Deep in the Swamp

A Polish newspaper has discovered that the former leftist government under Leszek Miller was intimately acquainted with CIA rendition flights and secret prison camps. It even disguised them.

Poland’s former leftist government under Leszek Miller apparently knew a great deal more about the CIA’s secret prison in Masuria than was previously thought. According to information brought to light by the investigations of the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, the government, then under the leadership of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) was not only aware of CIA flights to the secret prison camp, they even disguised them as official government business.

Between December 5th, 2002 and September 22nd, 2003, Gulfstream aircraft made regular landings at the former military airfield Szymany, 16 miles from the no-go zone controlled by the Polish security service “AW” near the village of Kiejkuty. The facility reportedly held al-Qaeda terrorists who were interrogated and tortured. Among them was Khalid Sheik Mohammed, mastermind of the attack on the World Trade Center.

Twenty Polish secret service officers are reported to have worked at the facility along with CIA agents. The Polish personnel were reportedly chosen because of their knowledge of the Middle East and their contacts there, according to the newspaper’s sources.

Since reports appeared in the Washington Post and Stern magazine in late 2005, Poland has been suspected of permitting the CIA to secretly imprison Arab terrorists on its soil. Ex-President George W. Bush admitted the existence of such secret prisons in September 2006 without disclosing their locations. The New York Times corroborated the suspicion that the CIA was using the restricted zone in Masuria. The intelligence service minister and the Minister of Justice under Jaroslaw Kaczynski, whose “Law and Justice” party was in power from autumn 2005 until autumn 2007, were also aware of the situation, according to a Radio Zet report last June.

Jerzy Szmajdzinski, former Minister of Defense for the SLD claimed on Polish radio that the revelations were already common knowledge and that he had always acknowledged cooperating with the security services. He declined to comment on the status of the flights reported by the newspaper.

Since January 2008, the Polish public prosecutor’s office has been investigating reports of the secret prison at the behest of Polish Premier Donald Tusk. It is also trying to determine whether there was any breach of Polish sovereignty by the American activities. There has been no mention as yet of an investigation of possible human rights violations.

The prosecutor is also investigating the cooperation given to the CIA by the twenty Polish secret service officers. The 20-man group was disbanded in 2005. The newspaper quoted one high security agency official as saying, “America has a lot to thank us for.”

The current feeling in Poland is that it is now America’s turn to prove its friendship to Poland, not the other way around. Due to the miserable Iraq situation and the defective F-16 fighter planes the U.S. provided to Poland, the usual pro-American enthusiasm in Warsaw has noticeably waned as of late.