Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 17, 1995 TAG: 9501170142
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN POMFRET THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WARSAW, POLAND LENGTH: Long
On a stretch of highway in the mountains of northern Iraq one chilly autumn evening in 1990, a Polish intelligence officer pulled four bottles of Johnnie Walker Red out of a satchel and passed them to six new friends - from the United States.
Drink, was the command.
Although they had not had a bite to eat all day, the Americans, all intelligence officers, obeyed. The booze was meant to help camouflage the Americans as drunken Eastern Europeans, but it had no effect. Stone cold sober, the six agents and their Polish chaperons reached the border crossing between Iraq and Turkey at sunset.
The whisky-soaked ride was the culmination of one of the most remarkable clandestine operations of the Persian Gulf War, following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August of 1990. Less than a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Polish intelligence agents trained to serve the Warsaw Pact smuggled six American intelligence officers out of Iraq, eluding Saddam Hussein's pervasive and ruthless internal intelligence apparatus.
The escape came after the six agents spent weeks on the run in Kuwait and Baghdad while White House and CIA officials desperately searched for a way to save them. Eventually, they turned to the Poles, who had ties throughout Iraq because of construction work carried out there by Polish engineering firms. With the help of a senior spy flown in from Warsaw, the agents were given refuge at a Polish construction camp. And in the end, a civilian Polish technician-turned-refugee-bus driver with a knack for improvisation stumbled on a way to get them out.
The daring exploit, masterminded by a man who for 20 years had battled the CIA as a Warsaw Pact spy, was one of three covert Polish actions during the Gulf War that aided the allied war effort, according to Polish and U.S. sources.
Using skills and knowledge acquired during their late autumn escapade, the Poles carried to freedom 15 other foreigners, mostly Britons, held hostage by the Iraqis as part of Saddam's ``human shield'' campaign to deter an allied invasion. Polish agents, mining information from Poland's substantial construction business in Iraq, also provided the United States with detailed maps of Baghdad and particulars about military installations scattered throughout Iraq, as previously has been reported in the Polish press.
``It was high-risk,'' said William Webster, who directed the CIA at the time and traveled to Poland in early November 1990 to commend the Polish government for its help. The Poles ``deserve a lot of credit. It was a good beginning for our relationship in the future.''
The Polish operations, which heralded the birth of what have since grown to be close ties between Poland's State Security Bureau and the CIA, helped prompt the United States to change its policy and back Poland's demands to renegotiate the $33 billion it owed to 17 foreign governments, including the United States, U.S. officials said.
Politically, however, Polish officials contend that little resulted from the operations during which Polish intelligence officers and civilians risked their lives for Americans. Poland's efforts to join NATO, considered a critical element in the coming of age for Eastern Europe's largest and most populous country, remain stymied by a lukewarm Western response.
``We proved to the Americans that we are not only a reliable partner but that we are a reliable partner which can carry out sensitive, delicate missions on behalf of the American government,'' a senior Polish diplomat said. ``After this operation, many of us hoped things would develop faster. They haven't.''
The man who carried out the plan to save the Americans worked as a spy in the United States in the 1970s and played an important role in several espionage operations pulled off by Warsaw Pact agents in the ensuing years, Polish sources said. Then he crowned his career as an operative by saving the lives of men from the very agency he had fought for two decades.
The story begins on Aug. 2, 1990, when Saddam's tanks rolled into Kuwait. The six American officers, in Kuwait to investigate Iraqi troop movements, were unable to seek the support of the U.S. Embassy because they did not have diplomatic cover identities.
The Americans fled to Baghdad with hundreds of other foreigners. As they scrambled to stay ahead of Iraqi intelligence, moving from place to place, their plight quickly attracted attention at the highest levels of the U.S. government.
``They were the most sensitive people there,'' even though they were not taken hostage as other Americans were, a former U.S. official said. ``It was a big deal for us,'' said another former U.S. official. ``They were in terrible jeopardy.''
After being rebuffed by the British and French, who were worried about their own people in danger, the CIA asked the Poles to help the Americans escape from Iraq.
