Kapuściński the spy
Polish journalist Ryszard KapuÅ›ciÅ„ski, who died in January at the age of 74, is the latest public figure to be “outed” as a communist-area spy. The Polish version of Newsweek ran a cover story this week on the late writer revealing that his ability to travel to Africa, Asia and Central America throughout the ’60s and ’70s was the result of a deal he made with the secret police. During that time, KapuÅ›ciÅ„ski was the only foreign correspondant for PAP, Poland’s official news agency. He covered over 25 revolutions in what he called the “liberation of Africa” from its colonial past. Many readers detect allegories of his communist-controlled country in his writings on other political struggles he witnessed abroad.
“No U.S. reporter had to work with the CIA in order to be allowed to leave the country,” said Ernest Skalski in the Globe and Mail.
Skalski, a long-time friend and fellow reporter, also added, “KapuÅ›ciÅ„ski had to. … If he didn’t agree, he wouldn’t have written his books. There would be no KapuÅ›ciÅ„ski.”
Evaluators of KapuÅ›ciÅ„ski’s files say his reports did not provide significant information and did not seem to hurt anyone.
The journalist’s “outing” is the latest in a processes started in February by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland’s Prime Minister, and his twin brother Lech, the President to cleanse Poland of its communist past. Lech Kaczynski signed a law banning people who collaborated with the secret police from working as judges or high-level civil servants. Poland’s former president, Aleksander KwaÅ›niewski, was a minister during the communist era. He also worked to bring his country into the EU in 2004.
Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:
The Kaczynski brothers wrote ‘lustracja’ — that is lustration, or illumination of the secret police past of their politically unpopular contemporaries — on their flag. However this whole movement of plundering the files has now reached the limit of people’s tolerance. This is made clear by the predominant reaction of rejection and outrage at the rampant scandal-mongering that you see these days in the discussion forums of the major newspapers on the KapuÅ›ciÅ„ski case.