poland

romania

hUngary

eaSt germany

czechoSlovakia

bUlgaria

THE WARSAW PACT 1955 - 1991

2 | the warsaw pact - treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance


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ableofC

ontents

Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance

soViet east european military relations in historical perspectiVe sources and reassessments | 3

Sponsorship 4

Seminar 6

Declassifed Cold War Records 7

FOIA Electronic Reading Room 8

Special Collections 10

Te Kuklinski Material 15

Te Kuklinski Files 16

Comment on Dr. Kramer 39

Te Warsaw Calendernote 41


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IN

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SPONSORSHIP

(U) Te Historical Collections Division (HCD) o the Oce o Inormation Management Services is responsible or executing theCIAs Historical Review Program. Tis program seeks to identiy, collect, and review or possible release to the public signicanthistorical inormation. Te mission o HCD is to:

Provide an accurate, objective understanding o the inormation and intelligence that has helped shape the oundation o major USpolicy decisions.

Improve access to lessons learned, presenting historical material to emphasize the scope and context o past actions.

Improve current decision-making and analysis by acil itating reection on the impacts and efects arising rom past decisions.

Uphold Agency leadership commitments to openness, while protecting the nat ional security interests o the US.

Provide the American public with valuable insight into the workings o their Government.

Harvard possesses a wealth o resources needed to pursue the advanced study o the experiences and problems o Russia and Eurasia-among them, teaching aculty in many o the relevant departments and the most complete Slavic library holdings o any Westernuniversity.

Te primary objectives o the Davis Center are to participate in the development o these resources, to provide direct services thatallow scholars to make efective use o them, to create an environment that encourages intellectual exchange and innovation, and topromote the training o graduates and undergraduates in this eld.

Joining the Harvard aculty in these eforts are Visit ing Scholars, Post-Doctoral Fellows, Senior Fel lows, Regional Fellows, andCenter Associates rom the Boston area and around the world.

Te Harvard Project on Cold War Studies promotes archival research in ormer East-bloc countries and seeks to expand and enrichwhat is known about Cold War events and themes. More important, it encourages scholars and students to use their research onCold War topics to illuminate current theoretical debates about international and domestic politics. One o the chie means oaccomplishing these goals is the sponsorship o scholarly publications, including the Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series and thepeer-reviewed Journal o Cold War Studies

Te Harvard Project on Cold War Studies promotes archival research in ormer East-bloc countries and seeks to expand and enrich

what is known about Cold War events and themes. More important, it encourages scholars and students to use their research onCold War topics to illuminate current theoretical debates about international and domestic politics. One o the chie means oaccomplishing these goals is the sponsorship o scholarly publications, including the Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series and thepeer-reviewed Journal o Cold War Studies




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Bulgaria

U . S . S . R

Romania

Hungary

slovakia

Poland

EastGermany

Czecho-

Albania

Moscow

Black Sea

Nor th

At lant i cOcean

North

Sea

Medi te rranean Sea

Barents

Sea

Norwegian Sea

Baltic Sea

CaspianSea

Boundary representation isnot necessarily authoritative.

0 500 Kilometers

0 500 Miles

Warsaw Pact Countries, 1955-91 (U)

UNCLASSIFIED 788399AI (G00112) 10-09

Warsaw Pact

Albania*BulgariaCzechoslovakiaEast Germany

HungaryPolandRomaniaU.S.S.R.

*Albania withheld support in1961 over the China split andofficially withdrew in 1968.




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ABOU HE SEMINAR

Soviet-Eastern European Military Relations in Historical Perspective;

Sources and Reassessments.

Ater Communist regimes in Eastern Europe collapsed twenty years ago and the Soviet Union disintegrated two years later,immense opportunities or archival research opened. Even though serious obstacles to archival work have persisted in Russia(which houses the central repositories o the Soviet regime), the archives o nearly all o the ormer Warsaw Pact countries arenow ully or at least largely open. As a result, scholars have been able to explore many aspects o the Warsaw Pact that couldonly be guessed at in the past, including questions o military planning, orce preparations and operations, nuclear commandarrangements, and civil-military issues.

Tis seminar is designed to take stock o where we are twenty years ater the collapse o East European Communism. Whatsources have become, or soon will be, available? o what extent have scholars actually been making use o the immense amounto inormation now available? How have the newly available documents changed our understanding o the Warsaw Pact? Whatquestions can we now answer more condently? What are some o the major points that are sti ll unknown? How big a hindranceis pose by the continued problems with archival including documents being declassied by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency,

altered our understanding o the Warsaw Pact?

Tis seminar is intended to raise questions as well as to provide some tentative answers. We hope to highlight uture directions orresearch and or the release o documents. Most o all, we hope to discuss how our understanding o Soviet-East European militaryrelations has evolved over the past twenty years.




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DECLASSIFIED COLD WAR RECORDS

Te CIAs Historical Review Program (HRP)--managed by the Historical Collections Division (HCD) in InormationManagement Services--is responsible or the declassication review and release o documents detail ing the Agencys analysis andactivities relating to historically signicant topics and events. racing its roots back to 1985, the HRP was established as anoutcome o congressional discussions that resulted in the passage o the CIA Inormation Act o 1984. Te mission o the HRP is

to showcase CIAs national security contributions, provide an accurate, objective understanding o the intelligence that has helpedshape the oundation o major policy decisions, and release, to the broadest audience possible, inormation that is not otherwisesubject to legally required review.

Te Historical Collections Division (HCD) o CIAs Inormation Management Services is responsible or executing the AgencysHistorical Review Program. Tis program seeks to identiy, collect, and review or possible release to the public documents osignicant historical importance.

Te mission o HCD is to:

Promote an accurate, objective understanding o the inormation and intelligence that has helped shape the oundationo major US policy decisions.

Broaden access to lessons learned, presenting historical material to emphasize the scope and context o past actions.

Improve current decision-making and analysis by acilitating reection on the impacts and efects arising rom pastdecisions.

Uphold Agency leadership commitments to openness, while protecting the national security interests o the US.

Provide the American public with valuable insight into the workings o the Government.

Te Historical Collection Division puts together a collection o documents that tell a story. Tis process provides a selectivedeclassication o materials that CIA believes would be o signicant historical interest. Examples o collections releasedinclude Soviet Finished Intelligence (Princeton Conerence February 2001), Soviet NIEs, CAESAR, ESAU, POLO documents,Guatemala, and Kuklinski material.

Te ollowing pages point to various locations where declassied Cold War documents rom CIA les reside. Te CIA FOIA site

is the rst place to visit at http://www.oia.cia.gov. Several collections which interest Cold War specia list are highlighted.

Te National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is a treasure trove o CIA material. Te CIA 25-year declassicationprogram has accessioned a variety o record collections to NARA; those collections include textual and multi-media records thatare part o NARA's record group 263. In addition, the CIA 25-year program provides the public at NARA with access to a stand-alone computer system called the CIA Record Search ool (CRES) that contains a searchable electronic record o documentsdeclassied by that program since 1999. Te CRES system currently contains 10.5 million pages o declassied material and isupdated periodically with newly declassied 25-year-old documents. Researchers can also now use the CRES search tool on theCIA e-FOIA website to display title and bibliographic/archival inormation o documents on CRES that are responsive to thesearch terms. Te e-FOIA website search does not provide images o the documents, however.




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Te CIA has established this site to provide the publicwith an overview o access to CIA inormation, includingelectronic access to previously released documents. Becauseo CIAs need to comply with the national security laws othe United States, some documents or parts o documentscannot be released to the public. In particular, the CIA, like

other U.S. intelligence agencies, has the responsibility toprotect intelligence sources and methods rom disclosure.However, a substantial amount o CIA inormationhas been and/or can be released ollowing review. See

Your Rights (http://www.oia.cia.gov/rights.asp) orurther details on the various methods o obtaining thisinormation.

Whats New at FOIA?

Top Searches

Te Frequently Requested Records section now showsJune - August 2009 op 25 Search (http://www.oia.cia.gov/op25PhrasesMonthly.asp) Phrases and August 2009op 25 Documents (http://www.oia.cia.gov/op25.asp)viewed.

Foreign Broadcast Inormation Service History, Part 1:1941-1947 (http://www.oia.cia.gov/bis.asp)

In response to the burgeoning intelligence requirementsdictated by the World War II (WWII), the ForeignBroadcast Monitoring Service (FBMS) evolved into the

Foreign Broadcast Inormation Service (FBIS) on 26 July1942. Te rst 44 years o FBIS is chronicled dutiully andexpertly in this 1969 study. Foreign Broadcast InormationService History, Part 1: 1941-1947 (http://www.oia.cia.gov/txt/FBIS_history_part1.pd) (15MB PDF)

Creating Global Intelligence (http://www.oia.cia.gov/cgi.asp)

Discover the back story o the US intelligence communityby exploring Creating Global Intelligence: Te Creation othe US Intelligence Community and Lessons or the 21stCentury, (http://www.oia.cia.gov/cgi.asp) a collectiono declassied documents rom the late 1940s to the early1950s that ultimately led to the establishment o the CIA.Tis 800+ collection allows history to come to lie as wellas giving perspectives on the complex issues that senior USGovernment ocials grappled with when considering howto establish an enduring national intelligence capability

Air America: Upholding the Airmens Bond (http://www.oia.cia.gov/airamerica.asp)

A ascinating assembly o documents (http://www.oia.cia.gov/airamerica.asp) revealing the role that Air America, theAgencys proprietary airline, played in the search and rescueo pilots and personnel during the Vietnam War. Tecollection has personal accounts by the rescued pilots andthank you letters as well as commendations rom variousocials.

