A Secret Life: Blog 1

Imagine being the individual that decided the fate of the world. Well, even though he didn’t know it, Ryszard Kuklinski was that individual and the biography A Secret Life, is the story of his life. This biography was written by Benjamin Weiser and his primary source for the information contained in this book are the CIA records of conversations that took place in the early 1970s between CIA agents in Western Europe and Ryszard Kuklinski. Mr. Kuklinski was born in 1930 and was a lieutenant colonel with the Polish General Staff, when he decided to make the leap and contact the United States to help him. He had lived most of his life in an occupied Poland. Whether it was the Nazis or the Soviets, he didn’t care, all he wanted was for his country to become a free nation and rebuild what had been taken from them during the occupation of their country. Kuklinski stated throughout his face to face conversations with CIA agents, Lang* and Henry*, two important beliefs. First off, he was not coming to the United States for help; he was merely enlisting this great power to his side in his personal fight against Communism. Secondly, that he had been wondering for many years whether or not coming to the US was immoral, or unpatriotic. A Secret Life, by Benjamin Weiser, is the story of an individual who had one goal, and the two beliefs that led to his goal would be first he would need the help of a greater power than himself, and he asked himself is this truly the best option to help him achieve the goal of liberating his country and founding a new, free Poland.
Kuklinski knew that he would need a great power on his side if he were to have any chance at overthrowing the Soviet Union, who was currently occupying Poland, but he also struggled with the decision about whether or not he should even consider moving forward with his dream. After all the goodwill of his entire nation rested on how well he performed in his goal, and if he were to fail, the entire country of Poland would be lost forever. In the words of Kuklinski himself, slightly paraphrased by Benjamin Weiser,
[H]e did not see himself as an American spy or mole; he always felt that he had acted on behalf of his own country, and that he had in effect “recruited” the United States to work against Poland’s Communist leadership and the Soviet Union. ‘In the beginning I asked myself if I had the moral right to do this,’ he said. ‘I was Pole. I understood that Poles should be free and that the United States was the only country that might support the fight for freedom for Poland. On the other hand, I was providing so much important information, and there always will be this question of whether a human being has this right, based on his own individual decision, particularly if the interest of the whole country and maybe the lives of millions are involved. It was a dilemma, my moral dilemma, but I became convinced that I not only had the right, I had the moral obligation,’ (xv).
This quote showed jumped out at me because we are supposed to be discussing moral dilemmas and issues, and this is exactly what Kuklinski is saying. If Kuklinski had come to the conclusion that putting the lives of millions in jeopardy was too big of a risk to take, the Cold War would probably have erupted into not a Hot War, but a scalding, scorching, end of the world, judgment day, extremely Hot War. In fact, the simple truth is that, if Kuklinski had not acted in this way, I would not be able to write this. Not because he no longer was an important figure, but because there would be no more Earth. So, Kuklinski did follow through with his plan and we know in hindsight that simply continuing with his ambition was able to save the world from complete and utter destruction.

* These names were changed to protect the identity of the agents.

Weiser, Benjamin. A Secret Life: The Polish Officer, His Covert Mission, and the Price He Paid to Save His Country. 1st. New York City: PublicAffairs, 2004.