A Secret Life: The Polish Officer, His Covert Mission, and the Price He Paid to Save His Country [Paperback]

Benjamin Weiser (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 3, 2005

In August 1972, Ryszard Kuklinski, a highly respected colonel in the Polish Army, embarked on what would become one of the most extraordinary human intelligence operations of the Cold War. Despite the extreme risk to himself and his family, he contacted the American Embassy in Bonn, and arranged a secret meeting. From the very start, he made clear that he deplored the Soviet domination of Poland, and believed his country was on the wrong side of the Cold War.

Over the next nine years, Kuklinski rose quickly in the Polish defense ministry, acting as a liaison to Moscow, and helping to prepare for a "hot war" with the West. But he also lived a life of subterfuge--of dead drops, messages written in invisible ink, miniature cameras, and secret transmitters. In 1981, he gave the CIA the secret plans to crush Solidarity. Then, about to be discovered, he made a dangerous escape with his family to the West. He still lives in hiding in America.

Kuklinski's story is a harrowing personal drama about one man's decision to betray the Communist leadership in order to save the country he loves, and the intense debate it spurred over whether he was a traitor or a patriot. Through extensive interviews and access to the CIA's secret archive on the case, Benjamin Weiser offers an unprecedented and richly detailed look at this secret history of the Cold War.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Highly placed in the military councils of the Warsaw Pact, Polish colonel Ryszard Kuklinski made himself the CIA's most important East Bloc intelligence asset in the 1970s, passing along invaluable information about Soviet weaponry, military plans and the brewing crackdown on Poland's dissident Solidarity movement. In this absorbing biography of an emblematic Cold War figure, journalist Weiser paints Kuklinski as a Polish patriot, his pro-American sentiments motivated by love of freedom, resentment of Soviet domination, and fear that a superpower confrontation would unleash a nuclear holocaust on Poland. At times Weiser goes overboard in establishing the point, reprinting at inordinate length Kuklinski's high-minded letters to his CIA handlers and their equally gushing tributes to his idealism and strength of character (the question of how much money the CIA paid Kuklinski is somewhat coyly skirted). But he gives a wonderful account of the daily routine of espionage, full of the theory and practice of counter-surveillance, dead drops, surreptitious hand-offs, suicide pills, invisible ink and (often balky) miniature transmitters, and moments of panic when Kuklinski narrowly escapes detection. Weiser also offers an unusually intimate portrait of the inner life of a spy and the intense emotional bond between agents and their handlers (after his case officer was transferred, the CIA continued to forge letters to Kuklinski over his signature to avoid upsetting their prize asset). Both a gripping spycraft procedural and a study of the moral tension of simultaneously collaborating with and undermining a system one detests, the book sheds light on a shadowy but evocative aspect of life under Communism.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker

Books about espionage, fiction or not, can be cliché flypaper—encrusted with tired plot twists and morbid atmosphere. Exceptions, like John le Carré's novels and Thomas Powers's histories, are rare. But Weiser's tale of how a high-ranking Polish officer, Ryszard Kuklinski, betrayed the communist leadership for almost a decade, starting in 1972, and fed the Americans thousands of pages of top-secret documents, including the plans for martial law, is in that elevated company. "A Secret Life" is thrilling not only in its chronicle of an honorable betrayal during the Cold War's endgame but also in its portrait of the strangely loving epistolary relationship between the spy and his American handlers. There are scenes here that are as tense as any in "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," and the access that Weiser gained—his sources include both Kuklinski and the Poles he fooled—is a feat of patient and intelligent reporting.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs; First Edition edition (May 3, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586483056
• ISBN-13: 978-1586483050
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.1 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #231,548 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars TRULY THRILLING February 5, 2004

By J. Darbyshire

Format:Hardcover

While spy novelists attempt to spin yarns that ring true, Weiser has spun the truth into a ripping good read. Clandestine meetings, miniature spy cameras, smuggled documents, dead drops, midnight escapes, everything short of murder - though legions of Hollywood agents are no doubt stabbing each other in the back to get the movie rights. Weiser provides a remarkable look behind two curtains: both the iron one that shielded cold-war Poland and the veil of secrecy that normally cloaks the CIA. The author's unprecedented access to the actual messages that passed between spy and handler allows him to bring two fascinating personalities - and the intimate friendship they developed - to life. If you like history, buy it. If you like biography, buy it. If you're a military buff, buy it. And if you like spy novels, buy two.