UPDAED 25-Year Program Archive Search (http://www.oia.cia.gov/search_archive.asp)

New data has been loaded to the CRES archive search(http://www.oia.cia.gov/search_archive.asp).

Te automatic declassication provisions o Executive

Order 12958, as amended, require the declassicationo nonexempt historically-valuable records 25 years oldor older. By 31 December 2006 all agencies were tohave completed the review o all hardcopy documentsdetermined to be historically valuable (designated as

permanent by the agency and the National Archives)

FOIa electronic reading room

FOIA ELECRONIC READING ROOM



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and exclusively containing their equities. As the deadlinepertains to CIA, it covers the span o relevant documentsoriginally dating rom the establishment o the CIA aterWWII through 1981.

CIA has deployed an electronic ull-text searchable systemit has named CRES (the CIA Records Search ool),which has been operational since 2000 and is located atNARA II in College Park Maryland. On this Agency site,researchers can now use an on-line CRES Finding Aid toresearch the availability o CIA documents declassied andloaded onto CRES through 2008. Data or the remainingyears up to the present (CRES deliveries have beenongoing) will be placed on this site at later dates.

Search the CRES web database here (http://www.oia.cia.gov/search_archive.asp).

Note: it does not contain actual images o the documents asthe regular Electronic Reading Room search does. Rather,it contains details on the les to speed FOIA requests.

FOIA ELECRONIC READING ROOM



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Air America: Upholding the Airmens

Bond

A ascinating assembly o documents (http://www.oia.cia.gov/airamerica.asp) revealing the role that Air America, theAgencys proprietary airline, played in the search and rescueo pilots and personnel during the Vietnam War. Tecollection has personal accounts by the rescued pilots andthank you letters as well as commendations rom variousoicials.

A Life in Intelligence - The Richard

Helms CollectionTis collection o material by and about Richard Helms(http://www.oia.cia.gov/helms.asp) as Director o CentralIntelligence (DCI) and Ambassador to Iran comprisesthe largest single release o Helms-related inormationto date. Te documents, historical works and essays oeran unprecedented, wide-ranging look at the man and his

career as the United States top intelligence oicial and oneo its most important diplomats during a crucial decadeo the Cold War. From mid-1966, when he became DCI,to late 1976, when he let Iran, Helms dealt directly withnumerous events whose impact remains evident today andwhich are covered in the release.

A-12 OXCART Reconnaissance Aircraft

Documentation

Tis release (http://www.oia.cia.gov/a12oxcart.asp),

containing approximately 1,500 pages o material,consisting o about 350 documents, maps, diagrams, andphotographs will provide researchers on aviation andintelligence with signiicant additional detail about thedesign and development o the A-12. Follow the link aboveto the page housing this new special collection.

special collections

SPECIAL COLLECIONS



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National Intelligence Council (NIC)

Collections on this site

Te National Intelligence Council (NIC) Collection(http://www.oia.cia.gov/nic_collection.asp)

Analytic reports produced by the National IntelligenceCouncil (NIC) on a variety o geographical and unctionalissues since 1946.

Te Vietnam Collection (http://www.oia.cia.gov/nic_

vietnam_collection.asp)

Over 170 estimative products on Vietnam have beendeclassiied and were released in April, 2005. Tiscollection, the largest such release to date and the irstexclusively on Vietnam, covers the period 1948-1975. Othe 174 documents, 38 are included at least in part inthe hard copy volume entitled Estimative Products onVietnam, 1948-1975and appear in their entirety in itsaccompanying CD/ROM.

Te China Collection (http://www.oia.cia.gov/nic_china_collecion.asp)

Tese documents were published in a book and CD/ROM entitled Tracking the Dragon: Selected NationalIntelligence Estimates on China, 1948-1976and werethe subject o a major international conerence cosponsoredby the National Intelligence Council and the WoodrowWilson International Center or Scholars in Washington,D.C. in October 2004.

Historical Review Office Collections

on this site

Te Princeton Collection (http://www.oia.cia.gov/princeton_intelligence.asp)

Analytic Reports Produced by the Directorate oIntelligence on the Former Soviet Union Declassiiedand released or a March 2001 Conerence at PrincetonUniversity

Collections available through the

National Archives (NARA)

How to access the documents via NARA (http://www.oia.cia.gov/access.asp)

Declassiied National Intelligence Estimates on the SovietUnion and International Communism (http://www.oia.cia.gov/soviet_estimates.asp)

Declassiied Intelligence Estimates on Selected Free WorldCountries (http://www.oia.cia.gov/ree_world_estimates.asp)

Declassiied Intelligence Analyses on the Former SovietUnion Produced by CIAs Directorate o Intelligence(http://www.oia.cia.gov/soviet_intelligence.asp)

An important part o CIAs ongoing eort to be more openand to provide or more public accountability has been arecognition o the importance o declassiying historicallysigniicant Agency documents. Te process o opening up

the Agencys historical record began in the 1980s whenthen Director o Central Intelligence (DCI) WilliamCasey authorized the declassiication and transer o ninemillion pages o OSS records to the National Archives andestablished the Historical Review Program.

A more ormal Historical Review Program (HRP) wasestablished by DCI Robert Gates in 1992. Rea irming theprinciple that the US governments records should be opento the public, the program called or signiicant historicalinormation to be made available unless such release couldcause damage to the national security interests o theUnited States. Subsequent DCIs R. James Woolsey and

John Deutch, and current Director o Central IntelligenceGeorge enet have supported a vigorous historicaldeclassiication program.

CIAs Historical Review Program, with the exception oseveral statutorily mandated requirements, is a voluntarydeclassiication program that ocuses on records ohistorical value. Te programs managers rely on the adviceand guidance o the Agencys History Sta, the DCIsHistorical Review Panel, and the general public in selectingtopics or review. Under guidelines laid out or the program,historical records are released except in instances wheredisclosure would damage national security-that is, or

example, where it would reveal sensitive oreign governmentinormation or identiy intelligence sources and methodsthat are currently in use and that are subject to denial and/or deception. Te Historical Review Program coordinatesthe review o the documents with CIA components andother US Government entities beore inal declassiicationaction is taken and the documents are transerred to theNational Archives.

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wo projects currently in progress in HRP involve thereview o National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) onthe ormer Soviet Union and international communismand intelligence analyses on the ormer Soviet Unionpublished by the CIAs Directorate o Intelligence. Formore inormation on these speciic collections, click on theappropriate summary title.

Declassified National IntelligenceEstimates on the Soviet Union and

International Communism

A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) is the mostauthoritative written judgment concerning a nationalsecurity issue prepared by the Director o CentralIntelligence. Unlike current intelligence products,which describe the present, most NIEs orecast uturedevelopments and many address their implications orthe United States. NIEs cover a wide range o issue-rommilitary to technological to economic to political trends.

NIEs are addressed to the highest level o policymakers-up to and including the President. Tey are oten dratedin response to a specic request rom a policymaker.Estimates are designed not just to provide inormationbut to help policymakers think through issues. Tey areprepared by CIA with the participation o other agencieso the Intelligence Community and are coordinated withthese agencies. When there are alternative views abouta subject within the Intelligence Community, the NIEsinclude such views.

CIA has made a major commitment to increasing the publicunderstanding o the role played by intelligence analysisin the Cold War by reviewing or declassication NIEson the Soviet Union and international communism. Tedeclassication review and release to the public o NIEson the ormer Soviet Union is part o a voluntary programinitiated by DCI William Casey in 1985 and given newlie in 1992 by DCI Robert Gates. In addition to NIEsand their predecessors-called OREs and produced bythe Oce o Reports and Estimates in the early postwaryears-the review has included other interagency intelligenceassessments-such as Special NIEs and InteragencyIntelligence Memoranda-which are usually more narrowlyocused or specialized in content. Te declassication

review is done in consultation with other agencies othe Intelligence Community, particularly those whoparticipated in producing the assessments. More than 550documents have been declassied and released thus arthrough the voluntary program, including most recentlydocuments or use at conerences titled At Cold Wars End,held at exas A&M University rom 18 to 20 November,1999, and CIAs Analysis o the Soviet Union, 1947-1991,held at Princeton University on 9 and 10 March 2001.

An index o National Intelligence Estimates and otherinteragency intelligence analyses released to the NationalArchives is provided below, arrayed by year o publication.Click on the year desired to view those published duringthat 12-month period.

Users should note that textual materia l was deleted roma number o the documents during the declassicationreview process. Te deletions were made to protect

intelligence sources and methods or or other nationalsecurity reasons. In those instances where deletions werenecessary, an efort was made to avoid distorting theconclusions or the analysis in the documents. No deletionswere made to conceal incorrect assessments or aultyconclusions, or to remove inormation embarrassing tothe Agency or the Intelligence Community. Te numbero pages shown in the index or a particular documentmay be less than the total number o pages in the origina ldocument. o assist the reader, the ollowing symbols areused in the index to indicate which documents containdeletions and the nature o the redactions.

