secret collaborator (TW)

The main category of secret collaboration with the SB (and also with the WSW): a person recruited to report on “hostile activity” and to carry out tasks for the SB.

According to the glossary of the IPN Archival Inventory, the TW category was introduced by an instruction of 1960 (Instrukcja 1960a), replacing the earlier categories of resident, agent and informer, although the term itself had already appeared, for example, in guidelines of 1957. The 1970 instruction (§§ 10–17) described a TW as a conscious, secret informer. The category applied to the domestic divisions of the SB; intelligence (Department I of the Ministry of Internal Affairs) had categories of its own.¹

Recruitment was preceded by vetting of a candidate for secret collaborator. A written pledge was not always required, for example from people of high social standing. The IPN lists among the motives compromising material, evidence of crimes, personal benefits and “a sense of shared civic responsibility”; some TWs were paid. Recruiting members of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) required the consent of the secretary of the provincial committee or of the Central Committee, so with them the SB often used the forms of operational contact (KO), official contact (KS) or consultant instead. Documentation was kept in a personal file and work file.¹

In the WSW (Internal Military Service), the TW was the basic category of collaboration with career soldiers and conscripts, civilian employees of the armed forces and their families; the rules were set out in the WSW instruction of 1984 (§§ 13–41). The concept of collaboration with the state security organs within the meaning of the Lustration Act is defined separately in its Article 3a.^1,2