correspondence point (punkt korespondencyjny, PK)

A flat abroad whose address was made available to the intelligence arm of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for secret correspondence.

Description based on the glossary of the IPN Archival Inventory. According to the glossary, the files on correspondence points of Department I of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were kept in the same way as the files on its safe flats – as an operational investigation (1980 instruction, § 2.5, annex 16). Part I contained, among other things, decisions, documents from the vetting and expenses; Part II the rules of use and a list of the people who knew of the premises.¹

Its domestic counterpart in the SB branches was the address drop – a flat whose address was used for SB correspondence, its owner being registered like a secret collaborator. A similar role in Western intelligence services was played by accommodation addresses: according to an article by B. G. Royden in “Studies in Intelligence”, the CIA's Soviet source Adolf Tolkachev sent letters to such addresses carrying messages written in secret ink.^2,3