Holiday I spy

Karen Neville

This month, author & journalist Michael Smith tells us about Ryszard Kukliński and his involvement in plans for the invasion of Western Europe 

The two greatest western spies inside the Soviet system during the Cold War Oleg Gordievsky, who died recently, and Oleg Penkovsky were both recruited by MI6, but there was another key agent whose name never gets mentioned.  

Ryszard Kukliński was a senior Polish Army officer working with Soviet colleagues on plans for the invasion of western Europe. These ‘unambiguously offensive’ plans involved the use of tactical nuclear missiles and accepted that the inevitable response by NATO would lay waste to his homeland. When an outbreak of protests in the 1970s in Poland was brutally crushed – with around 40 people shot dead by troops and militia – he decided to act.  

He proposed to his bosses that he and some colleagues take a sailing trip by yacht along the German, Danish, Dutch and Belgian coasts. It would look like a holiday but would actually be collecting intelligence and photographing naval bases and NATO warships. Then he arranged to meet up with CIA officers in Holland and offered to spy for them. They supplied him with tiny Minox cameras and he photographed every document that came across his desk, more than 30,000 in all over the nine years during which he was in play. A car would meet him on a Warsaw back street at night so he could hand over the unprocessed film and his reports. There were numerous fall-back plans to avoid surveillance and even if “casuals” – civilians with no link to the Polish authorities – were spotted, the car would drive round until the CIA handler was absolutely certain no one could spot them.  

Kukliński delivered regular updates of the latest Soviet plans for the invasion of western Europe, and details of every new piece of Soviet military equipment as it was introduced –  including the SS-20 Saber intermediate-range missiles based in Poland and East Germany and targeted at western Europe. He also supplied a complete breakdown of how every Warsaw Pact unit would be deployed in an attack on the West.  

For one of the most dangerous decades of the Cold War, the US – and therefore the UK – had unprecedented detail of Soviet military capabilities and plans, intelligence which led to major changes in the locations, size and operational plans for NATO forces in Germany and western Europe. Had a war been fought, NATO commanders would have known precisely what Warsaw Pact forces would do at every turn, allowing them to preempt or counter any attack. 

Want to chat spies or books with Michael? Get in touch at editor@roundandabout.co.uk