RIF(ReleasedinFull)-Tedocumenthasbeenreleasedin its entirety.

RNS(Releasedwithnon-substantivedeletions)-Te

document has been released with minor redactions, suchas certain classication indicators, access restrictions, andreerences to names or documents not released to the public.

RIP(ReleasedinPart)-Tedocumenthasbeenreleasedwith substantive deletions made in the text.

Declassified Intelligence Analyses on

the Former Soviet Union Produced by

CIAs Directorate of Intelligence

As part o its voluntary declassication program, in 1996CIA began to review or possible declassication analyseson the ormer Soviet Union produced by the Directorateo Intelligence. Since that time approximately 57,000 pagesand almost 2,000 reports on the ormer USSR have beenreviewed or declassication and released as part o thisvoluntary program.

Te materials contained in this collection includeintelligence reports, intelligence memoranda, provisional

intelligence reports, economic intelligence reports, andresearch reports. Also included is a volume o selectedearly weekly and daily intelligence summaries publishedby CIAs Center or the Study o Intelligence declassiedin connection with an academic conerence on CIAs earlyCold War-era analysis held on 24 October 1997, documentsdeclassied or a conerence titled At Cold Wars End heldat exas A&M University rom 18 to 20 November, 1999,

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and analytic reports declassied or a conerence titledCIAs analysis o the Soviet Union, 1947-1991 held atPrinceton University on 9 and 10 March 2001.

An index o analyses on the ormer Soviet Union, producedby the CIAs Directorate o Intelligence and released tothe National Archives is provided below, arrayed by yearo publication. Click on the year desired to view those

published during that 12-month period. A separate link isprovided to access an index o the documents declassiedand released or the Princeton conerence - the so-called Princeton Collection. By clicking on a particularpublication in the index o the Princeton Collection, thedocument can be v iewed on-line, in redacted orm. Tiseature is not available with the overall index o documentsreleased. Tey must be viewed at NARA. In addition,nearly 1000 other DI analytic documents, which hadalready been released by the Agency through FOIA orExecutive Order requests, were made available or thePrinceton Conerence. Te documents were transerredto NARA as part o the Princeton Collection, under

Accession #NN3-263-01-00 . Tey also can be viewedat NARA. Users should note that textual materialwas deleted rom many o the documents during thedeclassication review process. Te deletions were madeto protect intelligence sources and methods or or othernational security reasons. In those instances wheredeletions were necessary, an efort was made to avoiddistorting the conclusions o the analysis in the document.No deletions were made to conceal incorrect assessments oraulty conclusions, or to remove inormation embarrassingto the Agency.

Te number o pages shown in the index or a particular

document may be less than the total number o pages in theoriginal document. In general, the excisions made to thiscollection o documents have been relatively ew in numberand oten pertain to procedural requirements or sanitizing,primarily in the source sections o the documents, ratherthan to the text o the analysis.

o assist the reader, the ollowing symbols are used in theindex to indicate which documents contain deletions andthe nature o the redactions.

RIF(ReleasedinFull)-Tedocumenthasbeenreleased

in its entirety.

RNS(Releasedwithnon-substantivedeletions)-Tedocument has been released with minor redactions, suchas certain classication indicators, access restrictions, andreerences to names or documents not released to the public.

RIP(ReleasedinPart)-Tedocumenthasbeenreleased

with substantive deletions made in the text.

Te CAESAR, POLO, andESAU Papers

Cold War Era Hard Target Analysis of

Soviet and Chinese Policy and Deci-

sion Making, 1953-1973

Tis collection o declassied analytic monographs andreerence aids, designated within the Central IntelligenceAgency (CIA) Directorate o Intelligence (DI) as theCAESAR, ESAU, and POLO series, highlights the CIAseforts rom the 1950s through the mid-1970s to pursuein-depth research on Soviet and Chinese internal politicsand Sino-Soviet relations. Te documents reect theviews o seasoned analysts who had ollowed closely theirspecial areas o research and whose views were shapedin oten heated debate. Continuing public interest in theseries, as reected in numerous requesss through Freedom

o Inormation and Executive Order channels, led CIAsOce o Inormation Management Services (IMS) toconduct a search o Directorate o Intelligence recordsystems or documents in this series and then undertake adeclassication review o all the documents we located. Te147 documents in this collection, amounting to over 11,000pages o analysis, were written between 1953 and 1973. Tecollection includes a large number o newly declassiedmonographs as well as some tudies that have beenpreviously declassied and released to individual requesters.Te continuing sensitivity o some documents in the seriesrequired that they be withheld rom declassication.

Lt. Col. Oleg Penkovsky: Western Spy

in Soviet GRU

Tis group o documents highlights the highs and lows othe intelligence business. Te recruitment o a well-placedspy, in this case a high-ranking Soviet military intelligenceocer, lessened the tensions o the Cold War by providinginormation on the intentions, strength, and technologicaladvancement o the Soviet Union. At the same t ime, theenormous risks or the spy himsel became evident in theate o Penkovsky -- shot as a traitor by the Soviets in 1963

or spying or the US and UK. Tese documents provideover-the-shoulder looks rom the perspective o the CIADirector as well as rom Penkovsky himsel in operationalmeeting reports. Tis collect ion oers insights on the spysmotives as well as the ruit o his espionage or us.

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Atomic Spies: Ethel and Julius Rosenberg

Tis collection provides interesting Agency insights onthis post-WWII spy case. Documents cover, among manyother topics, US intelligence activities, including FBI-CIAcooperation; USSR intelligence activities; the Rosenbergespionage networks collection against the US atomic energyprogram; their attempts to protect the network as US

authorities closed in on it; their arrest; Soviet propaganda;the Soviets protest o the Rosenbergs sentencing; andMoscows reaction to the execution o their spies.

25-Year Program Archive Search

Te automatic declassication provisions o ExecutiveOrder 12958, as amended, require the declassication ononexempt historically-valuable records 25 years old orolder. Te EO was originally issued in April 1995 andamended in 2003, when it established 31 December 2006as the rst major deadl ine or automatic declassicationunder the "25-year program."

By 31 December 2006 all agencies were to have completedthe review o all hardcopy documents determined tobe historically valuable (designated as "permanent" bythe agency and the National Archives) and exclusivelycontaining their equities. As the deadline pertains to CIA, itcovers the span o relevant documents originally dating romthe establishment o the CIA ater WWII through 1981.

CIA has maintained a program operating out o theCIA Declassication Center to review records under thepurview o EO 12958, as amended, beore they reach theirautomatic declassication deadline. CIA has deployed an

electronic ull-text searchable system it has named CRES(the CIA Records Search ool), which has been operationalsince 2000 and is located at NARA II in College ParkMaryland. Te CRES system is the publicly-accessiblerepository o the subset o CIA records reviewed under the25-year program in electronic ormat (manually reviewedand released records are accessioned directly into theNational Archives in their original ormat). Over 10 millionpages have been released in electronic ormat and reside onthe CRES database, rom which researchers have printedalmost a million pages. o use CRES, a researcher mustphysically be present at the National Archives, College Park,Maryland. Recognizing this presents an obstacle to many

researchers, we have been investigating ways to improveresearcher knowledge o and access to CRES documents.

On this Agency site, researchers can now use an on-lineCRES Finding Aid to research the availability o CIAdocuments declassied and loaded onto CRES through2008. Data or the remaining years up to the present(CRES deliveries have been ongoing) will be placed onthis site at later dates.

As indicated in the "25-Year Released Documents Search"page below, researchers can search by the title and date, ordate span, o documents.

itle: Te title listed will be the ormal title o a report orthe stated subject o a memorandum. However, the titlemay be the best attempt by Agency indexers to identiydocuments without clear ormal titles such as cables,

letters, written notes, and other orms o communicationand correspondence. In such cases, the title may includereerence to the type o document, originator, recipient, orlocation.

Document Date: For a single document, the creationdate on the rst page o the document is the date to besearched. In a package o several documents or in a pairingo a document with a covering transmittal/addressee sheetthe date will again be that o the rst page. Te year 1900is the deault date used by Agency indexers or undateddocuments.

Following a successul search, the resulting document

metadata will appear on a separate page. In addition tothe title and date, the metadata wi ll include the "ESDNnumber" (see below), the number o pages, the originalclassication, document type, and the release decision.

Te ESDN number is the internal Agency tracking numberwhich should be used when submitting a FOIA request.Te original classication is indicated by the letters (opSecret), S (Secret), C (Condential), U (Unclassied), andK or unknown or unmarked. Te release decision o thedocument is either RIF (released in u ll) or RIP (releasedin part).

In the uture, in addition to populating the CRESFinding Aid with records rom 2003 to the present, CIAwill continue to release through CRES documents thatare 25-years old or older in conormance with the EO . Tisyearly requirement is reerred to as the "rolling period."You may e-mail comments on the CRES Finding Aidcapability to the eedback section o this site.

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An Analysts Perspective

In the course o a career at the Central Intelligence Agency,easily the most sensitive body o material that I had accessto was the collection o material provided by Polish ColonelRyszard Kuklinski. Over a nearly ten year period, the

Colonel provided the United States with an unprecedentedvolume o material, but more importantly, he provided uswith the ability to understand the thinking o the Sovietand Warsaw Pact General Staf.

