The End and the Beginning

by George Weigel

  56. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, pp. 517–18.

  57. Ibid., pp. 518–19.

  58. Author’s interview with Tadeusz Mazowiecki, April 7, 1997.

  59. Author’s interviews with Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, March 12, 2008, and November 20, 2008.

  60. Author’s conversation with Hanna Gronkiewicz-Walz, December 5, 2008.

  61. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, pp. 416–17.

  62. Cited in Sancton, “He Dared to Hope,” p. 11.

  63. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, p. 520.

  64. Ibid.

  65. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, pp. 418–19.

  66. See Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 405–6.

  67. The full text of the letter, which was written in French, is available in English translation in ibid., pp. 406–7.

  68. Author’s interviews with Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, March 12, 2008, and November 20, 2008; author’s interview with Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, December 2, 2008.

  69. See Lasota, Donos na Wojtyłę, epilogue.

  70. Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Code Message No. 260/1/70 from Rome, 9 January 1980” This document was obtained from the foreign ministry archives by Dr. Andrzej Grajewski, who shared it with the author. The translation from the Polish was done by Paula Olearnik.

  71. Twenty-eight years later, reflecting on this period, Cardinal Silvestrini conceded that he and Casaroli believed that a “certain caution, a certain prudence” was required in dealing with an unknown quantity like Solidarity. But, as Silvestrini put it, with a rueful smile, the Pope had the initiative on this front and, in any event, “Il Papa aveva meno … [The Pope had less (prudence) …].” Author’s interview with Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, November 20, 2008.

  72. John Koehler, Claire Sterling, and Paul Henze all report that a veteran KGB operative, Luigi Scricciolo, who worked for an Italian labor federation, kept Moscow Center and the Soviet Politburo informed of the Pope’s discussion with the Wałęsa delegation, to which Scricciolo had attached himself as a guide. [See Koehler, Spies in the Vatican, p. 92.]

  73. Author’s interview with Tadeusz Mazowiecki, April 7, 1997. John Paul II’s homily: “Mass for the Polish Delegation …” L’Osservatore Romano/English Weekly Edition, February 9, 1981, p. 23.

  74. Martin Anderson and Annelise Anderson, Reagan’s Secret War: The Untold Story of His Fight to Save the World from Nuclear Disaster (New York: Crown, 2009), pp. 74–75.

  75. The “holy alliance” myth was aggressively promoted by Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi in His Holiness: John Paul II and the Hidden History of Our Time (New York: Doubleday, 1996), an unreliable study of John Paul II on this and a host of other important points.

  76. On these aspects of Reagan, see Anderson and Anderson, Reagan’s Secret War, pp. 49–50, 52, 63–65, and 75.

  77. See ibid., p. 48, for the effects of John Hinckley’s assassination attempt on Reagan’s sense of vocational purpose.

  78. See Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, pp. 420ff.

  79. Dudek, “The Carnival,” p. 49.

  80. Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi took the Soviet disinformation bait in His Holiness, pp. 277–78; John Paul II and Stanisław Dziwisz confirmed to the author, in a conversation on December 16, 1998, that the Pope had never met with the Soviet ambassador to Italy to discuss Solidarity, or anything else. On the Pakistan bomb plot, see Andrew and Mitrokhin, The World Was Going Our Way, p. 358.

  81. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, p. 521.

  82. Dudek, “The Carnival,” p. 55.

  83. Quoted in Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, p. 522.

  84. Dudek, “The Carnival,” p. 59.

  85. Cited in ibid.

  86. Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Code Message No. 161/II/1423 from Rome, 3 April 1981.” This document was obtained from the foreign ministry archives by Dr. Andrzej Grajewski, who shared it with the author. The translation from the Polish was done by Paula Olearnik.

  87. Ibid. This document provides one of the clearest windows into the cast of mind of the veterans of the Vatican Ostpolitik, who seemed to share conventional European and liberal American concerns of the time about irresponsible Reaganite rhetoric and a bilateral, action/reaction cycle “arms race” that was, in fact, heavily weighted in early 1981 in favor of the USSR. It is possible, of course, that Silvestrini was simply telling Szablewski what he thought the Pole wanted to hear; possible, but very unlikely, given other evidence about the fundamental conceptual framework of the Casaroli/Silvestrini Ostpolitik.

