Ryszard Kukliński

Ryszard Jerzy Kukliński (June 13, 1930 – February 11, 2004) was a Polish Army colonel and Cold War spy for NATO. He was posthumously promoted to brigadier general by Polish President Andrzej Duda.

Between 1972 and 1981 Kukliński passed top-secret Soviet documents to the CIA, including Soviet plans for the invasion of Western Europe.

Former United States National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzeziński described him as "the first Polish officer in NATO."

Biography

Kukliński was born in Warsaw to a working-class family with strong Catholic and socialist traditions. During World War II, his father became a member of the Polish resistance movement; he was captured by the Gestapo, and subsequently died in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After the war, Kukliński began a successful career in the Polish People's Army. In 1964, he began work in Polish espionage and counterintelligence operations. In 1968, he took part in preparations for the Warsaw Pact's invasion of Czechoslovakia. Disturbed by the invasion, and by the brutal crushing of the parallel Polish 1970 protests, in 1972, Kukliński sent a letter to the US embassy in Bonn describing himself as an army officer from a Communist country and requesting a secret meeting.

In 1994, Kukliński said that his awareness of the "unambiguously offensive" nature of Soviet military plans was an important factor in his decision to communicate the details of those plans to the United States, adding that "Our front could only be a sacrifice of Polish blood at the altar of the Red Empire". Kukliński was also concerned that his homeland would be turned into a nuclear wasteland as the Warsaw Pact's superiority in conventional forces would mean NATO would respond to military action with tactical nuclear weapons.