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POSTSCRIPT
The
Paszkowski family future
remains far from clear.
Throughout the period of
putting together this book
and assisting his new lawyer
with his case, I attempted
to corroborate his allegations
to the extent possible.
Corroboration could only
come through official sources,
including ministries, CSIS,
the RCMP and the Polish
Ministry of the Interior.
This postscript outlines
some of many attempts to
verify Paszkowski's story
and find evidence in his
defence.
Paszkowski's
current lawyer, Brad Willis,
wrote the German lawyer
Josef Mühlbauer asking for
confirmation of the details
of his visit with Paszkowski
in the jail in 1986. Willis'
letter was taken out of
the country and mailed from
Germany by registered mail
but there was no response.
No response has been received
either to my two recent
letters to Mühlbauer; phone
calls to him were not answered.
Paszkowski
has kept in touch with his
friend Staszek sporadically
over the years. Staszek
served his full term in
German jail for hijacking.
His life in Germany did
not turn out well, when
Ryszard last heard from
him, he was in jail again
on minor criminal charges.
In Paszkowski's opinion,
Staszek could not add anything
new or substantive to his
defense.
A
telephone call to Rome to
the phone number given by
Paszkowski as that of his
contact Di Marco of Italian
Intelligence in 1986 indicated
that the number has belonged
to the Italian Red Cross
for the past two years.
Access
to Information Act requests
filed by my colleague, Danuta
Tardif, with the RCMP, CSIS,
and External Affairs took
more than a year and a half
to be processed. Almost
three thousand pages later,
most of the documents received
are of no real importance.
All of the information that
would be helpful was purportedly
exempt from release under
the sections of the Access
to Information Act that
deal with: information obtained
in confidence from the government
of a foreign state or institution;
information deemed `injurious'
to the conduct of international
affairs; information that
would be detrimental in
the detection, prevention
or suppression of crime;
personal information as
defined in the Privacy Act;
and information that contains
advice prepared for a government
or a minister of the Crown
and an account of consultations
or deliberations involving
employees of a government
institution, a minister
of the Crown or the staff
of the Crown.
After
such a dense combination
of exemptions, the documents
that were released and classified
as `secret', `confidential'
or `protected' were mostly
toothless, having entire
sections blanked out. There
were numerous blank pages
with only a relevant section
number recited; everything
on them was presumably considered
secret.
To
its considerable credit,
the Access to Information
and Privacy Office at the
Department of Citizenship
and Immigration (previously
Employment and Immigration),
co-ordinated well the massive
flow of material from immigration
offices in Edmonton and
External Affairs and waived
the charges because of the
long delays in processing
the request.
One
good indication that the
documents released were
going to be checked and
rechecked with any really
valuable information to
be claimed exempt under
an appropriate section of
the Access to Information
Act was a copy of one memo
included among 1300 pages
that arrived in April of
1994. The memo, dated 13
October 1992, was from the
Director of the Immigration
Information Centre and classified
`protected'. It was addressed
to Ian Taylor, Director,
Security Review, Immigration
Operations and concerns,
"...the Access to Inf. Act
request - Tardif.01". The
note asks Mr. Taylor to
assign an officer to review
the request and asks for
comments as to whether the
information is releasable.
The note is innocent by
itself, but the addressee's
name is significant. Ian
Taylor appears on a majority
of documents released as
the originator of items
or someone being copied
to. His name also appears
on copies of enquiries on
Paszkowski's file with External
Affairs dated August 12,
1986 seeking confirmation
of issue of a Canadian Identity
Card to Robert Fisher. Taylor
clearly worked with the
case for a lengthy time
and was, as various documents
quoted in this book indicate,
determined to keep Paszkowski
out of the country. This
would tend to make him reluctant,
I believe, to release anything
very enlightening about
the file in question provided
he felt the law allowed
him to claim an exemption.
The
Information Access Directorate
of the RCMP, responding
to a request for information
filed by Danuta Tardif on
Ryszard Paszkowski, wrote
that no record of personal
information was found on
Paszkowski, nor any other
information regarding his
case. Even if there was,
it would presumably have
been exempted. It took the
Access to Information officer
ten hours of search time
(the additional five RCMP
hours not paid by the applicant
was generously borne by
the RCMP) to decide they
had nothing at all on the
record to produce. This
seems bizarre as among the
documents received from
Immigration was correspondence
and other information that
originated with the RCMP
or that the force received
copies of.
My
own request filed at CSIS
under the Privacy Act in
September of 1992 in an
attempt to see if my various
interventions on behalf
of Paszkowski and his family
had resulted in some information
on my own file at CSIS produced
not even a single mention.
Everything with any reference
to his case was exempted
under a long list of sections
of the Privacy Act.
Checking
Paszkowski's past in Poland
proved an even more difficult
task. As the democratic
leadership was taking office
in Poland in late 1989 and
early 1990, there was a
frenzy of activity in the
Ministry of the Interior
to destroy archives reflecting
decades of political oppression.
There are about three million
files in the former SB archives.
One in every twelve Polish
citizens, including infants
and seniors, had something
to do with the secret service:
they had either spied on
others or, more likely,
were being spied upon by
the SB. As the SB was shredding
itself into oblivion, many
of its departments managed
to destroy archives that
would be of historic value.
For example, the branch
directed to fight churches
and religion had a file
on every cleric, no matter
what denomination, with
detailed information on
church activities, texts
of sermons, known friends
and enemies, and biographies.
