Communist files suggest secret police cut ties with ‘arrogant’ Walesa

Polish communist-era secret police files published yesterday suggest the regime cut an “arrogant” Lech Walesa from its list of informants in 1976, as the Solidarity freedom hero denies fresh allegations he was a paid communist secret agent. Hundreds of pages of newfound regime documents, dated 1970-76, surfaced last week alleging that the Nobel Peace Prize winner - renowned for negotiating a bloodless end to communism in Poland in 1989 - was in fact a paid collaborator codenamed ‘Bolek’. The 72-year-old former president admitted last Friday that he had “made a mistake” without elaborating. A special vetting court had ruled in 2000 that there was no basis to suspicions that he had been a paid regime agent. Made public yesterday, one file written by a secret policeman and dated June 8, 1976 reveals that agent Bolek refused further cooperation.  “Given his arrogance, I think it’s no use to maintain contact with him,” the policeman wrote. Another document dated June 9, 1976, bearing the stamp of a secret police major, confirms that cooperation with Bolek was cut. “These are complete fakes. I have nothing to do with them,” Walesa told Polish media yesterday, while travelling in the US.  Historian Slawomir Cenckiewicz called the new files “shocking” as they include dozens of pages of information that agent Bolek allegedly provided on various people. Cenckiewicz authored a 2008 book accusing Walesa of covertly working as a communist spy. “We trust Lech because of all he did. At the time (the 1970s), us workers, we were alone,” communist-era dissident Zbigniew Janas said yesterday. “We’ll protect you Lech, you’re not alone.” Rumours have long swirled that as a shipyard electrician, Walesa covertly fed the communist regime information while leading the freedom-fighting Solidarity, the Soviet bloc’s only independent trade union. The 1989 “Round Table” agreement between Solidarity and the Communist party triggered the country’s first democratic elections since World War II, and ushered Walesa into the presidency a year later. Right-wing politicians like Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the powerful leader of the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party, have long argued that Walesa was a regime spy and puppet whom communists used as a political fig-leaf while they held on to key military and economic sectors. Centrists and liberals have repeatedly ridiculed the idea, arguing that Kaczynski - who was also a communist-era dissident - is being vengeful after falling out with Walesa during his presidency. Experts have consistently raised doubts about the credibility of communist-era secret police files, arguing they could easily have been manufactured to frame opposition activists like Walesa. Poles have mixed feelings about Walesa. His boldness in standing up to the communist regime is still widely respected, but the combative and divisive tone of his later presidency earned him scorn in many quarters.DPA adds: Multiple Polish broadcasters set up special programmes for the file’s release while the 40 seats in the reading rooms at the Institute of National Remembrance were permanently filled.“I never betrayed you. You betrayed me,” Walesa wrote in an emotional post yesterday denying the allegations. Since the archive’s revelation, Walesa has only admitted to one mistake, while saying he would never reveal what that mistake might be because he swore secrecy to the other person involved.He says he has appealed to the other person involved to come forward, so that Walesa might air the secret.The personnel records for the documents in question were found in the home of former Polish general Czeslaw Jan Kiszczak, who died in November.Following the death, Kiszczak’s widow gave his private archive to the institute, including six packages of documents with handwritten notes, photos and typed texts.The institute, which also functions as an archive, has the powers of the public prosecutor and is responsible for processing the country’s communist past.