Jack Strong aka Ryszard Kukliński: Cold War traitor or hero?

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 26 January 2024

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

During the 1970s, the US and Soviet Union were engaged in the Cold War.

The US, along with other Western countries, was a member of Nato, while the Soviet Union joined forces with central and eastern European countries in the Warsaw Pact.

After becoming frustrated with the way the Soviets controlled his country, Ryszard Kukliński, a Polish colonel, wrote to the US Embassy in Bonn, West Germany.

For the next 10 years, he would feed the CIA tens of thousands of pages of classified military secrets.

Aris Pappas, a CIA agent who analysed Ryszard's intel, speaks to George Crafer about his memories of this forgotten hero.

(Photo: Jack Strong aka Ryszard Kukliński. Credit: AP)

Transcript

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0:00.0	I love you and would kill before I would see you taken from me.
0:06.2	Lady Killers is back.
0:08.2	Join me Lucy Worsley to investigate infamous female criminals from the past.
0:13.2	It's really important that we listen to these voices about the society in which they lived.
0:18.0	We're seeking to understand these women from the
0:25.0	21st century feminists. We cannot put women into history on the basis of likeability.
0:26.0	Put all the women back, the sinners and the saints.
0:29.0	Lady Killers, listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:33.0	Hello, you're listening to the Witness History Podcast with me George Crafer.
0:42.0	Today we're going back to the Cold War between
0:45.1	the Communist East led by the Soviet Union and the capitalist West. An agent has
0:50.7	been feeding the US's Central Intelligence Agency top secret information for the last 10 years,
0:56.2	but he's getting closer to being found out.
0:59.3	Every time you're behind a closed door, think of somebody suddenly knocking on that door and it could be your friend asking
1:05.6	to go out for a cup of coffee. It could be your wife calling to say bring something home for dinner.
1:10.1	It could be any one of a thousand things but at the end of that list of a thousand things there's always that one last knock that could be your entire lifetime gone.
1:20.0	This story begins in 1972. During the Cold War, Poland was part of the Warsaw Pact,
1:25.0	an alliance of countries that would fight with the Soviet Union
1:28.0	if an armed conflict started.
1:30.0	Risharck Kuklinski, a married 42-year-old Polish Army Colonel, is on a surveillance mission in Northern Europe.
1:37.0	When he gets a moment alone, he writes this letter addressed to the U.S. Embassy in the West German capital Bonn.
1:44.0	Dear Sir, I am sorry for my English.
	...

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