Knowing and understanding are related but diferent concepts.It is oten the case that analysts, whether o intelligence,nancial afairs or other disciplines, know things, butundamentally dont also understand them. Knowing in thiscontext is recognition o a reality: the plan dictates an attackon the let ank o the army. Understanding is recognitiono why: the attack on the let ank is being undertakenbecause o certain assumptions and objectives, tempered bydoctrine and the personality o the ocer responsible or theplan, himsel possibly pushed by outside pressures exerted bysuperiors, or other external realities.

Understanding allows or transerence and the abilityto make accurate projections. Knowing whats going tohappen on the let ank doesnt necessarily imply anyknowledge o whats going to happen in the center, or theright. Understanding, on the other hand, allows boththe intelligence analyst and the military planner or leaderto develop an accurate picture o the whole, includingportions or which there may be no rm knowledge. Withunderstanding comes the ability, thereore, to predictwith some accuracy how any given system would react to

difering, oten unanticipated impulses.

It also provides a context that al lows the stitching togethero otherwise disparate pieces o inormation, or thevalidation o others. We might, or example, have a picturethat tells us there are more tanks than previously countedin a ank Regiment, but that knowledge becomes evenmore valuable when we are able to add an understanding owhy that number was increased.

It is precisely this kind o understanding that ColonelKuklinski provided during the whole o his exceptionallyproductive relationship with the Central IntelligenceAgency. His documents were not garden variety articles,which though published in nominally classied journals,were intended or relatively wide audiences. His materialwas either extraordinarily sensitive documentation withcommentary o small, seminal, and exclusive meetings, orthey were compilations again with commentary, o other

classied material. What distinguished it all was its abilityultimately to provide understanding.

Tat didnt end with his departure rom Poland. Anxiousto continue his contribution to the dismantlement othe Soviet occupation, the Colonel continued to providehis assessments and proessional views o a wide varietyo issues, all beneting rom his long years o successuleducation and service within a highly raried atmospherethat was the General Staf. Rarely have we had theopportunity to plumb the depths o a documentarycollection as vast as his and then be able to ollow upthat review with detailed and direct interaction with the

individual who was there when it was generated.Te material thats been made available, particularly thematerial directly related to the relentless pressure puton the puppet Polish Government o Marshal Jaruzelski,easily illustrates the value o understanding, and theincredible contribution to reedom selessly made by onebrave man.

The Kuklinski MaterialAnd aris pappas

HE KUKLINSKI MAERIAL AND ARIS PAPPAS



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THE KUKLINSKI FILES AND THEPOLISH CRISIS OF 1980-1981: An

Analysis of the newly releasedcia documents

Mark Kramer: Harvard University

In the 1970s and early 1980s, several Polish militaryocers were secretly helping the U.S. Central IntelligenceAgency (CIA). O these, the most valuable by ar wasColonel Ryszard Kukliski, a senior ocial on the Polish

General Staf and a long-time aide to Deense MinisterWojciech Jaruzelski. For nearly a decade, rom the early1970s through November 1981, Kukliski providedvast amounts o highly sensitive military, technical, andpolitical-military inormation to the CIA. His role becameespecially important during the 18-month-long crisis inPoland in 1980-1981, when he sent a trove o invaluabledocuments and reports to the CIA, including detailedmaterials about the planning or martia l law.

Even though Kukliski ound out in September 1981 thatthe Polish Ministry o Internal Afairs had begun searchingor a CIA spy in the upper levels o the Polish military, hecontinued his clandestine work or another two months. Inearly November 1981 the oreign intelligence directorateo the Soviet Committee on State Security (KGB) learnedrom a KGB source in the Vatican that the CIA had

acquired the ull plans or martia l law in Poland1 Te KGBpromptly alerted the Polish authorities, who embarkedon a much more intensive investigation or a spy in theirmidst. Because Kukliski was one o the ew Polish ocialswho had had access to all o the nal planning, he realizedthat it was only a matter o time until the investigators

settled on him as the culprit. Using a specially-made Iskraencrypted communications device, Kukliski urgentlynotied his CIA case ocers that he and his amily wouldhave to leave Poland as soon as possible. An intricate CIA

exltration operation, which has been vividly recountedby the journalist Benjamin Weiser in his bookA SecretLife, narrowly brought the colonel to saety in the West2.Kukliski lived the rest o his lie under an assumed namein the United States, though he was able to travel back toPoland in 1998 ater the charges o treason lodged againsthim by the Communist regime were ocially revoked. Hedied o a cerebral hemorrhage at age 73 in early 2004.

Kukliski s exploits have been discussed at some length inboth English and Polish, mainly by journalists and publicgures. A Secret Lifeis the most comprehensive accountavailable o Kukliski s lie and his motivations in working

at enormous personal risk or the United States.Most o the Polish books about Kukliski are anthologieso interviews, published articles, or mass-media coverage,and they run the gamut rom the useul and perceptiveto the sensationalist and polemical.3 His activities have

1 Ater the CIA received copies o the plans rom Kukli ski, U.S. ocials notiedPope John Paul II, in the hope that he might be able to use his inuence to helpthwart the planned operation. KGB sources in the Vatican then learned o the

disclosure. See Vitalii Pavlov, Upravlenie S: Vo glave nelegalnoi razvedki(Moscow: Eksmo, 2006), p. 351.

2 Benjamin Weiser, A Secret Lie: Te Polish Ofcer, His Covert Mission, and thePrice He Paid to Save His Country(New York: PublicAfairs, 2004), pp. 271-289.

3 See, or example, Jze Szaniawski, ed., Pukownik Kuklisk i ajna misja(Warsaw: Ocyna Wydawnicza RYM, 2007); Jze Szaniawski, ed.. , Samotnamisja: Pukownik Kukliski i zimna wojna(Warsaw: Galeria Polskiej Ksiki,2003); Zbigniew B. Kumo, ed., Nikt czyli Kukliski: Rzecz o zdradzie(Warsaw:Wydawnictwo Comandor, 2002); Pukownik Kukliski: Wywiady Opinie

Dokumenty(Lublin: Wydawnictwo est, 1998); Krzyszto Dubiski andIwona Jurczenko, Oko Pentagonu: Rzecz o pukowniku Ryszardzie Kukliskim (Warsaw: KMSO, 1996); Maciej ukasiewicz, ed., Bohater czy zdrajca: Sprawa

HE KUKLINSKI FILES AND HE POLISH CRISIS OF 1980 - 1981



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also been discussed, with varying degrees o accuracy, inmemoirs by ormer senior government ocials and militaryocers who worked with him in Poland in 1980-1981. Tequestion o whether Kukliski should be regarded as a heroor a traitor has oten dominated the public discourse abouthim in Poland.

In this Working Paper I will rst discuss the provenanceand nature o some extremely important documentspertaining to Kukliski and the 1980-1981 Polish crisisthat were recently declassied. Ater giving a sense o boththe value and the major limitations o the newly releasedmaterials, I will review the most signicant ndings romthese documents about the Polish crisis. Te collectionenriches and corroborates much o what was known already,and it also adds many intriguing details about events inPoland and Soviet-Polish relations. In a ew cases, as notedbelow, the materials alter existing accounts o the crisis.

The Newly Released Documents

Until December 2008, only three o the reports thatKukliski sent to the CIA during the 1980-1981 Polishcrisis were available. I published them along with acommentary in Issue No. 11 o the CWIHP Bulletin.4Ater Weiser decided in the 1990s to write a book aboutKukliski, he requested that the CIA declassiy the largecollection o documents supplied by or relating to thecolonel. Te CIA declined the request and also turned downother eforts to seek the release o Kukliskis les. Butater considerable negotiation the agency did consent to anarrangement that gave Weiser indirect access to the les.

In 2008 the CIA nally agreed to release (in sanitized

orm) some o the materia ls rom its voluminous Kukliskiles, starting with a selection o items pertaining to thePolish crisis o 1980-1981. Te 81 documents in the initialtranche, which became available in December 2008, areapparently the only items about the 1980-1981 crisisthat will be released rom Kukl iskis les. Tey come to

just over 1,000 pages in total, counting the cover pagesand distribution sheets. Te tranche includes the letterKukliski wrote in halting English in 1972 under thepseudonym P.V. to the U.S. embassy in Bonn seekingcontact with a senior U.S. Army ocer, 44 translationso martial law-related documents that Kukliskieither photographed or transcribed (including separatetranslations o two successive drats o a speech deliveredon 13 September 1981), 17 memoranda summarizinginormation Kuklinski provided to the CIA in 1981beore he escaped rom Poland, 1 memorandum (dated

pukow nika K ukl iski ego(Warsaw: Ocyna Wydawnicza MOS, 1992).4 Mark Kramer, Colonel Kukliski and the Polish Crisis, 1980-81, Cold War

International History Project Bulletin, Issue No. 11 (Winter 1998), pp. 48-60.

