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Urban Warfare
The world probably would never have heard of Ryszard Kuklinski if Jerzy Urban had not tried to embarrass Ronald Reagan. In 1986, Urban was press spokesman for the Military Council of National Salvation, the junta headed by General Wojciech Jaruzelski that had seized power and instituted martial law in December 1981.
Known for his acerbic wit, sharp tongue, and occasional profanity, Urban stood out among the colorless bureaucrats who ruled Poland. He was always combative and never apologetic, even when defending an illegitimate government that had suppressed the first free trade union in the Soviet Bloc.
Warsaw had failed to improve or even normalize relations with Washington. Although the White House had lifted most of the sanctions it had imposed in 1981, the strongest measures, including withdrawal of Most Favored Nation status, remained in force. Even more important, Urban and his bosses knew that the United States was covertly supporting the underground opposition in order "to keep the spirit of Solidarity alive," and the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-private, government-funded, public diplomacy initiative, was about to receive $1 million in congressionally appropriated funds earmarked for Solidarity.4 Jaruzelski and company were in a foul mood because they were losing the battle against the underground, and the economy was in worse shape than ever.
Most important, however, Urban and his bosses could not abide Ronald Reagan. Next to Pope John Paul II and Lech Walesa, the American president was the most revered figure in Poland. The "evil empire" rhetoric of Reagan’s first term, while controversial at home, cheered the Poles on in their struggle against Soviet hegemony; in 1984, many prayed for his reelection.
On 3 June 1986, Urban met with Michael Dobbs, the former Washington Post bureau chief in Warsaw, then based in Paris. Urban offered Dobbs a scoop: in a few days, the Polish minister of internal affairs would reveal that CIA had had an agent inside the general staff who had drafted the operational blueprint for martial law. CIA had "evacuated" the agent and his family from Warsaw on 8 November 1981 and flown them to safety in the United States.5
The scoop was a setup. Perhaps because the Kuklinski case was potentially embarrassing to the Polish Army and to state security, Urban wanted it to surface in the US media before it appeared in Poland. He also wanted the Reagan administration to confirm the story. Thus Urban insisted that his remarks were "off the record," unless the Post obtained some form of official comment on the impending revelation.
If that was Urban’s intention, he succeeded. The next day, the Post ran a front-page story under the joint byline of Dobbs and Watergate reporter Bob Woodward. It repeated what Urban had told Dobbs: "The US administration could have publicly revealed these plans to the world and warned Solidarity," Urban said, "Had it done so, the implementation of martial law would have been impossible."6
With his own spin on the story, Urban was in a position at a 6 June 1986 press conference to comment on Washington’s (not Warsaw’s!) revelation that CIA had been in liaison with a senior Polish Army officer involved in martial law planning.7 In his briefing, Urban elaborated the theme he had developed with Dobbs. The Polish government, he said, assumed that CIA had withdrawn Kuklinski so that Washington could alert its "friends" in Solidarity—Urban often sarcastically referred to the Polish opposition as America’s "friends" and "allies"—and thereby foil Warsaw’s martial law plans. "Washington, however, kept silent," Urban noted. "It did not warn its allies. It did not boast of its agent as it customarily does." The Reagan administration had "lied to its own people and to its friends [in Solidarity] in Poland," when it denied having prior knowledge of martial law. Kuklinski, he maintained, was living proof to the contrary.
Urban even blamed President Reagan personally for the plight of the Polish opposition, asserting that Reagan "could have prevented the arrests and internment" of Solidarity leaders but did not because the White House was hoping to provoke a "a bloodbath of European proportions." It had intended to use Solidarity as a "bloody pawn" in its "imperialist aims" and in its geopolitical rivalry with the USSR. Reagan was no friend of Poland; his policy was "morally repulsive."
As intended, Urban also stirred up trouble for the White House within the large and politically influential Polish-American community. Alojzy Mazewski, President of the Polish American Congress (PAC), fired off an open letter to the President demanding to know why Solidarity had not been warned, why Kuklinski had been kept incommunicado, and why he had not been allowed to meet with the Polish-American community or given a job. The White House delayed its reply, giving Urban another opportunity to denounce America’s alleged "disregard for the [Polish-American] community." When the response came, Polish media noted that the messenger was not a top-level official.
The brouhaha eventually died down, but Urban had caused some damage. A commentator on Poland’s state-run television gloated as he read from Mazewski’s letter asserting that the "trust and friendship of the of the Polish nation toward America has been undermined." "And not for the first time," the commentator added.8 The Washington correspondent of Trybuna Ludu, the Polish equivalent of Pravda, cited a letter from a Polish-language daily in New York warning that foreign leaders from Napoleon to Roosevelt, Churchill, and Truman had betrayed the trust of the Polish people. 9 Now the underground opposition was flying close "to the flame of Reagan’s candle."10 When Mazewski expressed dissatisfaction with the slow response he was getting from the White House, Urban publicly invited him to Warsaw for a meeting with Polish officials.
Impact of Accusations
A decade later, a respected journalist could write that the allegation that "the most vocally anti-Communist US president" had failed to warn Solidarity "is still a subject of much discussion in Poland."11 Some Poles felt betrayed. But how much truth was there to Urban’s accusations? The answer is—not much. Having Kuklinski in the United States was a disadvantage, not a benefit. The blueprint he had worked on was a contingency plan. Having lost its source, the Agency did not know and could not predict when or if the plan would be implemented.
More important, perhaps, the policymaking community (and, in all fairness, the Intelligence Community as well) still seemed "mesmerized by the vision of Soviet troops marching into Poland" after months of Moscow’s saber-rattling and almost continuous military exercises and operations in Poland and along its borders.12 This saber-rattling had accomplished its objective: the West had been confused, Solidarity had been intimidated, and Jaruzelski could claim that, by instituting martial law, he had chosen the "lesser evil" (internal repression) and avoided the "greater catastrophe" (external intervention).
Some policymakers complained after the fact that they had not seen or been briefed on Kuklinski’s reporting, but, as former Deputy Director for Central Intelligence Bobby Ray Inman confirmed, at least 20 senior officials, including President Reagan and his closest advisers, knew about the colonel and his information. But it did not matter; no one saw an internal crackdown as likely or even feasible, given the questionable loyalty of the Polish Army.13 As one observer noted only half in jest, "US policy would have likely remained the same even if Kuklinski’s reports had been underlined in red and posted in every men’s room in Washington."14
Urban’s assertion that the United States wanted a bloodbath in Poland was especially odious. The Reagan administration, like the Carter administration before it, had worked to avoid just such an outcome. As former Secretary of State Alexander Haig noted, even if the White House had known martial law was coming, he would have advised against warning Solidarity for fear of inciting the opposition to suicidal resistance.15
Yep, the same mentality that constantly sought to show any US defense or intelligence policy in the worse possible light during the last 25 years of the Cold War and actively spun coverage of Viet Nam to a degree that 'stab in the back' is not an inaccurate description of media actions, is alive and well and determined to submarine the War on Terror. These people really are treasonous in their intent.