Lech Walesa was a paid informer for communist regime, papers show

[webfact]

Walesa was a paid informer for communist regime, papers show
By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Lech Walesa, the legendary anti-communist leader who played a historic role in bringing down communism in Poland and across Eastern Europe, had served as a paid informant in the 1970s for the same communist regime that he later fought, according to documents revealed publicly Thursday.

It is not yet clear how damaging the revelations will be to Walesa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for his defiant opposition to the communists and who became Poland's first democratically-elected president after the 1989 fall of communism.

Walesa, now 72, has long admitted that he signed a document in the 1970s agreeing to provide information to the generally-hated communist secret police, although he insisted he never informed on anyone and never took any money. In 2000, he was cleared by a court, which said it found no evidence of collaboration.

On Thursday, Walesa suggested that the newly uncovered papers were fake and vowed to fight to clear his name.

"There can exist no documents coming from me," Walesa said in a written message from Venezuela, where he is traveling. "I will prove that in court."

Communism and strong controls by Moscow were imposed on Poland and other Eastern European nations after World War II — measures despised and opposed by most people in the region. The secret service was the regime's harshest tool for keeping people under its control, using personal information to blackmail and discredit opponents and dissidents.

But the secret police also fabricated information on people, a fact that calls for meticulous confirmation of the authenticity of any compromising documents that emerge. The fate of the files was a major concern after the communists lost power in 1989, with reports saying that secret agents at the time were fabricating new documents and burning or hiding others.

The newly discovered evidence implicating Walesa was found among documents seized this week from the home of the last communist interior minister, the late Gen. Czeslaw Kiszczak, said Lukasz Kaminski, the head of the National Remembrance Institute, a state body that investigates Nazi and communist-era crimes.

Kaminski said they include a commitment to provide information that is signed with Walesa's name and codename "Bolek." There are also pages of reports and receipts for money, signed "Bolek," and dated from 1970-76.

Kaminski said the 279 pages of documents on Walesa seem to be authentic and will be made public in due course. He said historians need time to analyze the content of the documents.

Antoni Dudek, the institute's leading historian and an expert on Walesa, predicted that the impact would not be that great unless some evidence emerged that Walesa continued to be an informant after he had founded the Solidarity freedom movement in 1980.

"Lech Walesa is the symbol of Poland's struggle for freedom. He is the symbol of Solidarity and nothing can destroy that, unless we learn that he continued that collaboration," Dudek said.

The papers concerning Walesa came to light on Tuesday, when Kiszczak's widow offered to sell the institute documents concerning secret informer "Bolek." She demanded 90,000 zlotys ($23,000) for them. Prosecutors seized the documents the same day because the law requires that important historic or state papers be handed over to authorities.

According to Kaminski, the institute seized five more packets of documents but these have not yet been opened. Prosecutors and police also searched Kiszczak's summer house on Thursday.

Walesa is the icon of Poland's and Eastern Europe's drive for freedom that abolished communism and brought down the Iron Curtain without bloodshed. He founded and led Solidarity from 1980, when it was born out of shipyard worker protests on the Baltic Sea coast, and through communist-imposed martial law. He led Solidarity in round-table negotiations with the communists, Kiszczak among them, in 1989 that ushered in massive democratic and economic changes.

Walesa was democratic Poland's first popularly elected president from 1990 to 1995, but, following a term of office when his style was perceived as authoritarian, he painfully lost a re-election bid to ex-communist Aleksander Kwasniewski.

Walesa has withdrawn officially from politics, though he comments publicly on current events. He is a sharp critic of Poland's new conservative ruling party, the Law and Justice party, whose leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, is a longtime political foe of Walesa's.

Walesa has recently accused the new leadership of undermining democracy.

-- (c) Associated Press 2016-02-19

[Krataiboy]

And to think he was Mrs Thatcher's blue-eyed boy!

[RuamRudy]

And to think he was Mrs Thatcher's blue-eyed boy!

That, in itself, is a shameful stain on his reputation.

[Rorri]

He is, and always will be, a hero, not matter what kratiaboy and ruamrudy wish to believe, I suspect they were either too young or not born, to know how much of a heroic act he performed.

[RuamRudy]

He is, and always will be, a hero, not matter what kratiaboy and ruamrudy wish to believe, I suspect they were either too young or not born, to know how much of a heroic act he performed.

I cannot speak for the other guy, but I was merely commenting that he had very low standards when it came to the women he was seen with.

