Janusz Kaczmarek
Blows Whistle
Poland's Former Interior Minister Details Polish Government Political Spying
Warsaw, Poland 28 August, 2007 : In secret testimony before a Polish Parliamentary oversight committee, Poland's former Minister of Interior Janusz Kaczmarek revealed that Prime Minister Kaczynski's Anti-Corruption Bureau was being used for political purposes.
The Anti-Corruption Bureau, CBA, is the centerpiece of Kaczynski's program of fighting corruption. It is unique in that it operates without judicial oversight. It uses the powers of Poland secret services, public prosecutors and police to spy on people and arrest them if they think that those people may be involved in suspicious activities.
The CBA has extensive information gathering authority. It can get other personal information, telephone records, business records and monitor telephone calls or any other mode of communication on any person whether that person is involved in a crime or not. And if the person is not charged with a crime, the CBA maintains that information on record.
There are 500 members of the Bureau who use the most modern and sophisticated equipment such as the mini helicopters with listening devices that were used in the botched attempt to entrap Andrzej Lepper in a rezoning scandal. ( See Polish Watergate? The time has come for transparency in Poland! )
The CBA reports directly to the Prime Minister and its chief serves at his pleasure.
The CBA has been paraded before the public making high-profile arrests in front of invited journalists with television cameras. The public sees television coverage of men in black dramatically descending upon the target and taking him away.
The Prime Minister used CBA in an botched attempt to entrapped former Deputy Prime Minister Andrej Lepper. In a subsequent cascading sequence of events, Janusz Kaczmarek ended up testifying before the Parliamentary Special Services Committee for which he laid out some shocking details about how CBA has been used.
According to a report assembled from information leaked by many sources, the Polish News Daily Gazeta Wyborcza reported that Kaczmarek said that the Prime Minister, among others, used the CBA to spy on political opponents. Specifically CBA was tasked with getting compromising personal information on such people as Civic Platform Party Leaders Donald Tusk and Miroslaw Drzewiecki. They were also to find compromising business activities of Grzegorz Schetyna.
CBA was to look for political "hooks" into other people with notable targets being former President Alexander Kwasniewski and Civic Platform MP Jaroslaw Walesa, former President Lech Walesa's son.
Parliament Speaker Ludwig Dorn, of the Prime Minister's Party Law And Justice, dismissed Kaczmarek's comments as "Half truths and lies."
Kaczmarek, however, during his testimony gave the Committee names of people and specific documents that would prove the truth of what he said.
The details of what Kaczmarek said continue to leak and Gazeta Wyborcza has been updating its summary of what it knows. You can see it in Polish at http://www.gazetawyborcza.pl/1,84766,4435394.html Dorn czytal Kaczmarka
Update:
In response to the person leaving a comment on this article, here is a translation of the Kaczmarek testimony as published by Gazeta Wyborcza.
"During another meeting the president was irritated, because he suspected that the services are interested in his family: son in law connected with SLD and daughter, who complained that she is being followed by ABW. President also said that CBA is spying on Lena Cichocka, minister in president's chancellory. The president said: "Ziobro will overturn this government someday".
Last week the President's Chancellory denied this information in a special press release."
The Kaczmarek testimony is the Kaczmarek testimony, even though the President's Chancellory denied it and Ludwig Dorn called his testimony "Lies and half truths."
It is said that Kaczmarek gave names of people and specific documents that would verify his testimony.
Comment On This Article And Get A Free Discount Coupon
You will get a 10% discount coupon that can be used on the Unique Handmade Gifts online store or at the 3Cats Gallery in Warsaw.
Free eBook "Starting Your Drop Shipping Business A - Z"
If you are interested in starting a business on the web, or are running a business now, you are invited to read and download this 60 page plus eBook on Drop Shipping. For more information about it and how to download it free, go to Starting Your Drop Shipping Business A - Z
Free Tutorials
Start a home business and grow it into a full time income. You don't have to search all over the web. Here are three tutorials with all the information that you need to get started.
Enter a name and email address. You will get a message asking you to confirm that you subscribed to any tutorial you choose. You can unsubscribe anytime. Your email address is used only for these tutorials and is not given to anyone for any reason.
