The CIA and the Polish Crisis of 1980–1981

DaviesTheCIA and the Polish Crisis of 1980–1981 Review Essay The CIA and the Polish Crisis of 1980–1981 ✣ Douglas J. MacEachin, U.S. Intelligence and the Confrontation in Poland, 1980–81. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002. 256 pp. $45.00. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/6/3/120/696027/1520397041447346.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 The dramatic events of 1980–1981 in Poland began a process that led over the next decade to the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union. The crucial event in the Communist cession of power in Poland in 1989 was the failure of martial law after it was imposed in December 1981 by General Wojciech Jaruzelski, who was then serving simultaneously as prime minister, defense minister, and ªrst secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR—the Communist party). Douglas MacEachin devotes his book to the events of 1980–1981 as seen from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He is eminently qualiªed to do so. During the crisis, MacEachin was the senior ofªcial at the CIA who was most familiar with the course of day-to-day developments in Poland and with the intelligence reports of Colo- nel Ryszard J. Kukliñski, a key ofªcer on the Polish General Staff, who kept the United States informed about the Polish government’s efforts to combat the independent trade union, Solidarity.1 The events of 1980–1981 have been extensively reported on, analyzed, and reanalyzed. MacEachin singles out as authoritative three eyewitness ac- counts written in the early to mid-1980s by men on the ground: Nicholas An- drews, Neal Ascherson, and Timothy Garton Ash.2 Andrews was deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Warsaw during the crisis, and Ascherson and Garton Ash are both British journalists who spent extensive periods in Poland during the Solidarity era. MacEachin has now produced a fourth authoritative volume that lays out his own eyewitness testimony from within the CIA. 1. Kukliñski died in February 2004. For information on his career and the invaluable role he played during the Polish crisis, see Benjamin Weiser, A Secret Life: The Polish Ofªcer, his Covert Mission, and the Price he Paid to Save his Country (New York: Public Affairs, 2004); and Mark Kramer, “Colonel Kukliñski and the Polish Crisis,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, Issue No. 11 (Winter 1998), pp. 48–60. 2. Nicholas G. Andrews, Poland 1980–81: Solidarity versus the Party (Washington: National Defense University Press, 1985); Neal Ascherson, The Polish August: The Self-Limiting Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1982); and Timothy Garton Ash, The Polish Revolution: Solidarity, 3rd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 6, No. 3, Summer 2004, pp. 120–123 © 2004 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 120 The CIA and the Polish Crisis of 1980–1981 The unique value of MacEachin’s work lies in its critical account of the information made available on virtually a daily basis to U.S. policymakers through the President’s Daily Brief, the National Intelligence Daily, the Na- tional Intelligence Estimates, and other documents produced by the CIA and other member agencies of the U.S. Intelligence Community.3 His book thus provides a record of the real-time interaction between Warsaw and Washing- ton as the crisis in Poland developed and reached its peak during the imposi- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/6/3/120/696027/1520397041447346.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 tion of martial law in December 1981. In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s story “Silver Blaze,” about a case solved by Sherlock Holmes, one of the principal clues is “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” The tip-off was that a watchdog “did nothing in the night-time” when it could have been expected to bark and alert the staff of a racing stable as a prize racehorse was stolen. This image of a dog that failed to bark resurfaced in 1981 when, as MacEachin writes, “for more than six weeks prior to the imposition of martial law, the U.S. government had been notably silent on all aspects relating to a possible military crackdown in Poland” (p. 211). After the Communist regime in Poland was eclipsed in 1989, Jaruzelski repeatedly attempted to justify the imposition of martial law by ar- guing that the U.S. government had kept silent about the imminent crackdown even though it had received precise intelligence information from Colo- nel Kukliñski.4 Jaruzelski claimed that he construed this silence as “a signal that U.S. authorities endorsed his ‘internal solution’ to head off