This is where you will find cards for well-known intelligence operations. Each describes the aim, course and consequences, and identifies the services and people involved and the places where the affair played out.
Every card states the state of knowledge: whether the course of events is confirmed in sources, disputed, or still largely classified. Where sources differ, we show both versions in the “What is disputed” section.
Operation · Confirmed
Breaking Enigma
At the turn of 1932 and 1933, cryptologists of the Polish Cipher Bureau read the first messages enciphered with the military Enigma. In July 1939 they shared their knowledge with the intelligence services of France and Great Britain, which transformed the British approach to breaking the machine.
Operation · Classified
Operation Bridge (“Most”)
In the early 1990s Poland was a transit point for Jews emigrating from the Soviet Union to Israel. According to Tomasz P. Kozłowski, the counterterrorism cooperation around this operation was one of the beginnings of Poland's strategic partnership with the United States.
Operation · Confirmed
NotPetya
A cyber attack of June 2017, aimed primarily at the Ukrainian financial, energy and government sectors, which spread to companies in Europe and in Russia. The UK government and the Council of the EU attributed it to Russian military intelligence.
Operation · Confirmed
The Cambridge Five
Five graduates of the University of Cambridge recruited by Soviet intelligence in the 1930s: Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross. In 2025 the UK National Archives released more than a hundred MI5 files on the case.
Operation · Classified
Operation “Samum”
In autumn 1990, after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Polish intelligence is said to have smuggled a group of US intelligence officers out of Iraq. The operation is widely described in the media, but we have been unable to find any official documents or scholarly studies on it.
State of knowledge
- ● Confirmed
We know the course of events from documents, declassified files and academic studies, and the sources agree with one another.
- ○ Disputed
The sources differ, or some of the facts rest on accounts that cannot be verified. We show what is certain and what remains interpretation.
- ◌ Classified
A significant part of the case is still secret. We describe only what has been officially disclosed or established by researchers from available documents, and we say what is not known.
● This section grows in batches: new cards are added together with their sources.
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