Department I of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Departament I MSW)

The intelligence branch within the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MSW) of the Polish People's Republic, which had its own categories of collaborators, its own cases and its own stations (rezidenturas) abroad.

According to the glossary of the IPN Archival Inventory, Department I had categories of collaboration separate from those of the SB's domestic branches: the agent, the operational contact (a citizen of the Polish People's Republic living in Poland who knowingly carried out intelligence tasks abroad – the equivalent of an agent) and the information contact. The category of secret collaborator applied to the domestic branches, not to intelligence.^1,2

Intelligence kept its own records under instructions of 1972 and 1980: personal files of agents (with the recruitment plan, the pledge, the communications agreement and the financial accounts), files on contacts, and files on safe flats, contact premises and correspondence points abroad and at home; the files were usually registered without personal data. Intelligence's units abroad were the rezidenturas.²

The Act on the Office of State Protection of 6 April 1990 provided that the Security Service would be dissolved upon the establishment of the UOP (Article 129(1)); see UOP and Security Service.³