  88. Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Code Message No. 1340/II/1855 from Rome, 7 May 1981.” This document was obtained from the foreign ministry archives by Dr. Andrzej Grajewski, who shared it with the author. The translation from the Polish was done by Paula Olearnik.

  89. For a detailed account of the assassination attempt and its immediate aftermath, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 397–98, 411–16.

  90. Author’s interview with Gabriel Turowski, June 10, 1997.

  Two American pilgrims, Anne Odre and Rose Hull, were hit by ricochets or missed shots from Agca’s fusillade.

  91. Http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1981/51381b.htm.

  92. See Thomas Joscelyn, “Crime of the Century: How the Media Elite and the CIA Failed to Investigate the 1981 Papal Assassination Attempt,” Weekly Standard, April 7, 2005.

  Post–Cold War revelations suggested that the KGB had designs on getting as “close to [John Paul II]” as possible from the first months of the pontificate. One KGB officer defected to the United States in 1980 after hearing discussions of possible anti–John Paul II measures. [See Koehler, Spies in the Vatican, pp. 57–64.]

  93. Among the refinements of prevarication in Operation Papst was a forged letter, leaked to the European press, in which conservative Bavarian Christian Democratic leader Franz-Josef Strauss was implicated in the papal assassination plot via alleged links to Turkish right-wing parties. Never reluctant to try killing two birds with one stone, the Stasi aimed this piece of disinformation at undermining a major West German political figure while continuing to provide cover for the Bulgarians.

  The Stasi was also involved in what may have been another effort to cover Agca’s links to Soviet-bloc intelligence agencies. In 1983, Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of an Italian worker in the Vatican, was kidnapped. Subsequent letters to the Italian press claiming to be from her captors and suggesting that the Grey Wolves had captured her in order to trade her for Mehmet Ali Agca were in fact written by Stasi officers, acting again on behalf of their Bulgarian colleagues. Emanuela Orlandi was never found.

  Information on Operation Papst comes from the author’s July 2007 and November 2008 interviews with Dr. Andrzej Grajewski and from Grajewski’s article, “Operacja papież,” No. 43/2008.

  94. For the “second agony,” see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 415–16.

  95. When Glemp received the cardinal’s red hat in 1982, reports on his conversations with John Paul II were filed by a Hungarian intelligence operative and shared by Budapest with the Stasi and the KGB; the report speculated that Cardinal Casaroli had been impelled to adopt “the hard line of the Pope.” [See Koehler, Spies in the Vatican, p. 205.]

  96. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, p. 523.

  97. Ibid., p. 524.

  98. See Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, p. 434.

  99. Dudek, “The Carnival,” p. 63.

  100. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, p. 526.

  101. Cited in Weigel, Witness to Hope, p. 419. For more on the first Solidarity Congress and its relationship to John Paul II’s first social encyclical, Laborem Exercens, see ibid., pp. 418–21.

  102. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, p. 436.

  103. Dudek, “The Carnival,” p. 67.

  104. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, p. 439.

  105. Andrew and Mitrokhin, T
he Sword and the Shield, p. 528.

  106. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, p. 441; Dudek, “The Carnival,” p. 73.

  107. Operational details on the impending martial law crackdown had been given to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in mid-September 1981 by Colonel Ryszard Kukliński, who, with his family, was subsequently exfiltrated to the West some weeks before martial law was imposed. Rumors that Kukliński’s cover had been blown from inside the Vatican circulated in some circles for years afterward.

  108. Cited in Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, p. 443.

  109. Cited in ibid., p. 444.

  110. Ibid., p. 447.

  111. On Glemp as “a second Khomeini”: Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, p. 530. Glemp’s remarks on December 13, 1981, are cited in Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, p. 451.

  112. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, p. 452.

  113. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, p. 534.