24 February 1981) summarizing inormation conveyed tothe CIA by another well-placed military ocial in Poland,13 translations o commentaries Kukliski wrote in theUnited States shortly ater martial law was introduced inPoland, 2 translations o background reports he wrote inthe spring o 1982 about the martia l law operation andabout civil-military relations in Poland, 2 CIA analytica lmemoranda (dated 25 August 1981 and 7 December 1981)that rely in part on inormation supplied by Kukliski,and a 64-page translation o Kukliski s detailed answersin 1983 to the CIAs questions about Jaruzelskis attitude,behavior, and style.5

5 At a symposium commemorating Kukliski on 11 December 2008, the CIAdistributed a CD with audiovisual materials pertain ing to the colonel, includingscanned images o the 81 newly declassied documents. Te agency also distr ibuteda booklet titled Preparing or Mar tial Law: Trough the Eyes o Col. RyszardKukliski. Te CD g ives an incorrect date o 7 January 1981 or a document thatin act is rom 7 January 1982. Tis is more than just a simple typog raphical error;the document appears in the wrong place (in the area or January 1981 rather thanor January 1982) in the chronologically organized lin ks to documents. Te bookletincorrectly says that the tra nche includes summaries o 18 reports rom Kukliski;in act, it includes only 17 summaries o Kukliskis reports, along with a summaryo a report rom another CIA source in Poland. Te booklet a lso incorrectly statesthat 16 translations o Kukli skis post-martial law commentaries were released;in act, the CIA released only 15 translations o these documents, counting t woshort background memoranda. Te booklet is also incorrect in saying that thetranche includes 43 translations o documents supplied by Kukliski, counting a1977 document that was not distributed in tra nslation until early 1980. In act, itincludes 44 translat ions, counting the 1977 document. (wo o the translations,one distributed on 25 September 1981 and the other on 23 November 1981, are otwo diferent dra ts o the same document a speech to be delivered by GeneralFlorian Siwicki, the chie o the Polish General Staf, at a crucial meeting oPolands Homeland Deense Committee on 13 September 1981. A comparison othe two drats is somewhat dicult because the tran slations were clearly done byseparate translators, but the substance o the two drats is largely the same untilthe nal paragraph, when a very important diference in phrasing occurs, as will bediscussed below.) Te booklet distributed by the CIA reproduces an art icle about

Kukliski that was orig inally published in the Summer 2000 issue oStudies inIntelligence, Te Vilication and Vindication o Colonel Kukliski, by BenjaminB. Fischer, who at the time o publication was a member o the CIAs History Staf.Te article contains an importa nt error. Fischer writes:

Jaruz elski e mbellis hed the gre en light story d uring t he 1997conerence [in Jachranka, Poland]. According to the general, hedispatched General Eugeniusz Molczyk, deputy chie o the generalstaf, to Washington to coner with then-Vice President Bush justbeore martial law was declared. Te Vice President, Jaruzelski toldthe conerence attendees, agreed with Molczyk that martial law was abetter option than intervention. We took that as a sort o signal, thegeneral said, Do it yourselves, or there will be the more eared option.




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Tese newly released materials should be used inconjunction with hundreds o other CIA documentsabout the Polish crisis that have become available in recentyears. Te previously declassied items, which are storedas scanned, ully searchable images on the electronicreading room page o the agencys website (www.oia.cia.gov) and in the CIA Records Search ool (CRES) at theNational Archives (NARA) in College Park, Maryland,

include situation reports, national intelligence dailybries, inormation cables, special analyses, intelligencememoranda, alert memoranda, spot analyses, nationalintelligence estimates, and special national intelligenceestimates6. Cumulatively, these documents provide almostdaily coverage as well as longer-term assessments o whatwas going on in Poland and in Soviet-Polish relationsduring the 1980-1981 crisis. Valuable as the newly releasedKukliniski materia ls are, the immense number o otherdeclassied CIA documents are essential or a ulleroverview o the crisis.

By the same token, the Kukliski materials and other CIA

documents need to be used in combination with the vastquantity o archival evidence now available in the ormerWarsaw Pact countries. Occasionally one nds inormationin the Kuklisk i reports that is erroneous or incomplete,and the reports also at times ofer contradictory appraisalso particular events or individuals. For example, in a reportsent in February 1981 (summarized in a memorandumdated 27 February) Kuklinski claimed that MirosawMilewski, the Polish minister o internal afairs until July

Te only problem is that t his exchange never happened.Fischer did not attend the Jachranka conerence, a nd he is mistaken aboutwhat Jaruzelski supposedly told the conerence attendees. Te transcript othe conerence published by Nina Smolar under the title Wejd, nie wejd:Polska 1980-1982 Wewntrzny kryzys, midzy narodowe uwarunkowania

Konerencja w Jachrance, listopad 1997(London: Aneks, 1999), pp. 282-283 makes clear that Jaru zelski never said that he had sent Molczyk to meet with VicePresident Bush. (Indeed, the notion that Jaruzelski would have relied on Molczyk

a military arch-rival or this sort o assignment is preposterous.) Jaruzelskistated that Deputy Prime Minister Zbigniew Madej met with Bush in December1981 which is true. Madej and Bush discussed bilatera l economic relations,and the meeting was reported on t he ront page o the main Polish Communistnewspaper, rybuna Ludu. Te reason that Fischer went astray is that, instead ochecking the Polish transcript or tapes o t he Jachranka conerence, he relied solelyon an art icle by Jane Perlez that appeared in Te New York imeson 11 November1997. Perlez does not know Polish and had to rely on an inept translator. I tookpart in the Jachranka conerence and knew exactly what Jaruzelski had said, and Iwas stunned when I saw Perlezs article. I checked the recorded tape just to be sureand then wrote a letter to Te New York imeson 12 November 1997 that readpartly: Among errors in Perlezs article are her persistent reerences to MarshalViktor Kulikov as a general (a rank lower than his actual rank o marshal) and

her claim that the Polish ocial who met with then-Vice President George Bushin 1981 was Eugeniusz Molczyk, the deputy chie o the Polish General Staf. Inact, the ocial in question was Zbigniew Madej, the Polish deputy prime minister.General Jaruzelski said that Madej had gone to Washington. He never reerred toMolczyk. Te New York imesdid not publish my letter and did not publish acorrection o Perlez's errors. Tat is t he ault o the paper. But Fischer should havechecked what Jaruzelski actua lly said, instead o relying on a awed second-handsource.

6 Copies o many o the relevant documents are also stored at the National Securit yArchive, a private repository in Washington, DC, which has played a valuablerole in seeking the declassication o relevant documents through the Freedom oInormation Act.

1981, had said that a declaration o martial law could bethe greatest tragedy in Polish history and or this reasonshould be treated as the last resort, whereas in a reportseveral months later (summarized on 24 June 1981) thecolonel characterized Milewski as part o the group ohard-liners [in the PZPR leadership] who are submissiveto Moscow.7 Scholars nowadays have to bear in mindthat Kukliski was writing his reports under extreme

constraints o secrecy and time and did not have theopportunity to go back aterward and edit his reports orconsistency. Researchers who want to use the Kukliskimaterials should go careul ly through the entire collectionto distill the inormation in its proper context and shouldcross-check the inormation not only against other CIAdocuments but also against relevant items rom ormerEast-bloc archives.

Limitations of the Newly Released

Collection

Te CIAs decision to release some o the Kukliskimaterials is heartening, but the limited scope o this initialtranche is disappointing in several respects.

First, the CIA released no documents at al l rom 1980,apart rom a lengthy translation o a 1977 Polish documentthat was disseminated in February 1980 to the highestocials in the U.S intelligence community. (Te length othe 1977 document the drat o a direct ive to be issuedby Polands Homeland Deense Committee mightpartly account or the long delay in distributing it. Tetranslation comes to 111 pages. 8) ranslations o someo the documents that Kukliski provided to the CIA in

late 1980 are included in the tranche because they were notcirculated within the U.S. intelligence community until1981, but nothing rom the reports that Kukliski sent tothe CIA beore late January 1981 not even a December1980 report that I obtained rom Kukliski and publishedin ull in the CWIHP Bulletinmore than a decade ago is included in the CIA release. We know rom numeroussources, including Kukliski s own testimony (in variousinterviews), Weisers A Secret Life, Douglas MacEachins

7 Tis latter characterization is accurate. In two separate commentaries in lateDecember 1981, Kukliski placed Milewski among the hardliners on the PZPRPolitburo and stressed that Milewski was much more willing to cooperate with

the Soviets than was Wojciech Jaruzelski. See Contacts between Polish Militaryand Politburo Ocials, CIA Intelligence Inormation Cable, 20 January 1982,FIRDB-315/01100-82, p. 2; and Relationship between the Polish Ministryo National Deense and the Ministry o Internal Afairs, CIA IntelligenceInormation Cable, 29 January 1982, FIRDB-315-01802-82, p. 1.

8 Te ull document comes to 114 pages, counting the two cover sheets and routingslip. Te CIA translators o this document and o ot her items in the Kuklisk icollection chose to render the term Homeland Deense Committee (KomitetObrony Kraju, or KOK) as the National Deense Committee. Te phrase obronykrajuis more accurately translated as homeland deense. Te phrase obronynarodowejwould be translated as national deense, as in Polands Ministry oNational Deense (Ministerstwo Obrony Narodowej).




