A Secret Life: Blog 6

Ryszard Kuklinski is continuing his work with the CIA even in the presence of imminent martial law. The idea of martial law being used has been at the top of the CIA’s and the Polish government’s thoughts for over a month now and now being on the verge of having it instituted, the General Staff employees were being monitored much more carefully by the SB, as were the American Embassy diplomats. The stress levels of everyone were rising and on Monday, November 2 at 1:00 PM, the pressure of the moment reached a climax. Kuklinski was summoned to a superior’s office and in a group of four individuals, General Skalski told them, “There had been a disastrous leak, he said, an act of treason” (265). These words were those that Kuklinski had been dreading for the past decade. He was so stunned and scared that when he returned home that night, he told Hanka about his secret work with the Americans and told her that they could “get assistance from the Americans” (267). That night he burnt all of the unneeded documents, address books, pictures, Iskra instructions, personal papers, etc… He sent a message via Iskra, the handheld messaging system that he had received from the CIA, explaining his predicament and asking for a pickup of his family on one of three nights. He told Waldek and Bogdan as well, and it was especially painful for Bogdan, who had just started his own life and was deeply in love with his girlfriend, Iza. In his message to the CIA he wrote, “Everything is pointing to the end of my mission” (273). Gull had finally decided to get his family out of harms way and himself as well. He spent the next week and half or so trying every night to be picked up and ushered out of the country, however, every night the diplomats would be covered by multiple SB agents. On November 7th agents Tom and Lucille Ryan drove in from Berlin to pick up the Kuklinski’s and they were whisked off the next morning into Germany, where they were flown to Virginia. When he arrived in the USA, the CIA was rejoicing tremendously and congratulating the Warsaw division on a job well done. The Polish government meanwhile conducted a hearing on Kuklinski’s behavior, sentenced Gull to death.
The rest of Kuklinski’s life was spent in America, he and his family had to undergo an entire change to look more American and blend in. Bogdan was having more troubles than the rest of them because he had had to leave Iza in Poland. He couldn’t stand it so eventually the CIA worked out a plan to remove Iza from the East Bloc. The rest of the book describes the evolution of Kuklinski’s acceptance in Poland. In May 1984, Kuklinski was stripped of his citizenship, however, over time his sentence was reduced to 25 years and then to not being arrested unless he came back to Poland and eventually to being a free man. By the time that he was able to return to Poland for the first time, “Bogdan…was lost at sea in a boating accident. Six months later, Waldek also died” (312-313). These losses were very tough for Ryszard and Hanka however they recovered from them and from the constant barrage of “traitor” calls from their home country. The former primer minister of Poland, Jaruelski, stated, “If you come to the conclusion that Kuklinski’s act was the act of a hero—that he was helping Poland—then it’s logical to ask: Are all the others traitors?” (328). This is a tough question to answer and I say that they are not; they were simply serving a different master. Kuklinski was serving his conscience and the rest were serving their superiors. So, all in all the final question remains, just as the title of Chapter 11 asks, was Kuklinski a “Patriot or Traitor?”.