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Colonel Kukllinski, a hero or a traitor? March 19, 2004

By Artur Halota

Format:Hardcover

I heard many things about the martial law in Poland, and I read many books on the cold war. I think what Colonel Kuklinski did, was very dangerous and also heroic. In order to look at the martial law, everybody must ask himself/herself, where was Poland at this time? Was it free from foreign domination? Did Poland make indepedent decisions in regards to foreign policy or even internal policy? I think not. If those who think he is a traitor, then they think comunism was a good thing, and they enjoyed life under comunism. Most documents that Kuklinski shipped to Americans were in the Russian language. He did not take any money as some comunist members including Jaruzelski think.
I am one of many, who met Colonel Kuklinski personally. He is a man of a great courage and patriotism. His sacrifice was that he lost his two sons, and did not receive recognition among the Poles. I believe that his sacrifices wiill find recogniztion if we will read this book.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Reply to Voice from Poland April 4, 2004

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

The amazing story of Colonel Kuklinski and his work on behalf of the free world and America, resulted in many laudatory comments, but also an outrageous condemnation from pro-Communist sources. The understanding of this scurrilious attack will be helped by the recollection that our gallant ally, Poland, was abandoned at Yalta to the Soviet occupation, which lasted 46 years. During this time, some Poles were seduced, or bribed, to serve their Soviet masters and their interests. When the general discontent by the majority of the people, led by Solidarity, brought about the downfall of the Communist masters and their stooges, they naturally felt hate for the freedom-seeking patriots.

The kangaroo Communist court sentenced Colonel Kuklinski to death just like they condemned so many patriots, and even the anti-German resistance fighters. To most Poles, Colonel Kuklinski is a hero and the cities of Krakow and Gdansk made him an honorary citizen. The regime henchmen could not reach the colonel but his two sons met with sudden death in suspicious circumstances in America. So he paid the highest price for his efforts on behalf of the free world and Poland.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Patriot or Traitor March 28, 2004

By Janet Isak Hawley

Format:Hardcover

A Secret Life will attract numerous audiences but holds special appeal for those who enjoy the mental challenge of wrestling with questions of moral dilemma. Colonel Kuklinski, the subject of the book, lived as a citizen of a country, Poland, during a time when Poland's national interests were subjugated to the interests of another nation. In sharing military intelligence with the American authorities, did Kuklinski act as a patriot whose mission was to protect Poland's freedom or as a traitor to its national security? The author's conclusions are clear from the phrase in the subtitle "the Price He Paid to Save His Country," but his meticulous research allows the reader to appraise the narrative at every step of Kuklinski's journey and to draw one's own conclusion. An absorbing tale that one constantly has to remind oneself is not fiction!

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Truth is more interesting than fiction August 1, 2004

By A Reader

Format:Hardcover

This is an important book which reminds us of two facts

which must not be forgotten.

1. What the world thinks of the USA is vital for our security.

Our military power is essential, but it will not keep us

safe unless the rest of the world believes that we are

working for the freedom and prosperity of all, and not

just ourselves.

2. The CIA has an insoluble public relations problem. Its

failures become public knowledge immediately, but its

successes must be kept secret for twenty years or more.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Founding Father of the Post-Soviet, Polish State! March 21, 2005

By Michael J. Kechula

Format:Hardcover

"Sometimes it's not enough to do what is right, sometimes one must do what is necessary." Ryszard Kuklinski knew what was right, did what was necessary...and paid a terrible price.

Benjamin Weiser's riveting work A SECRET LIFE, on Polish hero Ryszard Kuklinski, is an enlightening look back into the dark intrigue, personal danger, and moral dilemmas surrounding one military officer's private battles to liberate his country from totalitarianism. Most importantly, this work shatters the left-wing's liberal illusion of "peaceful coexistence" with a communist system whose very raison d' etre is the destruction of freedom, democracy and enslavement of the West.

Kuklinski saw internal conflict to evict the alien system imposed upon his country by the USSR--as opposed to connivance or the wishful thinking of ideological transformation through "gradualism," favored by some of his Polish General Staff contemporaries, who, for lack of courage or personal gain, fully cooperated with their harsh Soviet task masters--as the only realistic option for peace in the face of Poland's likely nuclear annihilation, had war ensued with the United States. He dared to act accordingly, becoming an agent of change feeding top-secret Warsaw Pact military information to the CIA; thereby, tipping the balance of power in favor of liberty, while loosening the demoralizing death-grip of communist rule over Eastern Europe, as a de facto one-man Polish Underground....

When considering the totality of personal sacrifice and enormity of danger faced by Kuklinski, in his nearly solitary and single-handed struggle against radical, state-sponsored evil--who carried a suicide pill to end his life if caught and was sentenced to death, in absentia, by the Polish Military Court--moral giants like Kurt Gerstein and Aleksander Solzhenitsyn come to mind. It saddens me that former communist collaborators or sympathizers, like Aleksander Kwasniewski, were celebrated or elevated to significant post-Soviet leadership positions and societal prominence, while the country remains bitterly divided over Kuklinski, who has yet to be nationally vindicated, though history has already done so.

Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzesinski said it best when he honored him with the words traditionally reserved for decorating Polish soldiers: "Pan sie dobrze Polsce zasluzyl: You have served Poland well." Rest in peace Colonel Kuklinski. Read more ›