A Spy Drama: Polish Intelligence Rescued U.S. Agents From Iraq

AFTER IRAQ INVADED Kuwait in August 1990, six American agents spent weeks on the run in Kuwait and Baghdad while U.S. officials desperately searched for a way to keep them from becoming trophies for Saddam Hussein. -----------------------------------------------------------------

WARSAW, Poland - 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 eaten all day, the Americans, all serving intelligence officers, obeyed the order. The booze was meant to help camouflage the Americans as drunken Eastern Europeans, but it had no effect. Perhaps it was their training, or maybe nerves, but stone-cold sober, the six agents and their Polish chaperones 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 Iraqi President 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 has previously 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."

Officially, a CIA spokesman declined last week to comment on the extraction of the agents.

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.

Following the escape of the six Americans via Turkey, Webster brought a letter to Warsaw from then-President Bush announcing U.S. plans to push other governments to forgive half of the debt, or $16.5 billion, Polish officials said. A deal was signed to that effect with the so-called "Paris Club" of creditors on April 21, 1991.

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.

Details of the operation have been patched together from interviews with Polish participants and current and former U.S. officials. While hints about it have popped up in the Polish press over the last four years and in a recently published Polish book about the country's secret services, the accounts have been inaccurate in many details.

The story of the Americans' escape from Iraq combines all the elements of a thriller - tension, heroism, dumb luck and street smarts - with an additional ingredient: a bittersweet tang typical of Poland's stormy history, which crested again in 1989 with the collapse of communism.

Pole had been spy in U.S.

The man who carried out the plan to save the Americans, for example, 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.

Several of the participants, including Polish intelligence officers involved in the operation, requested anonymity, citing fears that agents from the Iraqi secret service would attempt to kill them if their identities became known.

The story begins on Aug. 2, 1990, when Saddam's tanks rolled into Kuwait. The six American officers were in Kuwait on a covert mission at the time near Kuwait's border with Iraq and were unable to seek the support of the U.S. Embassy, because they did not have diplomatic cover identities.

Both Polish and U.S. sources said the Americans were investigating Iraqi troop movements. Polish sources said all worked for the CIA, but one U.S. official recalled that several were military intelligence officers, serving with the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The Americans fled to Baghdad with hundreds of other foreigners.

"They were the most sensitive people there," even though they were not taken hostage as other Americans were and directly threatened by the Iraqis, another former U.S. official said.

In late August, a representative from the CIA contacted a high-ranking Polish intelligence officer in Warsaw and requested assistance in slipping the Americans out of Iraq. According to Polish and U.S. sources, the Bush administration had appealed to both the British and the French intelligence agencies for help but had been rebuffed because those countries were too busy worrying about their own people.

Among the reasons for choosing Poland was the fact that it had several thousand people in Iraq working on construction contracts, and that allowed Poles to move with ease without attracting undue attention.

Poles wanted to help U.S.

"We knew it was very essential, very important for our new relationship," said the former minister of internal affairs, Krzysztof Kozlowski. "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 of Baghdad.

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, bureaucratic wrangling broke out between Washington and Warsaw as the Poles attempted to work out a plan. In an effort to cut the mounting red tape and avoid the stultifying fears of both governments, the Poles demanded that their intelligence officers be smuggled into Iraq to run the operation from Baghdad.

Washington agreed.

Soon after their arrival in Baghdad, the Polish spies met the Americans. By one Polish account, at least, they were in dire need of rescue.

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.

The Americans were obedient, according to the Polish account, although under a tremendous amount of stress. "They were so squeezed"

"They were so squeezed they had no chance to leave by themselves," the Pole contended. "They couldn't even pronounce their names. They fulfilled all of the orders, they were very disciplined."

Several weeks later, the departure was arranged. The Polish officer in charge of the escape sent a cable to Warsaw for relay to Washington informing of his plans. But at the last minute, a reply arrived, canceling the scheme.

The Americans lacked exit visas from the Iraqi government in their fake passports - and Washington insisted that exit visas be obtained.

Several more weeks passed during which the officer worked around the problem, and another departure was prepared. At 2 a.m. on the morning he had planned to leave, the officer sent Washington another cable informing the U.S. they would move at 5:30 a.m.

At 5 a.m. a reply arrived, this time "advising" cancellation. The difficulty now was that the CIA did not want the Polish officer who commanded the operation accompanying the Americans. But the Polish civilians refused to carry out the plan without his presence. So the Polish group decided to ignore the CIA cable. The six Americans piled into a convoy of cars and headed off - north to Turkey.

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."

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, and the technician complimented his Polish.

"Ah," the technician said, remembering the passports, "you must check these."

"No problem," the Iraqi replied, "You are friends; you can go."