My Experience as a Paid Informer of the Polish Security Service

Abstract

An agent of the Polish Security Service posing as a journalist contacted me in January 1970 while I was doing research in Poznań, Poland, for a Ph.D. dissertation as a graduate student of Columbia University. He commissioned an autobiographical account of my life "on the road to a doctorate" for which I was paid. But the actual goal was to recruit me as an informer concerning professors at Columbia, particularly Zbigniew Brzeziński, and my fellow students and their connections with the FBI and the CIA. When my suspicions were finally aroused, on the advice of the American consulate in Poznań, I returned the money and broke off contact. This ended my career as an informer, while the agent pocketed the money. As a result of this contact, the Intelligence Unit of the Polish Ministry of Internal Affairs created a file on me currently in the Institute of National Remembrance.