  114. Cited in Thomas Swick, “Laughter in Red,” Weekly Standard, October 26, 2009, p. 31.

  115. See Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 432ff.

  116. Dziwisz, A Life with Karol, pp. 143–44.

  117. Http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1981/121481b.htm.

  118. Author’s interview with Bohdan Cywiński, November 14, 1998. Jonathan Kwitny created the myth of a John Paul II/Cywiński “conspiracy” to aid Solidarity in his Man of the Century (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), pp. 418ff. Cywiński flatly denied that any such “conspiracy” had taken place.

  119. Author’s interviews with Bohdan Cywiński, November 14, 1998; and Jan Nowak, May 13, 1998.

  Nowak, who was in close contact with the Reagan administration during this period, had an interesting analysis of Jaruzelski’s position and intentions during the imposition of martial law, stating that Jaruzelski had asked for a small number of Soviet troops to come in after WRON had imposed martial law: this would have provided him cover (“You see? I had to do it or they would have invaded.”) and would have deflected criticism. The Soviets, knowing what game he was playing, refused. Jaruzelski was also not sure, Nowak suggested, that he would be successful on the night of December 12–13 and wanted backup in case his initial plans did not succeed. In addition, Nowak argued, Jaruzelski was terrified of occupation strikes and sit-down strikes in 500 factories, which would instantly have become 500 fortresses—a concern that perhaps explains, although it certainly does not justify, the lethal brutality at the Wujek mine on December 16.

  120. These excerpts are taken from the “Minutes of the President’s Working Lunch with Agostino Cardinal Casaroli, Secret, The Map Room, The White House, December 15, 1981, 12:45–2:15 p.m.,” in Executive Secretariat, NSC: Subject File: Records, 1981–1985. Memorandums of Conversation—President Reagan (December 1981) (1)(2). Box 49, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. A full copy of this now-declassified document was generously provided to the author by Martin Anderson and Annelise Anderson.

  121. Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Code Message No. 3240/IV from New York on 18 December 1981.” This document was obtained from the foreign ministry archives by Dr. Andrzej Grajewski, who shared it with the author. The translation from the Polish was done by Paula Olearnik.

  122. See Koehler, Spies in the Vatican, p. 197.

  123. See ibid., p. 200.

  124. Author’s interview with Zbigniew Brzeziński, February 7, 1997.

  Chapter Four

  1. Author’s interview with Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, October 24, 1996.

  2. See Anderson and Anderson, Reagans Secret War, pp. 90–91 and p. 408, note 23.

  3. Author’s interview with Jan Nowak, May 13, 1998.

  Ryszard Kukliński died in 2004, his two sons having predeceased him under strange circumstances during their exile in the United States. The Polish officer’s career remained controversial in Poland until his death, with some insisting that he was a traitor who had betrayed his officer’s oath; among those arguing this were, perhaps not surprisingly, Wojciech Jaruzelski and Czesław Kiszczak. John Paul II had a dramatically different view, and quietly passed the word to friends in the Polish Church that Kukliński should be regarded as a Polish patriot and hero. [Jaruzelski’s and Kiszczak’s views are noted in Weiser, A Secret Life, pp. 308–10. John Paul II’s role in arranging a warm welcome for Kukliński on the latter’s return to Poland for a 1998 visit was related to the author by Radek Sikorski in a conversation on November 11, 1998.]

  4. Václav Havel et al., The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1985), pp. 23–96.

  5. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, p. 470.

  6. Author’s interview with Andrzej Grajewski, May 26, 2008.

  7. Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, p. 458.

  8. Henryk Głębocki, “The Underground,” in Strybel, trans., The Road to Independence, p. 111.

  9. For a description of the wide-ranging program at the Maximilian Kolbe Church in Nowa Huta, see Weigel, The Final Revolution, pp. 151–52.