According to one source,
these files were destroyed
to make it difficult to
solve the mysterious deaths
of a number of priests.
Similarly,
the files of the SB branch
dealing with political opposition
were being destroyed. Only
when it became public knowledge
in Poland that files were
being burnt on the orders
of the outgoing heads of
many SB departments did
the pressure of public opinion
and the new political leadership
finally stop the process.
One can only speculate about
how many dirty secrets during
the first post-communist
months between mid-1989
and the spring of 1990 were
set ablaze or are now in
the hands of people with
political ambitions. In
1990, the new democratic
Minister of the Interior,
Krzysztof Kozlowski, created
a commission to oversee
the files and control access
to existing archives of
the ministry so that they
would never be used in political
fights. The files containing
information on SB agents,
informers, confidants and
consultants remain highly
controversial.
Whether
to release lists of SB agents
and informants is unresolved
and remains highly divisive
in Poland. Fresh in many
minds there is the experience
of East Germans when Stasi's
secret files were made public
and a horrified society
realized the extent of the
state police infiltration
of their lives. A few months
before the Berlin Wall fell
in 1989, Stasi managed to
place several thousand agents
in government and business
institutions. Approximately
500 were smuggled into West
Germany. Just before unification,
the secret police destroyed
250 safety-deposit boxes
containing important information.
Der Spiegel quoted
one of the agents saying,
"We were relieved when after
14 days, working 24 hours
a day, we destroyed everything."
As it turned out, not everything
was destroyed. The numbers
of files were staggering:
35,000 officials, 150,000
permanent informers on the
payroll, and two million
collaborators. Six million
people - almost half of
all adult citizens of East
Germany - were on file in
the Stasi archives. The
consequences of revealing
the Stasi files included
suicides by three East German
generals, one parliamentarian
and the end of dozens of
political careers in both
Germanies.
Another
argument against releasing
the SB files was the experience
of former Czechoslovakia
with its ensuing political
turmoil. Rumours abound
that many files in SB possession
have been fabricated by
the SB to discredit disliked
leaders and Solidarity activists.
It is thus impossible to
determine officially if
Paszkowski was a regular
agent of the SB. The files
are not open to the public
and access to files is restricted
only to serious criminal
investigations.
Legislation
is evidently to be brought
before the Polish Parliament
which will regulate access
to archives in the possession
of the Ministry of the Interior.
The leader of the party
proposing the measure said
in the spring of 1994 that
it is an `unhealthy' situation
when access to the files
is given only to certain
government officials, including
the president and the ministers,
and when courts are refused
access, especially in cases
of libel.
The
interest generated by an
estimated three million
secret SB files is indicated
often in the Polish media.
Newspapers quote former
SB officers who claimed
that the files might include
the names of people who
never co-operated with them.
As each operational employee
was obliged to recruit at
least ten agents, many fabricated
new files to meet quotas
based on innocent contacts
with persons, for example
scientists, who provided
some simple advice on a
matter. One senior SB member
said that extremely important
agents had never been registered
and were only known to the
officer who supervised them
personally. Their files,
he said, are long gone.
In
a 1992 book published in
Poland, the authors interviewed
a number of former SB agents,
who asked to remain anonymous
as going public would be
equivalent to a death sentence.
They were not afraid of
the newly-created Office
of State Protection which
replaced the SB, but they
were very much afraid of
former SB employees now
hidden while hoping for
the return of the old order.
The former agents described
their own `work experience'
in the book and called the
new management team in their
department incompetent.
They laughed at those trying
to reveal the lists of names
of former SB collaborators
because the lists could
be manipulated. They implied
that most of the documents
were destroyed and the very
important ones were not
even in Poland any more.
Without good evidence, the
people left could not be
convicted of anything. Accusing
people and creating an atmosphere
of distrust and suspicion
leads only to turmoil, thus
pleasing the real agents,
whose identities we might
never know.
Antoni
Macierewicz, Minister of
the Interior in the former
government of Jan Olszewski,
the only coalition government
of the Right in post-1989
Poland, visited Canada in
the spring of 1994. His
name is associated with
the "Macierewicz list" -
a list of sixty-six SB informers
who occupied senior positions
in 1992 and are still in
government service. Macierewicz
was authorized by the Polish
Parliament to call a commission
to prepare the list. The
ensuing political uproar
led to the fall of Olszewski's
government in mid-1992.
Although the list was leaked
to the public, it is considered
top secret and the people
in question were not called
to account in detail for
their pasts. During an interview
with the Canadian Polish
weekly, Glos Polski,
Macierewicz admitted that
many files were destroyed
and many more were removed
from the archives and are
in the hands of `various'
people. He says Jerzy Urban,
the much-hated spokesman
for the Jaruzelski regime,
has access to the files
and has used the information
to blackmail various politicians.
General Jaruzelski and Kiszczak,
the last communist Minister
of the Interior, also have
access to the SB files,
says Macierewicz.
Macierewicz,
when asked in a private
conversation about Ryszard
Paszkowski, admitted to
me that he knew of the case
from Poland but stopped
short of discussing it or
going on record that Paszkowski's
life would be in danger
if returned to Poland. The
political situation in Poland
is still too volatile for
a former Minister of the
Interior to admit publicly
to what he might admit privately.
Macierewicz never suggested
at any point that Paszkowski
should be unconcerned about
his safety if he returns
to Poland.
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