``We knew it was very essential, very important for our new relationship,'' Poland's former minister of internal affairs, Krzysztof Kozlowski, said in explaining his country's willingness to engage in such a high-risk operation. ``We needed cooperation from the Americans. We knew your support was essential for the creation of our new democracy.''
Kozlowski assigned one of his best officers to the case, a man known for finding creative solutions to intractable problems. For weeks, the officer labored in Warsaw attempting to figure out a way to help the six Americans. Meanwhile, the agents took refuge at a Polish construction camp outside Baghdad.
``Every week as we prepared the action, the situation changed in Iraq,'' a Polish intelligence officer said. ``Every day was worse. New restrictions on foreigners, people getting taken hostage.''
Saddam moved quickly to enforce a ban on diplomats traveling outside Baghdad and established military checkpoints on all highways. The only foreigners with any freedom of movement were those working in Iraq on government contracts, which included many Poles.
Eventually, the Poles demanded that their intelligence officers be smuggled into Iraq to run the operation from Baghdad. Washington agreed. But before the operation began, said one U.S. source, the CIA spent several weeks helping train the Polish intelligence officers involved. ``Our guys were just astounded at [the Poles'] willingness to do this,'' a former U.S. official said.
Polish intelligence officers said that despite their past as Warsaw Pact spies, they felt comfortable helping their former enemies.
``Most of us weren't believers, just professionals,'' the Polish officer said. ``Besides, these guys were CIA guys. If they were caught in Iraq, that's the death penalty. We said these guys are our colleagues. We had to help them.''
Quickly the Poles provided the Americans with fake passports from a Slavic country. One problem surfaced immediately: The Americans were unable to pronounce their names on the passports. So the Poles banned them from speaking in the presence of Iraqis.
Polish officers then went to work scouring the city for checkpoints, studying the roads out of the city and toward the border.
One day after several weeks in Iraq, it became clear the operation needed to be speeded up. An Iraqi acquaintance told one of the Poles that people had begun to ask questions. But the officers needed the help of some Polish civilians. The activities of one man in particular caught their eye.
In the predawn hours of Aug. 18, a middle-aged Polish technician guided a convoy of 13 buses carrying Vietnamese, Filipinos, Americans, Germans and Poles to Iraq's border post at Trebil before the crossing into Jordan.
The crossing had descended into chaos. But in the madness, the Pole took a walk and found a small gap in the border fence. Ever the technician, he began to untwist the wires. Soon he had a gaping hole. About an hour later, his 430 charges were in Jordan.
Word of his creative heroics spread quickly in the Polish community and piqued the curiosity of Polish agents. The technician was summoned to the Polish Embassy, where he agreed to help save the Americans.
Several weeks passed as the Polish group worked out details of the escape plan. Finally, as dawn broke one morning, the six Americans piled into a convoy of cars and headed north to Turkey.
In one of the cars, the technician tried to train the Americans to pronounce the Slavic names written in their passports, but to no avail. The technician began to worry about bumping into a Polish-speaking Iraqi. Thousands of Iraqis studied in Poland in the 1980s.
Just north of the Iraqi city of Mosul, the nightmare came true.
At a military checkpoint, an Iraqi officer approached one of the cars, looked at some of the passports, and said in perfect Polish, ``How lucky I am to see my best friends.''
``My heart was going through my mouth and out the other way at the same time,'' the technician recalled.
The technician leaped from the car and, following Slavic tradition, grabbed the security agent and planted three kisses on his cheeks followed by a classic bear hug, thereby moving him away from the car. They exchanged pleasantries.
``Ah,'' the technician said, remembering the passports, ``you must check these.''
``No problem,'' the Iraqi replied, ``You are friends; you can go.''
Several miles south of the Turkish border, the Polish officer stopped the convoy and hauled out the whisky. The idea was to get the Americans drunk, so they could more easily fit an Iraqi stereotype of Eastern Europeans.
``We were as sober as mules,'' a Polish participant said with a smirk.
At the border, the Polish officer advised the Americans to walk slowly to the Turkish side to meet Polish officials there.
They didn't.
``They ran like sportsmen,'' the technician said.
by CNB