A Secret Life (5 page)
Authors: Benjamin Weiser
Tags: #History, #Europe, #Germany, #World, #True Crime, #Espionage
They discussed how to create a cover for Kuklinski’s trips away from the
Legia
. Kuklinski said that a plausible excuse would be that he had gone shopping for a carburetor or other parts for his 1968 Opel.
Legia
. Kuklinski said that a plausible excuse would be that he had gone shopping for a carburetor or other parts for his 1968 Opel.
At 11:40 P.M., both Henry and Lang embraced Kuklinski, with genuine admiration. As they prepared to leave, Lang asked Kuklinski about the mysterious signature he had used in the letter to Bonn.
“What does P.V. mean?” Lang asked.
Kuklinski thrust his right index finger toward the ceiling and smiled. “I am the Polish Viking,” he said.
After dropping Kuklinski near the railroad station, which was about a five-minute walk from where his boat was moored, the two officers returned to the embassy in The Hague. At midnight they prepared two cables for headquarters, recounting their first meeting and their plans for later sessions. In the first cable, they concluded with an assessment of his motivation: “Apparently strictly ideological, based on strong patriotic and anti-Soviet feelings.”
In the second, they offered more detailed observations. In Henry’s view, Kuklinski had seemed “utterly security conscious. . . . Very concerned about quality of our security practices, concerned over his own security and particularly for his family.”
Henry quoted Kuklinski as saying, “‘Don’t relay my reports by electronic means. I have heard a rumor in the General Staff that they can read your codes.’” Henry noted that when they had driven him back, Kuklinski “wanted to be left off in [a] dark corner to avoid all possibility colleagues would see him.”
“As patriotic Pole with no love left for Soviets, he felt he should contribute to the West,” Henry wrote. “He impressed me as courageous: . . . ‘Give me tape recorder and any topic you choose, and I’ll tell you all I know.’. . . He’s like a waterfall.”
Henry pointed out that Kuklinski was a “military type,” and not an “intel officer.” He added: “He’s either very sincere or a hell of a good actor.” Kuklinski reminded him of his own experiences in World War II. “In short, he’s a Pole.”
In Lang’s portion of the cable, he offered a series of words to describe Kuklinski: “Earnest.” “Convinced.” “Pride.” “Intelligent.” “Wiry.” “It seems we are indeed dealing with a man of far above [average] intelligence and talents,” he wrote. He estimated that Kuklinski was about five feet, nine inches tall, and 150 pounds “of solid bone and muscle.” Lang added: “Although I am his size and have at least a 10-pound advantage on him, I have the feeling I would not like to box, wrestle, or go at him in any way physically. He is one tough hombre.”
Lang added, “I had the feeling he was scarcely nervous at all. Nervous or not, he certainly knows what his association with us means in real terms and it takes a brave man, knowing this, to take the step he took. . . . He was there for business and was all business. I’m glad he’s on our side.”
The cable ended with the team’s observation that “father’s death, Saigon experiences and long pent-up feelings suggest next few contacts should be oriented toward man who [is] having catharsis yet torn with conflicts between his success in his world and Western idealism.”
Henry and Lang added a request for “intelligence requirements”―questions that Langley wanted them to pose to Kuklinski and what documents they should ask him to provide.
The cable was sent at 2:04 A.M. Headquarters responded almost immediately with a five-line message confirming the existence of a file on Kuklinski that included biographical details and his role on the ICC in Vietnam. The names Kuklinski had offered in the first meeting were generally accurate, the cable said, and Lang and Henry were asked to focus in the second meeting on how the CIA should communicate with him after he returned to Poland. It said that should Kuklinski and his family need emergency assistance to escape from Poland, it would be provided. Henry and Lang were to continue to leave the impression that they were from the army, not the CIA.
Early Saturday morning, Lang and Henry made the short drive to Rotterdam, where they reserved another hotel room. To maintain their businessmen pretense, they filled an empty suitcase with shoes to give it some weight. They were joined by a technical officer from Bonn Station, a handyman who could fix a broken camera, tape recorder, or just about anything else. He was asked to go shopping for a carburetor.
Late that afternoon, Lang and Henry headed for the RV park to wait for Kuklinski. At about five o’clock, they saw him, accompanied by a teenage boy with wispy blond hair. Kuklinski and the boy passed Henry, who was snapping photographs as if he were a tourist.
“Sir, my son,” Kuklinski said softly.
He and the boy walked on, taking pictures and mingling with a tour group.
Several minutes later, Lang and Henry saw Kuklinski say something to his son, and the boy strolled away. Kuklinski approached Lang, who led him across a pedestrian bridge, and with Henry, they drove to the hotel.
Once in the room, Kuklinski beamed as he spoke about his son, Bogdan. The boy did not understand English, Kuklinski said, and would have assumed that his father’s greeting was merely a friendly gesture to a fellow tourist. Kuklinski said he had told his son that he was going shopping for Hanka, and had given him ten guilders for sodas and candy. Bogdan would be fine for several hours. They had agreed to meet later in the park, but if Kuklinski was not there, Bogdan was to return to the boat without him. Kuklinski would arrive later.
Kuklinski, who was still chain-smoking and coughing occasionally, seemed more relaxed than he had been the previous evening. Lang placed on the table a Philips cassette tape recorder, which had a small detachable microphone.
“I live in Warsaw,” Kuklinski began, “on Jana Olbrachta Street, Number 19A, Apt. 55.” It was a block inhabited only by military people and their families. His building was nine stories tall; the surrounding complexes had only four. Kuklinski lived on the sixth floor, which was served by two elevators. He said his immediate neighbor was an Olympic fencing star, Egon Franke, who now worked as a coach at a sports club. Franke’s apartment was the only one with a wall that directly abutted his. Kuklinski said he was unaware of the names of his other neighbors on his floor.