  10. On the concept of “moral extraterritoriality,” see ibid.

  11. Author’s interview with Jacek Woźniakowski, November 5, 1998.

  The story of how Woźniakowski got to Rome reveals something of the temper of those times. Woźniakowski had been teaching in Toulouse in the fall of 1981, but happened to be back in Poland when martial law was imposed, the French academic semester having ended. Thinking that he’d never get a passport to return to France, and wanting to remain in Kraków in any event, given the circumstances, he prepared to see the martial law through with his family and friends. An SB official involved in passports tracked Woźniakowski down and asked him, on the street one day, “Why aren’t you in France? You’ll give a bad impression if you don’t fulfill your commitment. Come to my office tomorrow and I’ll give you and your wife passports.” As the only plane out of Warsaw was to Rome, they took that—which was fine with Woźniakowski, who knew that the Pope would be eager for firsthand information. They asked the wife of a French diplomat in Warsaw to get their passports stamped with visas at the Italian Embassy in the Polish capital; she got the job done and the passports delivered to the Woźniakowskis shortly before the plane took off. Thus did the SB’s determination to maintain a facade of “normality” in Poland lead to John Paul II getting his “first decent report” on what had been happening in his homeland.

  12. Ibid.

  Some years later, Woźniakowski mentioned the Pope’s approval of the Brussels operation to Walçsa, who replied, “That’s interesting; I have a report to the contrary”—which was likely another example of SB or KGB disinformation.

  13. Author’s interview with Tadeusz Mazowiecki, April 7, 1997.

  14. Http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives.speeches/1982/60782a.htm.

  15. Głębocki, “The Underground,” pp. 91–93, 99.

  16. Ibid., p. 101.

  17. Ibid., p. 99.

  18. Cited in Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, p. 461.

  19. Ibid., p. 460.

  20. See Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, p. 213; Anderson and Anderson, Reagan’s Secret War, p. 136.

  21. For Dobrynin, see Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, p. 213.

  22. Memorandum to the author from Andrzej Grajewski. Przemyśl was created an archdiocese in 1992; Archbishop Ignacy Tokarczuk, who retired in 1993, was a native of L’viv, the once predominantly Polish city incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic after World War II, and the diocese of Przemyśl was located on the Polish-Soviet (Ukrainian) border. Thus Tokarczuk was perceived as a particular threat by the SB and the Ukrainian KGB.

  23. On TRIANGOLO: memorandum to the author from Andrzej Grajewski; Lasota, Donos na Wojtyłę, chapter 6.

  24. Kotowski’s reports doubtless intersected with material coming to the KGB from other sources, including the ever busy Hungarian intelligence service in Rome. In mid-1982, Hungarian
agents in Rome reported that Cardinal Casaroli and other curialists were opposed to what became Poland II, on two grounds: first, that a papal visit risked exacerbating church-state tensions throughout the Soviet bloc, and, second, because a papal visit in the context of martial law (which John Paul II seemed likely to criticize, either overtly or subtly) seemed to contradict the Pope’s strictures against clerical involvement in politics. If the second alleged motive for caution was in fact reflective of curial views, then those who held it betrayed a striking ignorance of the difference between John Paul II’s concerns over clerical partisan politics in the context of the various theologies of liberation and the Pope’s insistence that the Church’s leaders had a responsibility to defend basic human rights—even if in doing so they were accused of being partisans. [On the Hungarian-based report, see Koehler, Spies in the Vatican, p. 20.]

  25. Kowalczyk was “registered” by PIETRO as an “information contact” in November 1982 and given the code name CAPPINO. The debate over Kowalczyk’s interaction with the SB became sharp in Poland in early 2009, not least because Kowalczyk had served as the Holy See’s nuncio to his homeland since 1989. Archbishop Kowalczyk’s probity in his interactions with PIETRO was defended in an article, “Lustrowanie nuncjusza,” by Andrzej Grajewski, in Gość Niedzielny, January 18, 2009, pp. 26–28. The case was also discussed in the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita on January 20, 2009 (Sławomir Cenckiewicz, “Współpracownicy wywiadu PRL”), and February 5, 2009 (Sławomir Cenckiewicz, “Opowieści officera ‘Pietro’ ”).

  26. The information on Kotowski’s operations in Rome was given to the author by Andrzej Grajewski in an interview on July 14, 2009, shortly after Dr. Grajewski had had an extensive conversation with Dr. Kotowski.

  27. For a more detailed account of John Paul II’s 1983 pilgrimage to Central America, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 438–39, 451–59. On KGB and Cuban intelligence operations in Central America, see Andrew and Mitrokhin, The World Was Going Our Way, pp. 115–36.

  28. Author’s interview with Andrzej Grajewski, July 14, 2009.