Polish spies list leaked

[R.A. Hettinga]

<http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/print/0,1478,3179078a12,00.html>

Fairfax New Zealand Limited

Polish spies list leaked

 SUNDAY , 06 FEBRUARY 2005


 WARSAW: Polish spies may be in danger after a list of names from
communist-era files was leaked onto the internet earlier in the week, Prime
Minister Marek Belka says.



 The directory of 240,000 names includes informers, spies and people
questioned by the secret police under communist rule. The archives are held
by the National Remembrance Institute (IPN) but the names were copied by a
journalist and published.

 Speaking after meeting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Belka said
yesterday it was possible that names of working agents were on the list.

 "I don't want to be alarmist. On the other hand, I would like to treat
with the utmost gravity the possibility of a safety threat to a few or even
just one active security agent, especially abroad," Belka told reporters.

 Poles have flooded the internet trying to find family members on the list.

 But daily paper Trybuna earlier yesterday scolded the journalist, former
anti-communist activist Bronislaw Wildstein, pointing out the potential
threat to spies.

 "The fun has ended. Polish intelligence officers are in danger...
Operations have been suspended, people withdrawn," it wrote in a front page
article headlined "Catastrophe".

 Belka said there would be a meeting between the secret services and the
IPN to establish the precise threat posed.

-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'