photo - PAPFormer president and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa has admitted to “playing games” with Poland’s communist-era secret police, but insists that he was always in control and never collaborated, as some historians have alleged.
“It was all a clever game,” he explained to British daily the Guardian.
“It was important to play it to give the impression I was weak, so as not to be eliminated,” he added.
Nevertheless, the former president remains adamant that he was never the secret informant that some historians claim.
“Not for a moment was I on the other side,” he declared.
Allegations that Walesa was a collaborator have dogged the Solidarity leader ever since the fall of communism, sparking a series of legal wrangles.
In 2008, two historians from the state-sponsored Institute of National Remembrance published a book about the matter. Lech Walesa and the Security Services: A Contribution to the Biography, held that Walesa was listed as a secret informer in 1970, working under the codename of Bolek.
He allegedly broke off contacts with the security services prior to the famed Polish August strikes of 1980, the watershed that gave rise to the Solidarity trade union.
Walesa has always denied that he was Bolek.
The veteran has attempted to defend his honour in the law courts on several occasions, to varying degrees of success.
Last month, an appeal court in Gdansk ruled that journalist and former dissident Krzysztof Wyszkowski must publically apologise to Walesa for calling him a collaborator.
As the verdict was read, the courtroom reverberated with cries of ‘disgrace’, as supporters of Wszykowski bemoaned the decision. (nh/pg)