U.S. Intelligence and the Confrontation in Poland, 1980–1981

13 Caught Off Guard

Chapter 13: Caught Off Guard For more than six weeks prior to the imposition of martial law, the U.S. government had been notably silent on all aspects relating to a possible military crackdown in Poland. This was in stark contrast to the klaxons sounded and reprisals threatened on earlier occasions, when the concern was a Soviet invasion or Soviet military intervention in collaboration with Polish leaders. Jaruzelski has repeatedly claimed that Washington’s silence, with no protests to the Polish government or warnings to Solidarity of imminent martial law, was a signal that U.S. authorities endorsed his “internal solution ” to head off an “inevitable” Soviet invasion. He has said that when Kuklinski disappeared from Warsaw, the Polish leadership knew immediately that the United States had the details of the martial law plans, and of the recent preparations for carrying them out. It was Jaruzelski’s military regime, in fact, that slipped the information to the Western media in the mid-1980s that the United States had an intelligence source on the Polish General Staff with detailed knowledge on the martial law plans. This Polish media campaign also made sure that it was known that the source had been evacuated from Poland more than a month prior to the imposition of martial law, giving Washington full latitude for publicizing his information. The effect of these disclosures was demonstrated in a U.S. press article in 1986 stating that “the U.S. administration could have publicly revealed these [martial law] plans to the world and warned Solidarity.”1 211 1. “CIA had Secret Agent on Polish General Staff,” WP, 4 June 1986, A1, from which the above quoted passage is taken. This article by Bob Woodward and Michael Dobbs was the result of information passed to them by the public spokesman for Jaruzelski’s ruling Military Council of National Salvation. A revealing account of the machinations of the Jaruzelski junta in putting out this story is given by Ben Fischer, “The Vilification and Vindication of Colonel Kuklinski,” in the unclassified journal, Studies in Intelligence, no. 9, summer 2000, published by the Center for the Study of Intelligence, and which can be obtained from the Web site www.cia.gov/csi. As regards Jaruzelski’s public assertions, in addition to his memoirs, Stan Wojenny Dlaczego [A State of War: Why?] (Warsaw: BGW, 1992), 356–58, he has said the same thing in interviews with Western journalists. See, for example, “Polish Officer Was U.S. Window 212 U.S. Intelligence and the Confrontation in Poland Leaving aside the self-serving aspects of the alibi, it is difficult to contest the basic point—that the United States had the plans, the Polish leaders knew the United States had the plans, and U.S. intelligence officials knew that the Polish leaders knew the United States had the plans. Under such circumstances, it would not have been unreasonable for the Polish leaders to assume U.S. officials would expect them to be watching for signals of Washington’s reaction. And the reaction they saw was nothing. About two weeks after Kuklinski’s escape (and three weeks before martial law was imposed) Jaruzelski met with the U.S. ambassador to Poland, Francis Meehan. The meeting was at the ambassador’s request, just prior to his scheduled return to Washington for consultations. Ambassador Meehan has since suggested that because Jaruzelski already knew by then that the United States had the martial law plans, he could have avoided the meeting if he was concerned about what message or questions the ambassador would be offering under instruction from Washington. Meehan has speculated that Jaruzelski went through with the meeting as an effort to mislead by presenting an image of “business as usual.”2 An equally plausible explanation for Jaruzelski’s behavior, however, could have been his desire to find out what the United States was going to do with its information on the nature and status of the martial law plans. It would have been understandable for him to have assumed that the U.S. ambassador to Poland had been given the latest—and most authoritative— U.S. intelligence on martial law, and that the ambassador knew that Jaruzelski knew this information had been given to the United States. Under these circumstances, it would have been a bit naïve for Jaruzelski to expect he could sell a business as usual image simply by accepting the meeting and not raising the subject. He would have had every reason to...