[StasD]

It was the happiest time in his life. Maybe now he wants to inform to somebody but no one is interested in him)

[connda]

Surprise!!!!

[Lokie]

why are we reading news from a case dating b ack 16 years ago..? which raised issues from 30 years ago?? back in the good ol Warsaw pact days of eastern europe everyone was an informer...

[Rorri]

He is, and always will be, a hero, not matter what kratiaboy and ruamrudy wish to believe, I suspect they were either too young or not born, to know how much of a heroic act he performed.

I cannot speak for the other guy, but I was merely commenting that he had very low standards when it came to the women he was seen with.

You also need to study history, which shows Maggie was just what the UK needed, whether you like it or not, maybe it is your standards that need reassessing.

[RuamRudy]

He is, and always will be, a hero, not matter what kratiaboy and ruamrudy wish to believe, I suspect they were either too young or not born, to know how much of a heroic act he performed.

I cannot speak for the other guy, but I was merely commenting that he had very low standards when it came to the women he was seen with.

You also need to study history, which shows Maggie was just what the UK needed, whether you like it or not, maybe it is your standards that need reassessing.

Thanks, but I am quite comfortable with my perspective of the Thatcher years and the lasting blight she inflicted on my country, and, also, with my own standards. However this thread is not about a dead woman who caused untold misery across the country in her rabid pursuit of a flawed ideology.

Edited February 20, 2016 by RuamRudy

[arjunadawn]

It is true that regardless of what a person has done positive in their life somethings after that period may be so damning as to totally revise their esteem. This charge against Walesa is not remotely this situation. Walesa survives the near impossible friction/dynamic of being an activist and not being disappeared. Eventually, as history and events unfolded, he proved to be the better of the forces that pulled at him- communism and freedom. He was clearly a man of the latter. As we used to say in my old units "I don't give a schiit what you did yesterday, I only care about what you do today." In Walesa's case, what he did yesterday was another world. What he did "today" for Poland defined him as a man for all time.

[Rorri]

He is, and always will be, a hero, not matter what kratiaboy and ruamrudy wish to believe, I suspect they were either too young or not born, to know how much of a heroic act he performed.

I cannot speak for the other guy, but I was merely commenting that he had very low standards when it came to the women he was seen with.

You also need to study history, which shows Maggie was just what the UK needed, whether you like it or not, maybe it is your standards that need reassessing.

Thanks, but I am quite comfortable with my perspective of the Thatcher years and the lasting blight she inflicted on my country, and, also, with my own standards. However this thread is not about a dead woman who caused untold misery across the country in her rabid pursuit of a flawed ideology.

And I, sir, am NOT the one who raise Maggie, as an issue, perhaps you should have kept your views, though wrong, to yourself.

[RuamRudy]

He is, and always will be, a hero, not matter what kratiaboy and ruamrudy wish to believe, I suspect they were either too young or not born, to know how much of a heroic act he performed.

I cannot speak for the other guy, but I was merely commenting that he had very low standards when it came to the women he was seen with.

You also need to study history, which shows Maggie was just what the UK needed, whether you like it or not, maybe it is your standards that need reassessing.

Thanks, but I am quite comfortable with my perspective of the Thatcher years and the lasting blight she inflicted on my country, and, also, with my own standards. However this thread is not about a dead woman who caused untold misery across the country in her rabid pursuit of a flawed ideology.

And I, sir, am NOT the one who raise Maggie, as an issue, perhaps you should have kept your views, though wrong, to yourself.

You do understand the concept of Internet forums, don't you? I was merely pointing out, in a lighthearted way, that many people would see Lech's involvement with that despicable woman as being far worse than the more recent allegations against him.

As for whether I am right or wrong in my assessment of Thatcher, I am afraid that your rebuttal, as eloquent and cogent as it is, lacks a little substance that might permit me to reconsider.

[Gene1960]

An informer. ... Who wasn't at that time!

Regardless, he was the person who helped to begin that turn to the right tracks. The Lithuanian President is said to be an informer for Soviets and who else. Many dissidents were informers or paid agents too.

People look to deep in the backgrounds of the Eastern European politicians and see that they were not as clean as many thought they were before the collapse of the Warsaw Pact.

It's all became irrelevant once the Soviet security services were removed from the political landscape and they cut the leash .

To me he's a hero.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Edited February 21, 2016 by Gene1960