A Covert Action: Reagan, the CIA, and the Cold War Struggle in Poland

by Seth G. Jones

Overview

The dramatic, untold story of one of the CIA’s most successful Cold War intelligence operations.

December, 1981—the CIA receives word that the Polish government has cut telephone communications with the West and closed the Polish border. The agency’s leaders quickly inform President Ronald Reagan, who is enjoying a serene weekend at Camp David. Within hours, Prime Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski has appeared on Polish national television to announce the establishment of martial law. A new era in Cold War politics has begun: Washington and Moscow are on a collision course.

In this gripping narrative history, Seth G. Jones reveals the little-known story of the CIA’s subsequent operations in Poland, which produced a landmark victory for democracy during the Cold War. While the Soviet-backed Polish government worked to crush a budding liberal opposition movement, the CIA began a sophisticated intelligence campaign, code-named QRHELPFUL, that supported dissident groups. The most powerful of these groups was Solidarity, a trade union that swelled to a membership of ten million and became one of the first legitimate anti-Communist opposition movements in Eastern Europe. With President Reagan’s support, the CIA provided money that helped Solidarity print newspapers, broadcast radio programs, and conduct a wide-ranging information warfare campaign against the Soviet-backed government. QRHELPFUL proved vital in establishing a free and democratic Poland.

Long overlooked by CIA historians and Reagan biographers, the story of QRHELPFUL features an extraordinary cast of characters—including spymaster Bill Casey, CIA officer Richard Malzahn, Polish-speaking CIA case officer Celia Larkin, Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, and Pope John Paul II. Based on in-depth interviews and recently declassified evidence, A Covert Action celebrates a decisive victory over tyranny for U.S. intelligence behind the Iron Curtain, one that prefigured the Soviet collapse.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393247008
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/11/2018
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Seth G. Jones is the senior vice president, Harold Brown Chair, and director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), as well as the author of Three Dangerous Men, A Covert Action, In the Graveyard of Empires, and Hunting in the Shadows. He lives outside of Washington, DC.

Table of Contents

Illustrations ix

Prologue 1

Part I

1 The People's Man 17

2 The General 35

3 The Spymaster 51

4 Covert Actors 65

5 Dutch 73

Part II

6 The Gdansk Agreement 91

7 Polish Abyss 101

8 The Case For Covert Action 111

9 The Birth Of Qrhelpful 125

10 Struggling To Survive 141

11 Getting Off The Ground 151

12 Ratlines 161

13 The Underground 173

14 Hardball 181

15 Cracks In The Foundation 193

16 Holy Alliance? 203

17 An Emotional Visit 213

18 A Global Campaign 231

Part III

19 The Tide Turns 245

20 The Return Of Solidarity 261

21 The Trump Card 271

22 Round Table Talks 277

23 Finishing The Job 285

24 The White Eagle 299

Epilogue 311

Acknowledgments 317

Map Credits 321

Notes 323

Index 393

Editorial Reviews

06/04/2018
Jones (In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan), a political scientist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, offers a complex and well-written account of a major U.S. intelligence operation of the Cold War. When the power struggle between Poland’s Communist government and the popular pro-democratic, unionist Solidarity movement led to the proclamation of martial law in December 1981, President Ronald Reagan saw an opportunity to bring the Cold War home to the Soviet empire by guile rather than force. He was the behind-the-scenes patron of Operation QRHelpful, which furnished Solidarity with resources to print leaflets, finance radio and television broadcasts, and organize demonstrations. By 1989 the movement had gotten Poland closer to free elections, and two years later a Solidarity leader was elected president. Despite the useful foreign assistance, the keys to the operation’s success were Polish: old-line trade unionists, idealistic intellectuals, and Catholic clergy. Some names remain familiar, like those of Solidarity cofounder Lech Waesa and Karol Wojtya, later and better known as Pope John Paul II. The person-to-person nature of the operation is ideally suited to Jones’s narrative format and the vivid character sketches that inform it. This account will reward readers interested in human and government behaviors in high-risk, high-stress situations. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"A tale of victory for peace, for freedom, and for the CIA — a trifecta rare enough to make for required reading."

The American Spectator

2018-04-30
The untold story of the CIA's rescue of Solidarity, "Poland's flowering democratic movement."On Dec. 13, 1981, Poland's virtual dictator, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, imposed martial law on his country, suspending and later banning the independent trade union Solidarity. The Ronald Reagan administration responded publicly with vocal condemnation and sanctions directed at the Polish economy. Almost a year later, the president signed a secret presidential finding authorizing the CIA to provide covert nonlethal assistance to moderate Polish opposition groups, including money, printing equipment, videotapes, and telecasts. Between 1983 and the fall of Poland's communist government in 1989, the aid program, code-named QRHELPFUL, delivered publications and materials that kept Solidarity alive at a cost of less than $20 million. To preserve the opposition's legitimacy and independence, the aid was delivered through a web of intermediary organizations, foundations, and individuals so tangled that the Poles themselves did not know the original source. National security consultant Jones (Waging Insurgent Warfare: Lessons from the Vietcong to the Islamic State, 2016, etc.) delivers a comprehensive and insightful account of how Poland moved from communism to democracy through the nonviolent efforts of its independent trade unionists, with assists from Western nations and Pope John Paul II. Along with biographical sketches of Lech Wa??sa, Jaruzelski, Reagan, and CIA director William Casey, the author tracks the high-level decisions in the American government to maintain the pressure on Poland and illustrates the Polish government's desperate efforts to navigate between threats of military intervention from Moscow and of domestic upheaval from its own workers and the Catholic Church. Readers hoping for a real-life James Bond adventure will be disappointed, however. The CIA's assistance ultimately plays an important but minor role in the story and includes no tales of personal derring-do, though the details of how materials such as printer's ink were smuggled into Poland are colorful.A revealing sidebar to a familiar story that has been thoroughly told elsewhere.

Kirkus Reviews