THERE ARE OVER 50 MILES of secret police files at the Institute
of National Remembrance (Instytut Pamieci Narodowej) in
Warsaw and its branches throughout post-Communist Poland. Among
other things, one can find there U.S. Army counterintelligence
manuals, accounts of American leftists cozying up to the
Communists, surveillance records of U.S. diplomats and visitors,
including compromising pornographic material, files of CIA spies
captured by the Communists, and numerous reports on “The Main
Enemy”: the United States of America. Most of the files, however,
concern Poland and the Poles. They show how, for half a century,
the Communist secret police (SB) endeavored to control and
terrorize an overwhelmingly Christian population. No one was
immune, not even the most prominent son of Poland, Pope John Paul
II.
What follows describes just one case of the active measures
directed against Karol Wojtyla. The agent responsible was Father
Konrad Stanislaw Hejmo, a Dominican priest. When initially courted,
he was known by the code name “Dominik.” After his recruitment it
became “Hejnal” (Signal). It appears that, technically, Hejmo never
signed an affidavit formalizing his status as an “secret
collaborator.” Instead, he was classified as an “operational
contact.” Hejmo’s recruiter and case officer was Colonel Waclaw
Glowacki of the Security Service (Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa —
SB). Before his transfer to civilian intelligence after 1982,
Glowacki was with the 5th Section of the IV (anti-Church)
Department of the interior ministry.
More than 700 pages of documents and several magnetic tape
spools of recordings reflect the extent of Father Hejmo’s work. The
contacts between the agent and the secret police began circa 1973.
At the time, the priest was trying to launch a Dominican
periodical, W drodze (On the Way). In approaching
the SB, Hejmo hoped to have eased the oppressive Communist
censorship regulations and limits on paper distribution faced by
his publication, where he served as editorial secretary. The
relationship became more formal in November 1975. At the end of the
following year, the SB opened up a file on him as a “candidate for
secret collaborator.” Next, it registered him as a full-fledged
“secret collaborator” even though, in violation of its own rules,
it never asked him to fill out the appropriate paperwork.
Father Hejmo informed his secret police handlers not only about
Karol Wojtyla, both before and after Wojtyla’s elevation to the
papal throne, but also about Radio Free Europe, anti-Communist
intellectuals, and dissident Catholic priests, including Father
Jerzy Popieluszko, who was subsequently murdered by the SB.
Further, Father Hejmo wrote pro-Communist articles for his
publication. He condemned the anti-regime activities of his fellow
Dominicans, for instance their 1977 hunger strike in solidarity
with Czech dissidents. His reports were apparently made available
to Colonel Tadeusz Grunwald of the IV Department’s so-called “D”
Group (Disintegration) to implement active measures against the
Catholic faith in general, and dissident priests and lay activists
in particular. Grunwald’s men specialized in black propaganda,
malicious gossip, and forgeries.
Father Hejmo hoped his collaboration with the secret police
would not only benefit his periodical, but also help him,
incredibly, to become head of the Dominican order in Poland. He
accepted a few tokens and gifts from his handlers — mostly
alcohol. On the other hand, his secret police friends did not trust
him. His phone was tapped and mail read. Contacts with the priest
stopped briefly in 1980 after Hejmo was transferred to the Holy
See.
By August 1981, Hejmo was re-recruited in Rome under a false
flag: SB officers pretending to be West German operatives. Each of
his three contacts approached him separately. The first, Andrzej M.
(“Lakar”), had been a Communist secret police agent in Poland.
Later, “Lakar” emigrated to Germany, where, reportedly, he became
the SB resident in Cologne. Hejmo never informed his other handlers
that Andrzej M. had identified himself to the priest as a BND
officer. (In time, allegedly, “Lakar” was either turned by West
German intelligence or recruited by the East German Stasi.)
While in Rome, Father Hejmo first worked at the Polish section
of the Vatican press office. His Church superiors charged him with
open source acquisition and analysis. Hejmo read the Western press
daily. He focused on the Pope and the Episcopate of Poland,
including its head, the formidable and staunchly anti-Communist
Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski. The agent supplied his output both to
his Church superiors and his secret police handlers. In May 1984,
he was transferred to a post devoted to assisting Polish pilgrims
in Rome.
