Reality. Because that mediacom we are built to keep you ahead. Mediacom, along with these television companies, supports cspan2 as a public service. Thank you. Let me welcome everyone here today to cold war studies seminar here at the data center of Harvard University. Today were going to be discussing this book from warsaw with love and the subtitle of it will give the title itself may not convey the substance of thece book but the subtitle, polish spies, the cia and the forging of an Unlikely Alliance does. The book is an unusual one in that the origin or impetus for it was landmark article published by the author of this book, john pomfret tool introduced in the second but that article appeared in the Washington Post in 1995, and it traced what wasas an extraordinary story of the polish Intelligence Services cooperation witha the cia to rescue u. S. Intelligence agents who had been trapped behind the rocky blind in 19901991 when1991 when, after iraq invadedry kuwait. And the story of how those agents were rescued plus other extremely interesting information aboutth the polish Intelligence Services cooperation was told in that article and has been expanded here. History. It looks at the intelligence dimension of us polish relations after 1989 poland was officially a member of the warsaw pact until mid 1991, but the facto it had already changed its ties it had already decided to align itself with the west with nato and with the United States early on after 1989. So this this book expands on that and looks at the travails and achievements after 1989 covering 30 years or so and because this entire dimension is important in polish politics especially in the 1990s but even after as well, it deals quite a bit with the ups and downs with the political polish political scene. All the intelligence that manipulated in some way. I wont say more about the book not accept to urge people who want to read a riveting story. It brief but extremely well written to you will find almost any interest in it even if you may not know much about poland. O speakers today. The first is john palm fred. Who is the author of the book and was long while a rapport or an editor at the Washington Post one of the greatest newspapers in the world, and he is writer is this book in the earlier books on china a test . And he has been stationed in numerous posts abroad and has reported, you know extensively on china as well. So yeah is really a good person to take up this topic in a way that makes sense of what could otherwise have been a tangled web for our most journalists seeking to figure out what was going on in polish politics and the intelligence relationship at the time. The other speaker is a colleague of my colleague and friend of mine here at the davis center. That is Thomas Simons. Who was the key thing to mention for todays talk is that he was ambassador Us Ambassador to poland during the early phase of what this book covers and he had been a long Time State Department official responsible for policy to an Eastern Europe and the soviet union and then he became ambassador in under george h. W. Bush and then later on served as Us Ambassador the pakistan but the relevant tuition for today with regard to tom is that he was ambassador to poland during the early phase. He he also has phd from harvard and has written himself a very interesting history of Eastern Europe. So let me with that turned to john john will speak for 25 30 minutes and then tom will offer his commentary and then well open it up. Please feel free in the meantime as the seminar proceeds to submit questions, and i will do my best to get to them. I we you can submit those either be a zoom or through youtube. Thank you, please john. Thank you, mark. And thank you for having me at the center today. I really been looking forward to this. So i want to talk basically about why or how i wrote this book a little bit and hopefully through that story. Ill can kind of fill in some of the backstory of this remarkable alliance that the polish Intelligence Officers and the cia forged together. So probably Washington Post in 1992. Basically to go to what remained of yugoslavia and right about the destruction of that country during the civil war mostly in bosley and mostly in sarajevo the capital id done a bunch of war coverage before what with the Associated Press and the Washington Post was having difficulty finding volunteers to go to to wartorn bosley to cover the to cover the war and so they basically found me hired me actually in an interview when i was in afghanistan of all places and sent me to bosnia. But at the time the post bureau in Eastern Europe was still in warsaw. Basically a throwback to the era when warsaw was sort of the crucible of eastern developments in Eastern Europe. Just some some of you might remember the Solidarity Trade Union and the push against communism in the 1980s, which was met with a crackdown of martial law, but in 89 poland had made a transition to the republic of poland with semifree elections. So poland was already on this trajectory of joining the west if you will both in terms of a liberal market economy and a Democratic Political situation, so there was stability in poland, but there was chaos in sarajevo. And basically i was sent to sarriable but we had a house in more so every sort of two months or so i would be allowed on rest and r r back back to poland. Id run an occasional story about polish politics the fact that bananas had showed up on the streets in warsaw etc as a sign of its changes and then i would go back to bosnia and