an ‘inevitable’ Soviet invasion” (p. 211). MacEachin devotes a chapter, “Caught Off Guard,” to the pros and cons of whether the U.S. government should have made public the detailed information provided by Kukliñski about the plans for martial law. MacEachin writes: “As Secretary [of State Alexander] Haig has said, the United States had plenty of information on what the Polish regime was pre- paring to do, but did not believe they would do it” (p. 230). U.S. Intelligence and the Confrontation in Poland is avowedly a case study designed to provide guidance that would help avoid such a “breakdown” (p. 13) in the future. MacEachin strives to exonerate the CIA of responsibility 3. Many declassiªed U.S. intelligence reports and estimates pertaining to Poland in 1980–1981 are now available on-line in Portable Document Format at (http://www.foia.cia.gov), which includes a useful search engine. 4. Jaruzelski has made this case not only in his memoirs but also in a large number of interviews. See Wojciech Jaruzelski Stan wojenny dlaczego (Warsaw: BGW, 1992); and Wojciech Jaruzelski, Les chaines et le refuge (Paris: Lattes, 1992). For a rebuttal of Jaruzelski’s argument, see Mark Kramer, “Jaruzelski, the Soviet Union, and the Imposition of Martial Law in Poland: New Light on the Mystery of Decem- ber 1981,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, Issue No. 11 (Winter 1998), pp. 5–31; as well as the reply by Jaruzelski, “Commentary,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, Issue No. 11 (Winter 1998), pp. 32–39. 121 Davies for the six-week silence. For example, he lists the titles of the leading execu- tive-branch ofªcials who received the CIA’s products on Kukliñski’s dis- patches, beginning with the president and the vice president (p. 220). At the same time, he notes that the intelligence community’s analyses never ºatly predicted whether or when martial law would be proclaimed. Hence, recipi- ents of the disclosures from Kukliñski did not receive the kind of unequivocal warning that would have prompted them to conclude that a full-scale crack- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/6/3/120/696027/1520397041447346.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 down was coming. MacEachin is at pains to answer criticism of the CIA to the effect that, once Kukliñski and his family had been brought out of Poland a month be- fore the implementation of martial law, there was no reason for the U.S. government not to make public the plans for martial law. If they had done so, the argument goes, they would have warned the leaders of Solidarity and enabled them to take steps to oppose or counteract it. MacEachin brushes aside the defenses offered after the fact by such State Department ofªcials as then- Assistant Secretary Lawrence Eagleburger and the ambassador to Poland, Francis Meehan. In his defense, Eagleburger asked what the United States would have done if the plans for martial law had been revealed and Jaruzelski had gone ahead anyway with the crackdown. But this is surely the nub of the matter. Had the plans been made public, the clamor for the U.S. government to do something to help avert martial law would have been insistent, even if in practical terms there was nothing the United States could have offered apart from stern but hollow warnings and admonitions to Jaruzelski and his Com- munist cohorts. What is perhaps more to the point is the danger that such warnings could have led some members of Solidarity to believe that the U.S. government was prepared to go beyond public pronouncements and ªnd a way to give con- crete support in some form to a movement of forcible resistance. As it was, when martial law was instituted, some forty miners at the Wujek, Ziemowit, and Piast coal mines in the Upper Silesian Basin were killed resisting the troops that attempted to make them leave the mines. If there had been a bloodbath on a nationwide scale, how soon thereafter could the Polish Com- munist authorities have decided they could afford to lift martial law? Nor could American ofªcials have ignored the likelihood that the Soviet Union would have responded with counterwarnings about the dangers of a wider conºict or with military moves that would have called the American bluff. The worst case would have been the utterance of warnings and admonitions to the Polish regime that subsequently proved to be without signiªcant effect. In short, there could have been a radical turn in the course of events, and the remarkably peaceful transfer of power that took place in Poland in 1989 122 The CIA and the Polish Crisis of 1980–1981 would undoubtedly not have occurred that early or, more likely, might not have taken place at all.

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