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book on U.S. intelligence perormance during the Polishcrisis, and memoirs by ormer national security ocialssuch as Robert Gates and Zbigniew Brzezinski, that thecolonel sent many inormational reports to the CIA in thelate summer and all o 1980, especially in the rst hal oDecember 1980, when he eared that Soviet/Warsaw Pactmilitary orces were about to enter Poland. Indeed, the CIAitsel has conrmed, in its booklet accompanying the newly

declassied documents, that rom the initial outbreako labor unrest in July 1980 . . . Col. Kukliski providedperiodic reporting and commentary on the chaoticprogression o events.9 Unortunately, no inormationrom any o Kukliskis reports prior to 21 January 1981was released.10

Second, even though this initial tranche includestranslations o a ew dozen o the martial law-relateddocuments that Kukliski photographed or transcribedin 1981 as well as 17 summaries o the reports he sent in1981, it excludes a large number o other documents andreports he transmitted in 1981. Weiser notes that on one o

the many occasions in 1981 when Kukliski transerred apackage o materials to the CIA on 10 September heincluded lm o ninety documents pertaining to martia llaw.11 Similarly, during another typical liaison on 21

June 1981 Kukliski gave the CIA twenty-one rollso lm that held some 880 pages o documents.12 Temagnitude o these and other exchanges leaves little doubtthat this initial tranche covers only a small ract ion o themartial law-related documents supplied by Kukliski in1981. As or the reports, among those excluded are twothat I published along with a commentary in the CWIHPBulletinin 1998.13 Even with the reports that are covered,

9 Preparing or Martia l Law, p. 5. wo o the declassied summaries o reportsrom 1981 also reer back to some o the 1980 reports sent by Kuk liski. Tereport summary dated 11 February 1981 reers to a report summary rom 7November 1980 (with identiying number FIRDB-312/02991-80, S #808302).Te report summary dated 27 February 1981 reers to the 5 December 1980 reportI published in the CWIHP Bulletin in 1998 (the CIAs summary o it was given thetitle Plans or Warsaw Pact Intervention in Poland on 8 December).

10O the newly released materials, the earliest summar y o one o Kukliski sreports a memorandum dated 23 January 1981 recapitulates the rstmessage sent by Kukliski on his Iskra tra nsponder, which could transmit andreceive brie encrypted messages. A previous Iskra device supplied by the CIAailed to work properly, but the second model allowed Kukliski to t ransmithis message at 10:00 p.m. on 21 January 1981. Te summary o the message isbriey excerpted in Weiser, A Secret Lie, p. 232. All previous messages had beenconveyed by car passes or dead drops. Unortunately, the second Iskra dev icealso soon malunct ioned, and the same was true o severa l subsequent models that

briey worked and then malunctioned. By September 1981 the inability o CIAtechnicians to produce a durable Iskra transmitter spurred Kukliski s caseocers to express rust ration, disappointment we are beyond words. Not untilthe ollowing month, a ew weeks beore Kukliski had to leave Poland, did theCIA provide him with a n Iskra device that worked properly. See ibid., pp. 229-232, 235-236, 238, 248, 253, 263, 265.

11 Ibid., p. 253.12 Ibid., p. 253.13Among the other report summa ries rom 1981 that have not been released

are ones dated 30 January 1981 (FIRDB-312/00339-81, S #818020), 17March 1981 (FIRDB-312/00838-81, S #818081), and 26 March 1981(FIRDB-312/00304-81, S #818034).

the CIA released only summaries o them, not the originaltexts (or translations o the original texts).

Tird, the CIA did not release any o the Polish originalsrom Kukliski s les and apparently does not intendto. Tis is unortunate, or it means that scholars haveno way to check whether the inormation summarizedby the CIA has been translated accurately. Te report

summaries contain occasional discrepancies that mightnot appear in Kukliskis original reports and thatmight instead have arisen during the translation or thesummarizing (or both).14 Fortunately, this problem is lessgermane to the 44 translations o documents included inthe tranche. With most o these, we can check the qualityo the translations against the originals that have beendeclassied by the Polish government. Vast quantities omaterials pertaining to the mart ial law planning are nowavailable in Poland, including tens o thousands o pages odocuments that were recently transerred to the InstytutPamici Narodowej (Institute o National Remembrance)in Warsaw. Other declassied items concerning the martia l

law preparations and the Polish authorities responseto Solidarity are stored at three key repositories theArchiwum Akt Nowych (Modern Records Archive), theCentralne Archiwum Wojskowe (Central Military Archive),and the Archiwum Ministerstwa Spraw Wewntrznych(Ministry o Internal Afairs Archive).

Fourth, some other items rom the Kukliski les thatare cited in Weisers A Secret Life, such as the messagessent to Kukliski by his CIA case ocers, the agencysinternal history o the Kukliski case, and intra-CIAcorrespondence about Kukliski during the Polish crisis,were wholly excluded rom being released.

Fith, the CIA did not provide an inventory o Kukliski sles. In the absence o that, we cannot really get a senseo how this initial group o documents ts into thelarger piture. It would be especially worthwhile to see aninventory o the reports and warning letters that Kukliskisent to his case ocers in 1980-1981.

Sixth, it is unclear why a memorandum dated 24 February1981 was included in materials rom Kukliskis les. Tesource o the report summarized in that memorandumwas not Kukliski. Te memorandum itsel indicates, ina note at the end, that the source o this report is not thesame as the source o [a summary] dated 11 February1981, which reported on certain subjets also covered in thiscurrent report. wo actual discrepancies between the11 February and 24 February memoranda leave no doubt

14 For example, the date o a KOK meeting held on 13 September 1981 is variouslygiven as 13 September and 14 September, including in the two separatetranslations o General Siwicki s speech. Te declassied Polish records o thatmeeting make clear that it was held on the 13th.




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that Kukliski was the source o the report summarizedon 11 February (and thereore was not the source o the 24February memorandum). Te report summarized in the 11February memorandum indicates, as do other reports romKukliski (and as Kukliski did in numerous interviewsgoing back to 1986), that a delegation o 18 Warsaw Pactgenerals led by Army-General Anatolii Gribkov, therst deputy commander-in-chie o the Warsaw Pacts

Joint Armed Forces, toured Poland in early February1981 to exert pressure on the Polish authorities and toassess the reliability o the Polish army. Te 11 Februarymemorandum correctly gives the dates o their visit as 3 to8 February. By contrast, the report summarized in the 24February memorandum says that the delegation consistedo 20 (rather than 18) generals and that they arr ived inPoland on 4 February. Because Kukliski a lways cited thegure o 18, it is sae to assume that he was not the sourceo the 24 February memorandum and that the inormationin it must have come rom another Polish militaryocial who was secretly helping the CIA.15 Te onlyconnection the 24 February document seems to have with

Kukliski is that it reers to the alphanumeric ling code(FIRDB-312/00531-81, S # 818052) o the 11 Februarymemorandum or which he was the source.

Valuable Findings about the Polish Crisis

Despite the shortcomings o the initial tranche o materialsrom the Kukliski les, the 81 newly declassied itemsshed valuable light on the situation in Poland and thenature o Soviet-Polish relations in 1981 and early 1982.Since the mid-1990s, the original texts o most o the

15 Most likely, the source o the inormation was Colonel Wodzimierz Ostaszewicz,the deputy chie o Polish military intelligence until September 1981, when he wasexltrated by the CIA. Ostaszewicz was a neighbor o Kukliski, but neither manat the time knew that t he other was also helping the CIA. Another possible sourceo the inormation was Colonel Jerzy Sumiski, a senior mil itary intelligenceocial until March 1981 when he was exltrated by the CIA. On the impact oSumiskis and Ostaszewiczs espionage, see Witold Bere and Jerzy Skoczylas,eds., Genera Kiszczak mwi: Prawie wszystko(Warsaw: Polska OcynaWydawnicz a BGW, 1991), pp. 65, 173, 178-180.

documents supplied by Kukliski have become availablein the Polish archives, including the large collection omartial law-related documents transerred to the InstytutPamici Narodowej. However, some o the documents(e.g., the letters exchanged between Jaruzelski and MarshalViktor Kulikov, the commander-in-chie o the WarsawPact joint armed orces, on 24 June and 28 August 1981,and the two versions o a speech to be delivered by General

Florian Siwicki, the chie o the Polish General Staf, ata meeting o Polands Homeland Deense Committee on13 September 1981) had not come to light beore. Moreimportant still are the 17 memoranda summarizingreports sent by Kukliski to the CIA beore November1981. Some o the inormation in these reports had beendisclosed earlier in Kukliski s interviews or in declassiedEast-bloc or Western documents, but the newly availablememoranda contain many resh details and ofer a richer,uller perspective. Indeed, the summaries o the reports areso interesting that one regrets all the more that the CIAis apparently not going to release the original texts o thereports or the ull set o the summaries.

Both the reports and the documents reveal or corroborateseveral crucial points about the martial law planning, civil-military relations in Poland, and Soviet-Polish interactionsthat are worth highlighting here.

