Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek said on Friday that releasing “any reports” concerning the work of Polish intelligence services would be “absurd” in the current geopolitical situation.
He was responding to President Karol Nawrocki’s decision to seek opinions from the Speakers of Poland’s lower and upper houses of parliament on the possible declassification of an annex to a 2007 report on the liquidation of the Military Information Services (WSI).
Waldemar ŻureK. Photo: Trójka/Polskie Radio
Presidential spokesman Rafał Leśkiewicz said on Thursday that Nawrocki had entered a formal legal stage “directly aimed at declassifying and making public” the annex.
Nawrocki had earlier said he would publish the document if there were no legal obstacles.
Speaking on private broadcaster TVN24, Żurek said that disclosing documents concerning Polish intelligence work, including from earlier periods, would be dangerous at a time of war in the region.
“If they are sitting in Moscow now, they are rubbing their hands together and saying: ‘We have useful idiots again,’” Żurek said.
He added that such moves were “political stunts” that could have “fatal” consequences. He said publishing such material could endanger “various Polish collaborators and agents scattered around the world.”
“If I hear that someone again wants to publish this in the situation we have now, a wartime situation, then I really say ‘congratulations,’” Żurek said. “Citizens should judge this. This is not serious.”
Żurek also referred to earlier disclosures of defense plans, saying that Sławomir Cenckiewicz, a historian and former head of the National Security Bureau, had been involved in making them public. “This is something extraordinary,” he said.
The dispute goes back to the liquidation of the Military Information Services, a Polish military intelligence and counterintelligence agency that operated from 1991 to 2006. The service was abolished by a Law and Justice (PiS) government as part of a broader effort to reform institutions seen by the right as insufficiently cleared of communist-era influence.
In 2007, then-President Lech Kaczyński made public a report prepared by a verification commission led by Antoni Macierewicz, a senior PiS politician. The commission investigated the Military Information Services and accused them of numerous irregularities, including links to communist-era structures, tolerance of espionage for Russia, involvement in the Foreign Debt Servicing Fund scandal, and illegal arms trading.
Several investigations were opened after the report was published, but most were later discontinued.
In 2008, the Constitutional Tribunal ruled that the publication of the report itself had been legal. It found, however, that some procedures had violated constitutional standards.
The tribunal said people named in the report had been deprived of the right to be heard by the verification commission, to access case files, and to appeal to a court against the decision to include them.
After that ruling, Lech Kaczyński did not publish the annex, saying that “too many fragments” replaced facts with interpretations. His successors, Bronisław Komorowski and Andrzej Duda, also declined to release it.
Leśkiewicz said Nawrocki’s current decision was “an extremely important element of closing an important stage of organizing the state after the political transformation.”
He said the issue had remained unresolved for years and had been burdened by political disputes and doubts about how information should be disclosed.
The presidential spokesman said Nawrocki was following standards set by the Constitutional Tribunal while responding to public expectations. He added that the move served citizens’ right to know how state institutions had functioned.
(rt/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP