Obtaining documents is the basis of a spy's job. In the People's Republic of Poland, counterintelligence obtained documents that made it possible to buy licenses for Western products cheaper. It was even possible to manufacture a vacuum cleaner…
"We are completely impartial, we watch everyone," said one of the UK's interior ministers. This is the reality:be it a democracy or an authoritarian country - the services are watching everyone. This, of course, was also the case in the People's Republic of Poland, a country that had a very extensive security apparatus. This is mainly to - unfortunately - keep an eye on our own citizens, but also to fight other intelligence services.
Foreign visitors coming to Poland to sell licenses for the production of various devices had to be careful (illustrative photo).
Sometimes, however, it was not about politics or military secrets. In the 1970s, in the times of Edward Gierek, Poland used money borrowed from abroad to buy licenses for the production of many devices. Also household appliances. Of course, it would be best to purchase these licenses as cheaply as possible. This is where the officers of the IX Division of the II Department of the Ministry of the Interior entered the scene.
Softening dinners
"Apart from people suspected of espionage, we were most interested in people coming to Poland for some commercial negotiations" - says in Tomasz Awłasewicz's book "Invisible" one of its heroes, nicknamed "Engineer", who worked in a special group searching hotel rooms. When Gierek was splashing about with borrowed money, representatives of companies ready to do business on the Vistula came to Warsaw.
businessmen visiting Poland were placed in hotels that were adapted to the observation of guests . SB officers from the so-called "betka" were staying there all the time, but various devices were also installed. When the Swedes were building the Forum hotel (today's Novotel), they even asked:“Do we want them to leave some room for some goodies in some rooms? It is known - wiretaps, cameras, ”says the hero of Awłasewicz's book. The Polish side reportedly refused.
When the Swedes were building the Forum hotel (today's Novotel), they even asked if the Poles wanted to leave space in their rooms for the installation of surveillance devices. The Polish side reportedly refused.
The task of the people from Division IX was to find out under what conditions Western companies are ready to sell licenses to Poles. The "Engineer" says:
It was invaluable knowledge, we were immediately guaranteed the best offer. The piece of paper said the guy could go down to a hundred dollars a kilo of some product. Well, now the man representing the Polish side in the negotiations could easily walk away from the table when he was asked for one hundred and twenty dollars. He knew he wouldn't even have time to get to the door until he heard that they would get along somehow.
Another member of this group, "Hunter," adds:"When a guy like this came for a trade negotiation, he knew hotel searches were standard. Usually he tried to keep an eye on it, but for a day or two he felt like it and dragged these suitcases with him, and then when he got tired, the atmosphere relaxed and he wanted to jump out somewhere outside the protocol at night, he left it all in his room ”.
It happened that a foreign guest was invited to a "softening" dinner with representatives of the Polish side, for example the day before the official talks. Polish officials knew perfectly well that it was in their best interest to entertain their guest as long as possible, so that spies had time to thoroughly search his room.
Cap on the handle
Upon entering a hotel room, Department IX staff first took pictures with a Polaroid camera, so they knew what had been before the search and could leave the room in the same condition as they found it.
Of course, the Westerners knew they could be under surveillance. They left their papers in suitcases locked with a code, but this was not a problem for professionals. Not even the locks in the famous Samsonite suitcases were an obstacle . They were opened in several seconds without leaving any traces. “The trick was that we opened them with an ultra-thin plate. We cut them ourselves, from razor blades. We didn't need much to be happy, ”recalls“ Hunter ”.
However, there were also more primitive but effective methods. One of the guests, leaving the room, put a rolled-up tie on top of the suitcase, and in the middle a pile of coins arranged in a specific order. He has been to many countries, so he had a wide variety of currencies. “If I picked up this tie without noticing that there was a surprise inside, the coins would scatter and the birds were gone - the guy would know that someone was picking up his suitcase. Nobody will play it, "says" Engineer ".
The text was created, among others based on the book by Tomasz Awłasewicz “Niewidzialni. The greatest secret of the special services of the People's Republic of Poland ”, which has just been released by the Agora SA publishing house.
Equally trivial was the way with the cap hung on the door handle ... or just left on the floor under the door. Whoever was breaking into the room then had a problem - did the cap fall off or was it deliberately placed on the ground? What to do now? Leave or hang? Most often, however, the cap was left on the ground, assuming that the visitor would not be entirely sure whether, for example, it was not the maid who threw it or some other tourist pressed the door handle because he had mistaken the rooms.