Soviet Pressure

Te materials rearm something that is a lready well-known rom a great deal o other evidence, namely, thatboth Jaruzelski and Stanisaw Kania, the First Secretary othe Polish United Workers Party (PZPR) until Jaruzelski

succeeded him in mid-October 1981, came under relentlesspressure rom Soviet ocials to crush the opposition andrestore orthodox Communist rule. Te magnitude othe pressure varied over time, but at no point did it adealtogether. Soviet leaders were determined to compel thePolish authorities to act. Te reports rom Kukliski, assummarized in the CIA memoranda, give a good sense othe thinly-veiled threats rom Soviet military commandersand political leaders in 1981. Marshal Kulikov and his chiedeputy, General Gribkov, repeatedly traveled to Poland in1980-1981 as high-level envoys or the ruling Politburo othe Communist Party o the Soviet Union (CPSU) and orthe Soviet Deense Ministry. Te two mens trips to Poland

invariably were intended, at least in part, as a means ocoercive diplomacy.

Te Kukliski materials show that in addition to thepressure exerted by Kulikov and Gribkov, the SovietDeense Ministry was able to use several other channelso inuence in Poland. One such channel was the group oSoviet generals and colonels who served as representativesto Poland or the Warsaw Pact Joint Command. Tese




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Soviet ocers, Kukliski reported, spoke strongly [about]the need or decisive ation against Solidarity and or a timeencouraged the Polish military to stage a coup against theregime o Kania and Jaruzelski.16 Another channel oinuence was the nearly 100 Soviet/Warsaw Pact generalsand colonels who were assigned to an ad-hoc Warsaw Pactcommand center that was ormed in the spring o 1981in Legnica (a city in southwestern Poland that was the

headquarters o the USSRs Northern Group o Forces),ostensibly or the Soyuz-81joint military maneuvers. Evenater the Soyuz-81exercises ended, the Soviet generalscontinued to operate out o Legnica and paid requent visitsto Polish military units at the military district level, as wellas through division and regimental levels to gauge themorale o the Polish troops and their ability to unctionunder martial law.17 (Te command center remained inplace until June 1982.) A urther channel o inuence orthe Soviet military was the roughly 30 Soviet ocers whoserved at the Rembertw military communications centeron the eastern outskirts o Warsaw. Tey were reinorcedin mid-1981 by groups o Soviet ocers who secretly

brought in military communications equipment and set itup at nearly two dozen sites around the country withoutthe knowledge o the Polish government, ostensibly ora new round o Warsaw Pact military exercises.18 Tehigh-requency military communications network theyestablished under the auspices o the Warsaw Pact wassupported by special communications troops o the SovietKGB, who could easily monitor the telephone conversationso Polish military and political leaders.19 All o these unitswere backed up by the two tank divisions o the USSRspermanent Northern Group o Forces in Poland.

Tus, even when Kulikov and Gribkov were not in the

country, the many other Soviet military ocers stationedin Poland could keep up the constant pressure on Kaniaand Jaruzelski. Soviet political leaders, or their part, werein almost constant touch with the Polish authorities, urgingthem to act or ace the consequences. Looking back onthe crisis, Kukliski was convinced that Jaruzelski in late1980 and the spring and early summer o 1981 had earedthat the entry o Soviet troops into Poland was a distinctpossibility:

Tere is no doubt . . . that [General Jaruzelski]arrived at a conviction, not without certain basis, as

16 Relationship between the Soviet Military Representation to Poland and t hePolish General Staf, CIA Intelligence Inormation Report, 13 May 1982,FIRDB-312/01036-82, p. 5.

17 Soviet Penetration o the Polish Militar y, CIA Intelligence Inormation Cable,25 January 1982, FIRDB-315/01528-82, pp. 3-4.

18 Attitudes o the Polish Ministry o Deense a nd Soviet Military Positions inConnection with the Current Political Situation in Poland; Results o the Meetingo the Polish National Deense Committee on 19 June, CIA Memorandumsummarizing inormation rom Kukliski, 24 June 1981, FIRDB-312/01995-81,S #818168, pp. 1-3.

19Ibid., p. 5.

it appeared rom the veiled comments o his closestriend Siwicki, that the USSR is to repeat in thePPR [Polish Peoples Republic] one o its scenariosrom Hungary, Czechoslovakia, or Aghanistan. Tisconvicion solidied with Jaruzelski stil l more in [therst hal o] 1981 when the USSR undertook urtherpreparations in this direction.20

Kukliski outlined the steps the Soviet military had taken

to prepare or armed intervention, and he said he had nodoubt that under the inuence o these acts Jaruzelskihad concluded that there was an actual danger to theexistence o Poland as a separate state. 21 Tis pointapplies at least as much to Kania, whom Soviet leaderstrusted even less than they did Jaruzelski. Indeed, thepressure rom the Soviet Union was so intense during thecrisis that Kanias ability to end it of or more than a yearwas remarkable.

Internal Pressure

Te reports rom Kukliski conrm that Soviet andWarsaw Pact leaders were not the only ones who wereattempting to orce Kania and Jaruzelski to impose martiallaw. A great deal o pressure also was coming rom withinthe PZPR, especially rom Stean Olszowski, whomKukliski descr ibed as the principal leader o the Moscowgroup, and adeusz Grabski, a man o many limitations

. . . [who] was designated to do the dirty work. 22 Pressurealso was exerted by hard-line Polish military commanderssuch as General Eugeniusz Molczyk, the deputy chie o

the Polish General Staf, and General Jze Urbanowicz,the rst deputy minister o national deense, both o whom

20 Jaruzelskis Attitude, Behavior and Style, CIA translation o Kuklisk isresponses to questions, 1983, pp. 43-44.

21 Ibid., p. 45.22 Polish Military and Security Reactions to the Current Political Situation in

Poland, CIA Memorandum summarizing inormation rom Kukliski, 15 June1981, FIRDB-312/01888-81, S #818164, p. 3.




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signal both to the Polish military and to the security orcesthat a radical solution [i.e., martial law] was the onlyalternative to the domestic crisis.25

Jaruzelskis Demeanor

Kukliski s reports, and his lengthy retrospectiveprole o Jaruzelski, underscore the conicing strands o

Jaruzelski s personality. Te genera l at times was capableo acting decisively and orceully, especially when itwould benet Soviet interests. But as Jaruzelski took ongreater responsibility or imposing martial law, he becameincreasingly nervous, almost to the point o being paralyzed.Kukliski recalls that Jaruzelski was torn internallybecause, on the one hand, he agreed with Soviet leadersthat Solidarity had to be crushed, but, on the other hand,

he saw initially no chances o achieving that goal.26 ForJaruzelski, the crisis o 1980-1981 was a period o nearlyuninterrupted stress and the greatest psychological tension.Under pressure, he lost his characteristic sel-assurance

and was even close to a breakdown. Troughout thisperiod, the general was wont to procrastination and [an]inability to make decisions. At one point, Jaruzelski wasso upset that he swayed and could not utter a sentence. Bymid-summer 1981 he had become so exhausted mentallyand physically that he wanted to resign.27 Kukliskirecounts how Jaruzelski would shut himsel in his oce orlong periods, reusing to meet or speak with anyone. Tegeneral distinctly avoided any contats when he sensed thathe would be subjected to pressure. He literally hid rom[Marshal] Kulikov . . . and met with him only when he hadno choice.

One thing that is not ully clear rom Kukliskis materialsis why the Soviet Union stuck with Jaruzelski to the end.Kukliski oten notes that the Warsaw Pacts chie militaryrepresentative in Poland, Soviet Army General AanasiiShcheglov, was openly contemptuous o both Jaruzelskiand Siwicki, who was Jaruzelski s most trusted aidethroughout the crisis.28 Other Soviet military commanders,including Marshal Kulikov, were equally dismissive o

25 Background to the Polish Imposition o Martial Law, CIA IntelligenceInormation Cable, 15 December 1981, FIRDB-315/22383-81, pp. 6-7.

26 Unless otherwise indicated, the quotations in t his paragraph are rom the 64-pagetranslation o Kukliski s comments, Jaruzelski s Attitude, Behavior and Style,

pp. 19-21, 25. Te translation, unortun ately, is oten decient; it would havebeen much better i the CIA had released the original Polish text along with t hetranslation.

27 Polish General Staf Evaluation o Soviet Military Presence and Activitiesin Poland; Premier Jaruzelski and the Polish Ministry o Deenses AttitudeRegarding Martial Law and the Current Situation in Poland, CIA Memorandumsummarizing inormation rom Kukliski, 17 July 1981, FIRDB-312/02264-81,S #818185, p. 6.

28 See, or example, Polish Government Plans or Possible Soviet Militar yIntervention and Declaration o Martia l Law, CIA Memorandum summarizinginormation rom Kukliski, 27 February 1981, FIRDB-312/00679-81, S#818061, pp. 2-3, 6.

enjoyed unstinting support in Moscow.23 Te role o thehardliners in the PZPR and the Polish armed orces has,o course, long been known, but Kukl iskis observationsshow how erce the pressure was and how Soviet ocialssought to exploit it.

