Walesa Cleared of Police Informant Charge

A special court cleared former Polish President Lech Walesa on Friday of accusations that he collaborated with Communist-era secret police after it heard evidence that fabricated documents were used in an early 1980s effort to discredit him.

The allegations that the Nobel Prize winner had been an informer in his early days as a dissident shipyard worker were first made public in 1992. They were recently revived under a law requiring that candidates for political office be screened for past links to the secret police.

“I won against those who used false arguments and engineered forgeries,” a triumphant Walesa said after a judge ruled that he had told the truth in denying collaboration. “It was an incredibly repulsive game.”

Walesa, 56, is making another bid for the presidency in elections set for Oct. 8. He is running against 19 others, including incumbent President Aleksander Kwasniewski, 45, a former Communist who was cleared Thursday of similar allegations.

Under the 1998 “vetting” law, political candidates are required to file declarations of whether they ever cooperated with the secret police. There is no punishment--other than from voters--if someone admits collaboration. A special governmental office reviews accusations against candidates, and if denials are proved false in a hearing, those who lied are banned from public office for 10 years.

A 1985 Interior Ministry report introduced to the special vetting court on Friday detailed a 1982 effort by Communist authorities to prevent Walesa from winning the Nobel Peace Prize by providing false evidence to Nobel committee members. The memo, summarized in court by Judge Pawel Rysinski, said professional forgers fabricated documents to make it appear that Walesa was a paid agent.

Walesa did not win the Nobel in 1982, as many had expected. But he won it the following year for his leadership of the Solidarity union, which went on to play a key role in the 1989 collapse of communism in Poland.

Dressed in a gray suit with a black-and-white checkered tie, Walesa looked alternately impatient, tense and amused during legal arguments Friday. He smiled and relaxed when Rysinski declared: “The court has concluded that Lech Walesa’s declaration corresponds to the truth.”

The collapse of the cases against both Walesa and Kwasniewski--and the last-minute filing of evidence to the court--has fueled accusations that the new vetting law was manipulated to influence the presidential race.

Walesa is still considered a hero of the anti-Communist struggle, but he was viewed by many as an argumentative and ineffective president during his 1990-1995 term in office. Many Poles also consider him insufficiently polished in social graces and language to represent the country well, despite his fame and the respect shown him by foreigners. He has drawn only about 4% support in recent polls.

Kwasniewski, known for his ingratiating manner and smooth political skills, has an enormous lead over all other candidates in the polls and is widely viewed as likely to win reelection. He is now generally seen as a supporter of democracy and capitalism, while still on the left in terms of social issues and government spending.

Evidence made public in the cases against both men had seemed flimsy all along, and in both cases there were repeated unexplained delays in providing evidence to the court.

There was no clear explanation in court Friday of why Poland’s current intelligence service, the State Protection Office, failed to provide the 1985 memo earlier.

The other two key candidates in the presidential contest are Marian Krzaklewski, the nominee of the ruling Solidarity Election Action bloc, and former Foreign Minister Andrzej Olechowski. Both have been cleared by the vetting court.

Solidarity Election Action controls the prime minister’s office, and through it exercises authority over agencies such as the State Protection Office. This has made Krzaklewski’s campaign the natural target for criticism about how the vetting procedures have been carried out. Oral exchanges between his supporters and backers of the president have been particularly bitter.

After he was cleared by the court Thursday of charges that he had worked as an agent code-named Alek in the 1980s, Kwasniewski told reporters that “those who manipulated the documents and their delivery dates should not feel at ease.”

Ryszard Kalisz, head of Kwasniewski’s campaign, said Friday that evidence will emerge showing that “bad people” had manipulated the vetting process against the president.

Krzaklewski’s campaign chief, Wieslaw Walendziak, has filed a libel suit against Kalisz for a comment last month suggesting that Walendziak was perhaps responsible for the way the State Protection Office handled the case against the president.

After Kwasniewski was cleared, Walendziak said critics of the vetting process owed an apology to Krzaklewski and Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek “for having hinted that these politicians were responsible for creating a threat to democracy” by abusing the vetting process.

Walesa, asked by reporters Friday whether he might sue those who brought accusations against him, replied: “No, no, I’m forgiving them in a Christian way.”

A poll by the CBOS polling institute released Friday showed Kwasniewski with 62% support, Olechowski at 10%, Krzaklewski at 6% and Walesa at 4%.