“I occupy three rooms with a kitchen,” Kuklinski said. “There is only one entrance to my apartment. There are three windows with a big balcony which look out on a residential quarter.”
The street was guarded by uniformed militiamen on motorcycles or in radio-equipped cars, especially after dark. “Generally speaking, I work after hours,” he said. He often arrived home as late as eleven o’clock and sometimes later.
“Sometimes, when my car is not operating or I want to save money on gasoline, I use my boss’s official car, a Fiat, which he often leaves after working hours,” Kuklinski said. “If I am alone, the driver takes me on my own route home. If there are several of us, we decide who will be dropped off first.”
Kuklinski said that he liked to socialize with other officers in the General Staff’s yacht club, called Atol, on Wisniowa Street. He was vice president of the club. He enjoyed sailing with his family and tried to set aside weekends for his wife Hanka, Bogdan, and his other son, Waldemar, who was nineteen.
Kuklinski said Hanka worked as a bookkeeper in a lathe factory, and together they earned enough “for a modest living.” He had borrowed to buy a garage for their car and was paying for car repairs after two accidents. The boys needed clothes and school supplies. Waldemar was constantly buying books and had an extensive collection.
Lang was impressed at Kuklinski’s mastery of detail. At times during the meeting, and in a third session held a few days later in Ostend, Kuklinski grabbed the microphone of the recorder and paced around the room. At one point, he delivered a forty-five-minute exposition on his military education, his past and current assignments, and his access to secret documents, gesticulating as if he were addressing a staff meeting. Kuklinski had “apparent total command of subject,” Lang and Henry later wrote, and an “outstanding ability [to] organize and articulate material.”
Kuklinski said he had joined the General Staff in 1963 and now worked in the operations directorate, which was a kind of nerve center for the Defense Ministry. He described his six-month stint in Vietnam, where he had gotten a close look at American troops. In 1969 he was the chief author of a signals exercise for Polish, East German, Czech, and Soviet troops. To prepare for this exercise, he had traveled to Moscow, where he worked closely with Warsaw Pact commanders. He was well-regarded and was assigned to write all of Poland’s military training exercises. He was the chief author of exercises called “Summer 70,” “Summer 71,” and “Spring 69,” each of which required collaborating with twenty to forty Warsaw Pact officers.
Kuklinski had written the annual operational training directives for Defense Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski, in which he had analyzed the state of training throughout the Polish Armed Forces, and developed new plans for each year. He had been sent to Romania to study its military training and planning. In the fall, he would accompany Jaruzelski to the Soviet Union to watch Polish Army exercises, which would include the launching of Scud missiles and Polish air-defense missiles.
Kuklinski had no family or friends abroad. But he kept in regular touch with officers in other Warsaw Pact militaries and had developed a network of experts who supplied him with the latest information he needed for his job. He often visited military units around Poland and met directly with the field commanders, who treated him with respect.
As Kuklinski talked, he puffed on his cigarette, which he held between his thumb and middle finger, European style.
Henry and Lang told Kuklinski that he would be given a miniature camera to photograph secret documents. They also spent part of the meeting explaining an initial system of communications inside Poland. Kuklinski was asked for details of his daily life, from where he parked at work (often on a public street) to the streets he took back and forth. He was told that whenever possible, he should drive his own car―rather than take the bus or his official car―and to adhere to the same route each way. Henry explained that the information would allow the Americans to keep track of him and leave him signals, and if he deviated from his routine, they could begin to worry.
Simplicity was the key, Henry said. The United States would make initial contact with him in Warsaw by dropping a letter into his car window. The letter would contain innocuous writing and a hidden message, visible only when pressed with an iron (the CIA calls this scorch technique “SW,” or secret writing). The message would confirm the time and place of their first meeting in Warsaw. Henry told Kuklinski to use the pseudonym “Jack Strong” when signing letters to the Americans.
The Americans also assured Kuklinski that if the worst case happened, that if he believed he was about to be arrested and had to flee Poland, the U.S. government would take care of him and his family. They said the Americans would begin to put aside funds for this purpose. Kuklinski, who understood the risks he was taking, was surprised at the statement. He had assumed he was dealing with the U.S. Army as officer to officer, and he had made clear that his motivation was ideological, not financial. He wanted to remain in Poland and work against the Soviet Union, and what he wanted was America’s support.
As the second meeting drew to a close, Kuklinski addressed Henry and Lang directly. He said he had no desire to talk about areas in which he lacked expertise. “I do not propose to dwell on my political views.” After all, he said, he was a military person. “Nonetheless, as every Pole, I understand that we find ourselves in a forced situation, and were harnessed into the Communist yoke.”
Having been in the army for twenty-five years, he said, “observing life and happenings in the world, starting with the Korean War and followed by the situation in Indochina, events in Czechoslovakia, the dramas in our own country―have convinced me that the Communist [side] is, unfortunately, the aggressive side.”
In his view, the Polish Armed Forces, in case of a war, could never be “harnessed to the Soviet war machine.” For centuries, he said, Poland had a tradition of freedom, and the Polish Army was “where freedom was fought for.”
But even though Poland was deep inside the Communist bloc, he continued, “the place of our armed forces, the place of our army, although inside the defense system of the Soviet Union, is on the side of freedom. It is where your army is, the army of the United States.”
At 9:05 P.M., the three men embraced again. The technical officer arrived with a carburetor for Kuklinski. They agreed to meet again in Ostend.
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