There really was no way to protect yourself from surveillance. The only option, as mentioned, was to carry everything with you, but according to Tomasz Awłasewicz's interlocutors, most of the guests did not want to take all precautions after a few days.
Of course, there were professionals. "They didn't even leave a single piece of paper because they knew how to do such a job. When we saw that someone only had panties and T-shirts in their room, it was obvious what kind of guest they were "Says" Hunter ".
One of the officers of Division IX once searched the room of the famous terrorist "Szakal", who visited Poland. This one had left some of his passports with photos in his room. Apparently he felt very confident or, more likely, was just careless.
Scanner made in CCCP
Once the Polish spies had the documents in their hands, they had to be carefully copied. This was achieved by the "combine" - a special device with two lamps, a desktop on which sheets of paper were placed and a boom with a camera attached to it. “And please imagine that it all folded and fit into such a handy suitcase. It was Soviet equipment, simple and reliable, "says" Tourist ", another hero of the book" Invisible ".
Poles preferred this harvester to Western machines, which were perhaps more sophisticated, but had their drawbacks. The "combine" could be plugged in, and the others had their batteries, which weighed a lot. The German company "Robot" launched a machine that had flashes. This first threatened to attract attention because the flashing light could be visible in the hotel corridor through the crack under the door, secondly - after taking several hundred photos with the lamp, the officer would most likely lose his eyesight.
Soviet harvester used by Division IX officers to quickly copy documents. There are lamps on the left and right, and a camera on the top.
An important task was to find out what was actually being copied. The counterintelligence officers knew the languages - English, German and French. Worse when someone from more distant places, for example from Japan, appeared. So once a whole pile of papers was photographed, and it turned out that they were radio manuals, which could be bought in Polish stores. Another time, one of the officers was sure he had copied an archaic document. After it was translated, it turned out that it was the constitution of the People's Republic of Poland.
The basis of the basics
"For many officers, hotel works were a good introduction to work in the department, because they are the basis of the basics - this is what services all over the world do," says one of the heroes of the book "Invisible". Another form of stealing secrets was through the diplomatic mail. Apparently nobody does it ... but at Okęcie there was a special room where parcels were opened before they were picked up by representatives of embassies . The officers of Division IX were even decorated when they copied the documents that allowed Gierek to prepare for negotiating one of the loans. "He already knew all the questions when he went to the interviews."
The situation was somewhat comical. The West lent Poland money, which it used to buy licenses from it, but at the same time stole documents that allowed it to buy these licenses cheaper. So Poland not only borrowed, but also robbed its creditors. Thanks to this, in the 1970s, many products previously unavailable to Poles - Coca-Cola, Fiat 126p - appeared in the People's Republic of Poland - these are only the most famous ones.
Interestingly, the actions in hotels and in Okęcie were in fact a warm-up before the real "adventure" of breaking into embassies and consulates of Western countries. It was already a higher driving school - it required preparation, precision and cold blood. These actions, especially about opening locks with the use of gamma radiation, are also told by Tomasz Awłasewicz's interlocutors - thanks to which his book provides a unique insight into the secrets of the secret services' work.
US safe in a bunker in Poznań. The Americans kept the most important documents of the facility there. It featured, inter alia, secret CIA material. As the safe was not attached to anything, it was possible to tilt it away from the wall, put an isotope on the back, get the lock removed and thus determine the code.
It is easy to condemn these actions today. After all, these were communist services - their functionaries may not arouse sympathy. However, it should be remembered that the Second Department, i.e. counterintelligence, had relatively little in common with the repression of the opposition in the last decades of the Polish People's Republic, and its functionaries were largely verified after 1989 and probably still served democratic Poland.
Every country needs such people. This is evidenced by, for example, reading the memoirs of high-ranking MI5 officer Peter Wright, who described break-ins into the offices of legal institutions operating in Great Britain. The surveillance technique was actually very similar.
Not only that, the recently released documents of British secret services prove that files were also placed on citizens of the British Empire, against whom there was no official suspicion - it was done “on the other hand”. Organizations for the liberation of the colonies with which the Labor MPs collaborated were under surveillance. The British were also often concerned with money - that is, negotiating the best contracts with newly formed countries for oil, rubber and other raw materials.
So who can properly evaluate the activities of Division IX today? “After all, a lot of money was spent on licenses and it is good that we paid a little less thanks to our shares. After all, enough debts have already accumulated "- says" Inżynier ".