Another source o internal pressure was the growinginux o conscripts into the Polish armed orces who

had been exposed or at least a while to the inuence oSolidarity.24 Kukliski reported that, as time passed, thePolish General Staf, became increasingly concerned[about] the reliability o its conscripts in the ace oSolidarity activism something that is also abundantlyevident in declassied Polish documents. o bolster thearmys reliability and stave of Solidarity[s] inuenceamong the rank and le military, the General Staf tookseveral steps beginning with the spring 1981 inductionperiod, including the stationing o new conscripts outsidetheir province o residence and the concentrating o newconscripts in separate (isolated) sub-units. Te aim wasto prevent existing soldiers rom being contaminated by

new conscripts, who would have greater and more recentexposure to Solidarity, and who were presumably moresympathetic to Solidaritys goals and actions. Tese steps,however, came at a price. Inevitably they resulted in lower

combat readiness o the sub-units manned by new recruitsand disrupted the training schedules o the ull units. wourther important steps the retention o pre-1980conscripts ater their 2-year period o service was over, andthe postponement o the induction o new dratees wereadopted in the all o 1981 to orestall the dilution o theoverall reliability o the orce with new conscripts. Suchmeasures could not have been sustained over the long term,but the idea was to ensure the maximum reliability o the

armed orces as the date or the imposition o martial lawapproached.

Tese internal actors, combined with the external pressure,gave the Polish authorities a strong incentive to move aheadexpeditiously with martial law, beore the situation reacheda point o irreversible crisis that might provoke a large-scaleSoviet military incursion. Kania was able to withstand thesurge o internal and external pressure during his timeas PZPR First Secretary, but, as Kukliski noted, theremoval o Kania as party leader in October 1981 was a

23 Soviet Inuence among the Current Polish Leadership; Composition o theCouncil o National Salvation, CIA Intelligence Inormation Cable, 18 December1981, FIRDB-315/22625-81, pp. 1-8; FIRDB-312/01995-81, S #818168 (cited i nnote 18 supra), pp. 1-4; Contacts between Polish Military and Politburo Ocials,pp. 1-4; Relationship between the Polish Ministry o National Deense and theMinistry o Interna l Afairs, pp. 1-3; and Comments on a Recent Photographo the Polish Military Council o National Salvation; Former Polish GeneralStaf Ocer with Access to t he Highest Levels o the Polish Armed Forces, CIAIntelligence Inormation Cable, 26 February 1982, FIRDB-315/03775-82, pp. 1-8.

24 All quotations in this para graph come rom Measures aken to Ensure theReliability o Polish Conscripts, CIA Intelligence Inormation Cable, 28 January1982, FI RDB-315/01801-82, pp. 1-5.




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Jaruzelski, treating him with what Kuklisk i describedas open scorn.29 Kukliski reports that in the summero 1981, Kulikov remarked to Polish General FlorianSiwicki that Jaruzelski was the main impediment tomartial law.30 Declassied Soviet documents indicate thatalthough Soviet political leaders at rst had great aith in

Jaruzelski, his continued deerra l o any action caused themto become deeply worried that he would lose his nerve

and ail to do what they wanted.31

Kukliski s reports andmany declassied documents rom the ormer East-blocarchives reveal that Soviet and East German leaders werestriving, rom an early stage, to oster hard-line alternativesin Poland who could replace Kania and Jaruzelski andmove decisively to impose martial law. Kukliskis 1983assessment notes that

Moscow [initially] reposed the greatest hopes or therestoration o order especially in Jaruzelski. When,however, under the pressure o the population, the[Polish] authorities kept retreating and Jaruzelskidelayed using the military until more avorableconditions would arise, the Soviet leadershipconsidered him incapable o acing and undertookconcrete steps to replace him and Kania with moredecisive people. Jaruzelski received a series o reportsrom Polish generals and other ocers who wereprepared or it by the Embassy o the USSR in Warsawand by the representatives o the Supreme Commandero the Combined Armed Forces attached to the Polishmilitary.32

In mid-1981 the Soviet and East German authorities andtheir Polish collaborators were on the verge o orcing

Jaruzelski s (and Kanias) ouster, either at a PZPR CentralCommittee plenum in June or at the PZPRs Ninth

29 Soviet-Polish Positions on the Declaration o Martial Law in Poland; 23rdMeeting o the Militar y Council o t he Combined Armed Forces o the WarsawPact in Soa, Bulgaria; and Soviet Air Operations in Poland, CIA Memorandumsummarizing inormation rom Kukliski, 29 April 1981, FIRDB-312/01362-81,S #818124, p. 5.

30 Soviet Pressure on Polish Leaders to Impose Martial Law, CIA IntelligenceInormation Cable, 27 January 1982, FIRDB-315/01627-82, p. 2.

31 See Mark Kramer, Soviet Deliberations during the Polish Crisis, 1980 -1981,CWIHP Special Working Paper No. 1 (Washington, DC: Cold War InternationalHistory Project, 1999).

32 Jaruzelskis Attitude, Behavior and Style, p. 43.

Congress in July.33 In the end, however, the Soviet Unionbacked of and decided to place all its bets on Jaruzelsk i.Te Kukliski materials do not clariy why Soviet leadersstaked so much on someone whose ortitude they clearlydoubted even as the time or the martial law operation wasdrawing near.

Soviet Forces in Poland

Another issue that is let unclear in the newly releasedmaterials is the size and conguration o Soviet militaryorces in Poland in the latter hal o 1981. A summary oa long message sent by Kukl iski to the CIA in mid-July1981 reported a sharp increase in the quantity o heavyweapons deployed by Soviet troops in Poland and a ar-reaching reorganization o the two Soviet tank divisions inPoland the 90th Guards ank Division based in BorneSulinowo and the 20th Guards ank Division stationed inwitoszw.34 According to the summary (dated 17 July1981), the Polish General Staf estimated that there are900 to 1,000 -55, -64, and -72 tanks at the Borne-

Sulinowo ring range as o mid-July. Kuklinski alsoreported, albeit on the basis o third-hand inormation,that each o the three regiments in the 90th Guardsank Division had been reorganized into 27 companies(rather than the customary 9) and that each regimentwas equipped with more than 300 tanks. Tis essentiallymeant that the three regiments had been transormedinto armored divisions o a truncated structure consistingprimarily o armored and antiaircrat elements. Kukliskinoted that the Polish General Staf had received as yetunconrmed inormation that a similar situation exists atthe Swietoszow ring range and that the number o Soviettanks in this area exceeds 1,000 combat vehicles [sic].Presumably the rationale or converting the two Soviet tankdivisions in Poland into six truncated (i.e., streamlined)divisions and thereby tripling their military deploymentcapacity almost overnight would have been to ensurethat they were more suitably congured or strike-breaking,internal policing, and administrative unctions.

Te reorganization o the Soviet Unions Northern Groupo Forces (NGF) along the lines described here would

33 See Kramer, Soviet Deliberations during the Polish Crisis, p. 120 ;and theexcerpts rom transcribed KGB documents in Christopher Andrew and VasiliMitrokhin, Te Sword and the Shield: Te Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret

History o the KGB(New York: Basic Books, 1999), p. 524.34 FIRDB-312/02264-81, S #818185 (cited in note 27 supra), pp. 1-2. Borne

Sulinowo, a small town in northwestern Poland known as Gross-Borno when itwas under German ru le prior to 1945, was the top-secret site o one o the largestSoviet military bases in Poland throughout the Communist era. Te town andall the surrounding area (mostly orests) ell under exclusive Soviet jurisdiction in1945 and did not appear on any ocial maps until 1992. witoszw, a tiny vil lagein western Poland known as Neuhammer when it was under Ger man rule priorto 1945, was the site o another Soviet military base t hroughout the Communistera. Located near the Ea st German border, Soviet orces deployed in witoszwwould have played an important role in Warsaw Pact operations against the NorthAtlantic reaty Organization.




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have meant that the number o tanks deployed by the90th Guards ank Division had more than tripled, at leasttemporarily. Data compiled by the Polish government aterSoviet/Russian troops completed their withdrawal romPoland in 1993 indicate that the NGFs two tank divisionswere equipped with a combined total o roughly 600 tanksand 450 armored vehicles in the early 1980s.35 Te CIA, inits summary o Kukliskis message, inserted a bracketed

comment that the 90th ank Guards Division, accordingto available inormation, . . . is equipped only with -62tanks and that there are only 322 tanks in a Soviettank division. Te CIA also noted, in another bracketedcomment, that according to available inormation, thereare not 1,000 tanks at Swietoszow. However, dependingupon the denition o combat vehicles, there could well beover 1,000 such vehicles. Te manpower needed or six

truncated divisions could have been drawn (though justbarely) rom the roughly 62,000 soldiers in the NGF, buteven under a loose denition o combat vehicles, the sixdivisions could not have been set up without a major inuxo tanks and armored vehicles roughly doubling the

number deployed by the NGF.36

It is conceivable that the extra weapons were brought intoPoland in connection with the Soyuz-81 joint militaryexercises in the spring o 1981 or in preparation or otherexercises slated to be held in Poland in the summer o1981 and were simply let there aterward. Several oKukliski s reports mention that during the Soyuz-81exercises the NGF secretly deployed new militaryinstallations, primarily communications, in Polandwithout the knowledge or prior agreement o the PolishGovernment.37 A report sent by Kuklinski in June 1981,

35 Najwaniejsze dane statystyczne zwiz ane z pobytem wojsk radzieckich wPolsce, in Pnocna Grupa Wojsk Armii Radzieckiej w Polsce w l atach 1945-1993(Warsaw: Ministerstwo Obrony Narodowej, 1995), pp. 41-45. See also JerzyDomagaa, Bratnia stra, Rzeczpospolita(Warsaw), 28 April 2004, p. 3; and TeMilitary

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