From the Second Department to the ABW and the AW: a family tree of Poland’s special services

The Second Republic: the “Dwójka”

Military intelligence and counterintelligence in interwar Poland were run by the Second Department of the General Staff (Oddział II), from 1928 the Main Staff, known colloquially as the “Dwójka” (the Two). Wojciech Skóra describes its cooperation with the consular service; the head of Polish intelligence and counterintelligence in 1930–1939 was Colonel Stefan Mayer.¹

On 15 January 1930 Major Gwido Langer took over as head of the Radio Intelligence Section. In mid-1931 this section and the Own Ciphers Section were merged to form the Cipher Bureau, where the cryptologists known for breaking Enigma worked.⁷

In September 1939 the Germans captured the Polish intelligence archive at Fort Legionów in Warsaw. In a 2025 article Władysław Bułhak examines why the order to destroy it was not carried out and who was responsible.⁸

The Polish People’s Republic: intelligence within the security ministry

The lustration act lists the institutions that the law treats as state security organs of 1944–1990. First on the list are the Department of Public Security of the PKWN, the Ministry of Public Security and the Committee for Public Security, followed by, among others, the central institutions of the Security Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs with their local units (Art. 2(1)(1)–(5)).²

According to the list of documents in a collection of IPN studies, a decree of 7 December 1954 set out the competences of the newly created Ministry of Internal Affairs. An act of 13 November 1956 merged the Committee for Public Security into the Ministry, and Order No. 3/56 of 28 November 1956 concerned the merger of the two institutions (see Security Service).⁹

Civilian intelligence operated as Department I of the Committee for Public Security (from the first half of January 1955) and then as Department I of the Ministry of Internal Affairs – from 28 November 1956 to 31 July 1990. According to the IPN historian Witold Bagieński, it was an integral part of the security apparatus: its task was to fight enemies beyond the borders of communist Poland, as well as to help narrow the economic gap with the West.¹⁰

The Polish People’s Republic: the military services

The same lustration act lists Military Information (Informacja Wojskowa), the Internal Military Service (WSW), Directorate II of the General Staff of the Polish Army and other services of the Armed Forces conducting operational-reconnaissance or investigative activity (Art. 2(1)(9)–(12)).²

According to the explanatory memorandum to the 2002 government bill on the WSI, military intelligence and counterintelligence had earlier operated on the basis of classified departmental regulations.⁴

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesAccording to a Polish Press Agency report on a discussion at the IPN (2019), the WSW’s predecessor was the Main Directorate of Information, active from 1944 and known as Military Information. The WSW was created by an order of the Minister of National Defence, Marian Spychalski, of 10 January 1957 and existed until 1990. After the changes of 1989 the military counterintelligence and intelligence bodies of the People’s Republic were abolished, and many officers moved to the new Directorate II for Intelligence and Counterintelligence of the General Staff; in 1991 the WSI were created in its place.¹¹

1990: the end of the SB, the start of the UOP

The Act of 6 April 1990 created the Office of State Protection (UOP), whose purpose was to protect the security of the state and its constitutional order (Art. 1(1)). Its tasks included identifying threats to the security, defence, independence and integrity of the state, preventing and detecting espionage and terrorism, and preparing information and analyses for the highest organs of the state (Art. 1(2)).³

Upon the creation of the UOP the Security Service was dissolved (Art. 129(1)), and once the Office was organised its officers were dismissed from service by operation of law (Art. 131(1)). The act entered into force on the day of its publication (Art. 137). The vetting of former officers is described in the UOP entry.³

In its original wording the Head of the UOP reported to the Minister of Internal Affairs and was appointed by the Prime Minister on the minister’s proposal (Art. 4). In the consolidated text of 1999 he was already a central organ of government administration reporting directly to the Prime Minister; before his appointment the opinions of the President, the College for Special Services and the Sejm committee had to be sought (Arts 1, 4 and 4a).^3,12

According to the Foreign Intelligence Agency, the UOP’s Intelligence Directorate had distinct aims and tasks from the start, and its move in the mid-1990s from Rakowiecka Street to the building on Miłobędzka Street further cemented that separateness.¹³

The Military Information Services

The UOP Act provided that the tasks assigned to the Office were also carried out, on separate terms, by the intelligence and counterintelligence services subordinate to the Minister of National Defence, and that the UOP was to cooperate with them in combating espionage (Art. 2).³

The explanatory memorandum to the WSI bill calls this provision the first, if incomplete, statutory basis for military special services in the history of the state. On 25 October 1991 Art. 15 was added to the 1967 act on the universal duty of defence, sanctioning the existence and tasks of the Military Information Services (WSI). The Sejm Special Services Committee repeatedly stressed in resolutions the urgent need for a separate act.⁴

From 1995 parliamentary oversight of the UOP and the WSI was exercised by that committee, added to the Standing Orders of the Sejm by a resolution of 27 April 1995 (see Who oversees Poland’s special services).¹⁴

The WSI received their own act on 9 July 2003; it lost force on 30 September 2006 (Art. 3 of the act introducing the Act on the SKW and the SWW). Their liquidation and vetting are covered in the WSI entry and the glossary entry WSI Liquidation Commission.⁶

2002 and 2006: the ABW, AW, SKW and SWW

The Act of 24 May 2002 on the ABW and the AW abolished the Office of State Protection (Art. 221). The UOP’s separate archive passed to the ABW, and the Prime Minister was to set by regulation how the property, documents, posts and budget funds of UOP and WSI units would be divided (Art. 223).^5,15

The Foreign Intelligence Agency began operating on 29 June 2002, when civilian intelligence was separated from the structures of the UOP being wound up; on that day its statute, granted by Prime Minister’s Order No. 74 of 26 June 2002, entered into force. Today the ABW is responsible for the internal security of the state and its constitutional order (Art. 1), and the AW for external security (Art. 2).^13,16,17

The Act of 9 June 2006 on the SKW and the SWW entered into force on 1 October 2006 (Art. 1 of the introductory act). The SKW protects against internal threats to national defence (Art. 1), the SWW against external ones (Art. 2); the heads of both services report to the Minister of National Defence, and their activity is overseen by the Sejm (Art. 3).^6,18

The current Act on the ABW and the AW counts the ABW, AW, SKW, SWW and the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau as special services (Art. 11).¹⁷