kind of to deal with the issues of snipers and artillery shells etc and along about 1994 began to pick up this room these rumors in poland that the polls had done the United States a great favor in iraq in 1990, and i couldnt really confirm it. I didnt really know what the rumors were about but i just was told that theyd done a significant favor for america and so on my rest and relaxation trips back to warsaw. I began to try to figure out what this was and at the time the post had a marvelous translator and fixer by the name of helena potuska, and she said suggested speaking with the managers of polish stateowned Construction Companies because at the time the polls had operated across the middle east in terms of Development Projects building roads building Sewage Treatment plants etc and upwards of several thousand polls construction workers had been working. In iraq, and if the polls ever to embed a spy in any community. That would be the smart place to look and there were 14 such companies and so we began to interview them again. I was sort of shuttling back between sarajevo and warsaw and we got the 13 and all of them said theyd never heard it if anything of anything happening, we didnt know what i was talking about. And so we finally got to the 14th. And the manager the 14th company basically said yeah, you know, we actually had this crazy engineer named eugenia. A new genius told us this wacky story about how we were involved. Our company was involved in moving six american spies out of iraq to safety in turkey, but we never believed them in any way hes retired and he lives in western poland. So helena, potosika finds eugenish in western poland and we go to western poland. We interview him. And he tells his story and i write up the story and theres this kind of i print out his print out in the printouts about this long because the Time Printers didnt cut between paid they didnt know pagination at the time that sort of dates us, but thats life. And we faxed the facts again dating us we faxed this massively long page of information to the Spokespersons Office of the uop, which at the time was the polls intelligence agency. And within an hour i get a phone call in the bureau in warsaw demanding that i show up at the uops offices. And so i we drive down to to downtown warsaw and theres this stalinist era building the high ceilings and that that worn in red carpet and go through one door after another after another and after theyre finally going through a final door on the on the door. I read the title director the door opens. Theres this massive desk and behind this massive desk. Is this looming presence of this this character with piercing blue eyes and pencil thin mustache about six four. He has his my facts rolled up in his hand and hes shaking it at and hes goes i am grown with swanson pinski. I am the director of the Intelligence Services of poland and you are in possession of state secrets i could have you arrested. And that begins this decadeslong friendship i had with gromich chimpinski and over the course of the next few months while im settling back and forth between warsaw and sarajevo. We work out the terms on which i could write the story about what the polls did for the United States in terms of exfiltrating six american officers actually was a cia station chief three commutered communicators from the nsa and two American Military officers from iraq to safety to warsaw and then back to United States that story appears on the front page of the post to january 1995 time passes i go to china poland vendors nato in 1999, but i always thought that this story could make a colonel of a really interesting book, but i had no idea what the backstory was. And actually obviously no idea with the front story was what happened after that. Um, so and i i was obviously maintaining trying to the best i could maintaining close relations with chrome extempinski, but he was reluctant to tell the story until 2015 when the situation changed significantly political situation changed significantly in poland when the law and Justice Party wins parliamentary election and the law and Justice Party was led by people who had been involved in the Solidarity Trade Union movement someone but these people had a very different vision of what poland should have done once communist communism ended and their vision. Was that basically all commoners should be punished by by the current and by the polaris government for actually participating in that of a government. And so they carried out. Programs like cutting the pensions of all people who had worked in the Security Services including polands foreign spies to a below Poverty Level and at that point chimpinsky became emboldened to try to basically push back at this at this what he believed to be an unfair treatment of both him and and spies like him but telling the story of how these excommunists officers worked with the cia who created an alliance with the United States and so he was more open to that and that opened to me many possibilities to interview underlings who would work with him or under him over the course of their careers. They then gave me information about the american cia officers whod work with them that allowed me to contact them back in america now, there were many cia officers and a significant portion didnt want to speak with the Washington Post whatsoever understandable, but there were some who did and so that gave a lot of about from the cias perspective. Why did the americans reach out to the polls from the polish perspective . Why were they