15 years ago, on 11 February 2004, Colonel Ryszard Kukliński, an officer of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, died in Tampa, Florida. He established cooperation with the American intelligence service in the early 1970s. As Jack Strong, he handed over the strategic plans of the Warsaw Pact.

In 1947 he began his service in the Polish Armed Forces. In 1971, on his own initiative, he started cooperation with the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This was the result of his reflections after the participation of the Polish army in the intervention of Warsaw Pact states in Czechoslovakia and the army shooting at workers on the Coast in 1970. He operated under the nickname Jack Strong. He did not receive any remuneration from the Americans for the information provided. In 1994 he stated that his dilemma was not a choice between communism and capitalism, but between serving the nation or the red empire.

Kukliński transmitted strategic plans of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, including plans of attack on NATO countries. William Casey, Director of the CIA, said after Kukliński’s intelligence mission had ended, that in the last 40 years no one had done as much harm to communism as he had.

Colonel Kukliński informed the Americans about the planned imposition of martial law. On the night of November 7-8, 1981, he and his wife and their two sons were secretly deported from Poland. The reason was Kukliński’s fear of deconspiration. In 1984 he was sentenced to death for treason and degraded by the military court in Warsaw.

In 1994, Kukliński’s two sons died in the United States. The circumstances of their death have not been explained to this day. There were opinions that it could have been a Soviet revenge on the Colonel.

In 1994, Pope John Paul II received Kukliński. In 1997, Kukliński was acquitted. Kukliński visited Poland in 1998. He gave a speech to MPs and senators in the Parliament. He received an officer’s sabre of honour from Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek. In the years 2002-2004 Kukliński was visiting Poland. He wanted to live permanently in Poland.

He died on 11 February 2004 in Tampa, Florida. The funeral ceremony took place at the American National Cemetery in Arlington. Colonel Ryszard Kukliński was buried in Aleja Zasłużonych (Avenue of Notables) at the Military Cemetery in Warsaw’s Powązki.

Tłum. K.J.