Ryszard Kukliński

Early life and military career

According to the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), he was born in 1930 in Warsaw. His father was killed in 1943 in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After the war Kukliński settled in Wrocław and in 1946 joined the Polish Workers’ Party.^1,2

In 1947 he entered the Officers’ Infantry School in Wrocław, graduating in 1950. In 1964 he graduated from the General Staff Academy and was posted to the General Staff in Warsaw. In 1967–1968 he served on the International Commission for Supervision and Control in Vietnam, and in 1972 he was promoted to colonel.^1,2

According to the IPN, from 1962 he cooperated with the Internal Military Service (WSW). In 1975 he completed a two-month course at the Academy of the General Staff of the USSR in Moscow, and in spring 1981 he headed the team planning the introduction of martial law in Poland.¹

Cooperation with US intelligence

According to the IPN, his first meeting with the Americans took place on 18 August 1972 in The Hague. As ‘Jack Strong’ he passed on documents about communist Poland, the USSR and the Warsaw Pact; the IPN puts their volume at more than 35,000 or 40,000 pages (see ‘What is disputed’).^1,2

The CIA released more than 75 documents on the planning and implementation of martial law in Poland, timing the release to coincide with a symposium honouring Colonel Kukliński, whom it presented as their source. According to the agency, his documents and commentary gave US analysts and policymakers exceptional insight into the crisis.³

Evacuation and sentence

On the night of 7–8 November 1981 CIA officers took him out of Poland together with his wife and two sons.^1,2

On 23 May 1984 the Court of the Warsaw Military District sentenced him to death in absentia; on 27 May 1984 the Council of State declined to grant clemency. In March 1990 an amnesty commuted the sentence to 25 years’ imprisonment.⁴

In 1995 the Military Chamber of the Supreme Court quashed the sentence, and in September 1997 the case was discontinued on the grounds that he had acted out of necessity.^2,4

Death and remembrance

He died on 11 February 2004 in a hospital in Tampa, Florida, aged 73. On 19 June 2004 his urn was laid in the Avenue of Honour at the Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw.^1,2

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesIn October 2016 the Polish Press Agency (PAP) reported that President Andrzej Duda, at the request of the minister of defence, had posthumously appointed him brigadier general.⁵

According to the IPN, he was the first foreigner to receive the CIA’s Distinguished Intelligence Medal. He is commemorated by plaques, squares and monuments, among them a life-size sculpture unveiled in Gdynia in 2015.¹