Throughout, Hejmo’s contact with the Pope was quite limited. He
dined with the Pontiff only on very rare occasions. Still, he often
bragged about his “access” to the Pope. Curiously, no reports by
Hejmo on the Pope himself have been found. Nonetheless, he was able
to procure documents from the Office of the Secretary of State, as
well as supply information gathered from his conversations with
fellow priests and other, mainly Polish visitors.
A few apologists have suggested that, since Hejmo never
formalized his status as an agent, the priest was not aware that he
was being used by the secret police. He was simply overly
garrulous. Further, the argument goes, the intelligence he provided
from the Vatican was of poor quality and mainly gossip. Yet it has
been established that Hejmo accepted money for his services from
Andrzej M. He may not have signed the spy personnel affidavit, but
he did sign receipts for at least 20,000 German Marks. Further, the
intelligence he provided probably helped the Communists to
construct a psychological and physical portrait of the Pope and his
surroundings. It also contained important inside information about
the Episcopate of Poland and its anti-Communist work. Last but not
least, it is highly likely that some of Hejmo’s reports were
forwarded to the KGB.
The priest continued his nefarious activities until July 1988.
At this writing, he has suffered no real punishment for his
misdeeds from either Church or secular authorities.
HEJMO’S, AGAIN, IS MERELY one case connected to John Paul II. There
are about 100 sets of secret police files on Karol Wojtyla at the
Institute of National Remembrance. Each set contains between a
single and a score of files. The Institute’s Marek Lasota, in his
forthcoming book Karol Wojtyla w dokumentach bezpieki
(“Karol Wojtyla in Secret Police Documents”), treats the subject
comprehensively, describing a legion of agents snitching on the
future Pope since the first days of Communist Poland. The first
reports date from May 3, 1946, owing to Wojtyla’s involvement that
day in a massive anti-Communist student demonstration that was
crushed by tanks. Later, letters of denunciation occasionally
flowed when Wojtyla was parson at St. Florian Church. The secret
police opened a permanent file on Wojtyla only after he was
consecrated Bishop of Cracow in 1958.
At any given time, up to a dozen agents, both clerical and lay
Catholic, reported on Wojtyla. Some were close confidantes. Three
of them were priests who worked at the metropolitan curia and one
was a lay administrative director of the influential Tygodnik
Powszechny, the liberal Catholic weekly. In addition, reports
poured in from a few dozen agents who met Wojtyla occasionally or
heard of his “misdeeds” from other sources. Further, his apartment
was bugged as was each subsequent residence to which he moved. His
home and office phones at the Tygodnik Powszechny were
tapped as well. The secret police rumor mill churned out stories
and produced forgeries of his alleged lack of patriotism, immoral
sexual behavior, and the like. The secret police classified Bishop
Wojtyla as “an extremely dangerous ideological enemy.”
Soon, Wojtyla became the Archbishop of Cracow and, finally,
Pope. Active measures intensified. When as John Paul II he returned
triumphantly to Poland in 1979, his immediate entourage was
infiltrated by eight agents and four secret police officers.
During the papal visit, tens of thousands of agents and secret
police officers (in addition to hundreds of thousands of regular
police and military) were deployed to contain the situation
throughout Poland. There were 480 agents posted for the papal visit
in Cracow alone.
At the peak of its expansion in 1984, the secret police had
8,334 agents among Catholic religious and lay people (employed or
involved with the Church voluntarily). Rather significantly, there
were relatively few nuns and lay women among the turncoats.
The Institute of National Remembrance estimates that between 10
and 15 percent of Poland’s Catholic religious and lay people were
secret police agents or contacts. To put it into perspective, some
calculate that about 30 percent of all journalists were agents.
Altogether in Poland, between 1944 and 1989 about 3 million people
(over 800,000 at the peak in the 1980s) denounced their fellow
citizens to the secret police in a formalized way. That is less
than 10 percent of the nation which, by Communist bloc standards,
is rather low. As many as 30 percent of all East Germans
collaborated. In the Soviet Union, the proportions were probably
even higher.
Please remember that there are over 50 miles of secret police
files in Poland’s archives. The search for the Truth has hardly
begun.
