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May 23, 1983

Polish Intelligence Report on Radio Free Europe Links to CIA

Warsaw, 23 May 1983
Secret
Copy Nr 1

offiCial note

 

In carrying out my duties, I have in recent days received from an intelligence source information [report] pertaining to Zdzislaw Najder, according to which, as director of the so-called Polish section of Radio Free Europe, he spent November 29 - December 12, 1982 in the USA at the direction of the CIA. While there, he participated in a meeting organized by the Board for International Broadcasting (BIB) headed by Glenn Ferguson, a career agent of the CIA. During this meeting Zdzislaw Najder received new instructions from the CIA, mainly concerning the political work of the Polish section of RFE, as follows:

 

– Attempt to intensify RFE initiatives aimed at increasing socio-political tensions in Poland during martial law

– In view of the “weakening of Solidarity” (as it was called in the meeting), [he should] create within the shortest possible time, through contacts between RFE and the underground structures of the former solidarity in Poland, a central base abroad, which would coordinate the activity of the “underground movement” in Poland,

– Assist with the creation of a financial base abroad for the building of an “underground state” in Poland,

– Urgently expand the network of RFE collaborators inside Poland as a covert group which, under the guise of information-gathering for propaganda purposes, would in fact carry out espionage for the CIA, taking advantage of current social radicalization in Poland.

 

These instructions would put into practice the directive of the state department about sharpening RFE’s approach to the socialist countries, specifically Poland and the USSR.

 

Reacting to G. Ferguson’s appraisal of the present situation in Poland, and the method of carrying out his instructions, Z. Najder stated that:

 

– RFE must increase its activity in order to hasten the inevitable (in his opinion) breakdown of Poland in all practical realms, which must result in “revolt,”

– All possible mechanisms of pressure should be brought to bear on that part of the Polish Episcopate around Cardinal Glemp, in order to halt its dangerous [accomodationist] policy toward the Polish authorities,

– [RFE] should work to counter the argument of “various circles and milieux” that it is linked to the CIA; the principle should be accepted that any worker in the Polish section whose ties with the Cia are uncovered would immediately lose his employment at RFE. This would create an added element of discipline for people employed at RFE, while requiring any RFE employees cooperating with the CIA or staff agents of that agency, to take pains to conceal their contacts.

 

During his trip to the USA, Z. Najder also received special intelligence training pertaining to his new tasks for the CIA as director of the Polish section of Radio Free Europe. He also met with G. Ferguson directly many times.

 

Inspector of the Interior Ministry
Signatory
Colonel Sylwester FLAKO

 

Stamp of the Office of the Minister, Ministry of Internal Affairs.

 

This May 1983 document draws on Polish intelligence service reporting to detect a hidden CIA hand behind RFE broadcasts (although the CIA connection had been severed twelve years earlier). It is representative of Polish intelligence reports on RFE in those years, which were usually far less accurate than Soviet and other East European intelligence reports.


Document Information

Source

Urzad ochrony panstwa collection, Hoover Archives. Translated by A. Ross Johnson.

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2014-12-18

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