open to the american outreach and how then that Alliance Work . And the backstory was fascinating from the beginning of the cold war and specifically in the 70s the cia actually had a very high opinion of polar spies the cia also also secretly did work with pauls Intelligence Officers in terms of buying weapons etc on during the iran contra issue in the 19 in 1970s as well. But but the cia was actually had a very very for polish tradecraft. Polar spies had been operating in the United States throughout the 60s and the 70s and in the 70s a senior polo spy ultimately was involved with a in a massive theft of American Military secrets based in los angeles. And the cia officer ultimately ended up being involved in the arrest of this Police Officer was a fellow by the name of john palavich. Who what . What was it very impressed with the trade craft of that polar spy marion zaharski. And when zaharsky was ultimately exchanged on the bridge of spies in 1984 for 26 some odd american agents who had been operating in east germany palavich committed to himself basically had a thought to himself ultimately i really would like to work with this guy and not against him because the tradecraft of these professionals is of such a quality that they could really be useful to the United States. And so when polands political change begins to happen in 89 and 90, but the election of a solidarity government paulovich has this idea that we need to actually now we can begin to outward to reach out to our polish intelligence comrades if you will and begin to create a relationship with these guys and at the time the the administration of george h. W. Bush was also looking at polands transition from a communist country into a liberal democracy if you will and wondering how this transition was going to be done and so the Bush Administration and the cia began to lobby the polish government to say look dont dismantle all your communist bureaucracies dont dismantle your foreign intelligence a bureaus dont dismantle your police because if you begin a revolution at ground zero, youre gonna probably have a counterrevolution on your hands because you havent give the given the communist a stake in the in the new poland. And the cia was also pushing this line for selfish person purposes because as parliament had argued within the cia. These guys these spies are good we can use them. And so in 1990 palavich proposes to paul redman with the time was the Deputy Director of operations for soviet and Eastern Europe, but the cia. Hey, i go make an outreach to my polish comrades. What do you think . Ive read them says great and so theres a debate about where is the outreach going to be done . Right . Is it going to be done in rome . For example, where a pollos officer by the name of Alexander Makowski had done a year Harvard Law School courtesy of american scholarship as a spy studying american constitutional law, or should it be done elsewhere the problem with rome. Is that despite this Old School Ties between redmen who was a harvard man and makovsky that the embassy in rome was on an alley and italian counterintelligence could monitor the cummings and goings and the americans didnt want to involve other a third country in this operation. So they thought about switzerland, but again swiss counterintelligence is famous for its for its professionalism. They finally settled on lisbon, which the portuguese were kind of their reputation was either as a relatively sleepy service and so palavvich goes to lisbon and march of 1990 on his traveling on israel passport over the course. Career actually had about seven or eight passports. Hes traveling on his real password. He knocks on the door of the polish embassy on a major avenue in lisbon gets in to see a consular official who was actually a polo spy and announces that the cia wants to begin a real relationship with the polish government. The pulse to the pulse Intelligence Services his interlocutive repos officer kicks to paulovich out of his office. Denies that hes a spy outraged etc and pelvic has left to find a taxi on his own but then that night the Police Officer richard thomasewski sends a cable to war so saying the cia just came knocking in my door. What do i do . And the Police Officers saying this is something weve been waiting for we knew this was going to happen and they tell him call pal of its back up and in may of 1990 a delegation of cia officers comes to lisbon and and theyre off to the races. So that was the back story of this operation and and then in august of 1990 saddam invades kuwait these six americans who one of whom is in possession of significant intelligence about exactly how the americans would plan to remove saddam from kuwait are stuck in baghdad. The americans go to the france the brits the russians. None of them can help. They finally go to the polls and because of polovichs knowledge of the professionalism in the polo services. He argues with the americans. These guys could do the operation gromis webchempinski is sent down to iraq. He then collects these characters. He gives them six fake polish workers overalls, six fake polands passwords with fake polish names sadly the and pronounce their polish names, but thats another story. He had a certain point. He douses them with Johnny Walker black trying to camouflage them as drunks Eastern European workers and he drives them out of out of iraq and this argolike operation. This creates a blood bond between the two services. It shows that the americans that americans have a lot of respect for polls to polish tradecraft