Agents Provocateurs

May 26, 2009 in Communism, Germany, Uncategorized 1 Comment Tags: 1968, agent provocateur, Communism

The files of East Germany continue to reveal secrets. The NYT reveals

The killing in 1967 of an unarmed demonstrator by a police officer in West Berlin set off a left-wing protest movement and put conservative West Germany on course to evolve into the progressive country it has become today.

Now a discovery in the archives of the East German secret police, known as the Stasi, has upended Germany’s perception of its postwar history. The killer, Karl-Heinz Kurras, though working for the West Berlin police, was at the time also acting as a Stasi spy for East Germany.(

For the left, Mr. Kurras’s true allegiance strikes at the underpinnings of the 1968 protest movement in Germany. The killing provided the clear-cut rationale for the movement’s opposition to what its members saw as a violent, unjust state, when in fact the supposed fascist villain of leftist lore was himself a committed socialist.

There is the sobering reminder of the Stasi infiltration of West German structures, but also the question of whether it went much deeper than has ever been uncovered.

The most insidious question raised by the revelation is whether Mr. Kurras might have been acting not only as a spy, but also as an agent provocateur, trying to destabilize West Germany.

More on Accusations Against Walesa

June 28, 2008 in Collaboration, Communism, Poland No Comments Tags: collaborator, Piotr Gontarczyk, Poland, Slawomir Cenckiewicz, spy, Walesa

The new book by Slawomir Cenckiewicz and Piotr Gontarczyk that claims Walesa worked for the Communist secret police until 1976.

Der Spiegel interviewed Cenckiewicz:

SPIEGEL: This Monday your book “The Security Service and Lech Walesa” comes out. It has already sparked an intense debate. In it, you and your co-author Piotr Gontarczyk claim that the hero of the Polish reform movement collaborated with the secret police in the 1970s. Do you have proof?

Cenckiewicz: We provide clear evidence in our book including registration cards, notations, notes from the secret police and reports from the so-called informant “Bolek.” There’s positive proof that Lech Walesa was registered with the secret police under that code name between 1970 and 1976.

SPIEGEL: Walesa has emphatically denied that, and says the Bolek file is a forgery. How can you be sure the secret police didn’t fabricate the documents to paint the union leader in a bad light?

Cenckiewicz: We know the secret police’s methods, and the way the archive and registry were run — that’s how we know. We’ve also found evidence from the Bolek file cited in other files.

SPIEGEL: Those could also have been forged.

Cenckiewicz: These files still had their original seals and it could be proven that they hadn’t been opened since the 1970s. Manipulation is out of the question.

SPIEGEL: Assuming for a moment that Walesa was in fact Bolek as you allege, how much damage did he do?

Cenckiewicz: We describe the fate of people who Bolek informed on. We’ve come across seven such stories. The rest were destroyed or stolen from the files. But it’s clear that Bolek informed on more than 20 people who were later harrassed or oppressed.

As president Walesa sought to sanitize his file:

SPIEGEL: The other major claim in your book is that Walesa tried to clean out his file when he was president of Poland in the early 1990s.

Cenckiewicz: For me that’s the saddest chapter. He was the first freely elected head of state since World War II, but he used his office to remove incriminating secret police files.

SPIEGEL: Walesa has also strongly denied this accusation. What proof do you have that he did this, or at least ordered it done?

Cenckiewicz: Some of the documents have his signature, a date and the note “I have borrowed this file.” Others have the signature of some of his closest co-workers, for example former Interior Minister Andrzej Milczanowski, requesting the documents on his behalf. Walesa endorsed the request. Later it turned out some of the files were returned incomplete. The new, post-Communist secret service took note of that.

Lech Walesa – Communist Informer?

June 21, 2008 in Collaboration, Communism, Poland, Uncategorized No Comments Tags: Poland, secret police, spy, Walesa

According to Der Spiegel’s “In the Hell of the Files,” a book in Poland, The Secret Police and Lech Walesa, claims that Walesa, after his first arrest in 1970, agreed, under the code name of Bolek, to inform on his follow workers in Gdansk, and received 13,000 zlotys, about two months pay, for his work.

Walesa, founder of Solidarity and Nobel Prize winner, denies it and says the secret police files are false.

The national conservative paper Rzeczpospolita, which has also reported on the sexual misconduct of Archbishop Juliusz Paetz, has printed a preview of the book by Slawomir Cenckiewicz und Piotr Gontarczyk of the Institute of National Memeory (IPN).

In 1992 the conservative government presented a list of 66 prominent Poles who had cooperated with the Communists, and Walesa was on that list.

But the Polish secret police had destroyed many of their files as Communism was falling, and it was impossible to determine what these men had done. Such accusations were used as a weapon to destroy political foes. The lustration or cleansing of Polish society from Communism became a farce.

The files were sealed, and liberals such as Adam Michnik want them to be sealed forever.

The Institute of National Memory has custody of the remaining files of the secret police, and the new book is based on those files.

Cardinal Paskai of Hungary betrayed his priests to the Communists; and Paetz is suspected of being a Communist informer in the Vatican.

Until the generation of Europeans who might have collaborated with the Communists dies off, the suspicions and accusations will be an open wound on the new democratic societies.