Court Clears Walesa On Spy Claims

A Polish court investigating political candidates' pasts ruled Friday that Solidarity founder Lech Walesa, who fought communist rule for two decades, told the truth when he denied cooperating with the old secret police.

The decision clears the way for Walesa, a 59-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner, to run this fall for the presidency he lost to an ex-communist five years ago.

Walesa stood in court for the verdict, smiling and leaning back in relief at the result. Poland's first democratically elected president after communism collapsed a decade ago, he had vehemently denied suggestions in old police files that he spied on fellow dissidents.

A two-year-old law requires top Polish officials to declare whether they ever worked with the old regime's secret services. There is no penalty for admitting collaboration, but anyone found by the court to have lied is barred from public office for 10 years. The law is being applied to presidential candidates for the first time.

Earlier Friday, Prosecutor Krzysztof Kauba had recommended that the case against Walesa be dropped after evidence was introduced that communist authorities forged documents to smear Walesa by making it appear he spied for them.

The newly disclosed documents read in court indicated the secret police formed a special team to discredit Walesa in the 1980s, when the Solidarity movement founder was leading the struggle to overthrow the Soviet-backed communist regime.

A May 1985 Interior Ministry report detailed the use of professional forgers to fabricate documents to make it appear that Walesa was a paid agent. It said forged documents were sent to Nobel committee members in 1982 in a bid to prevent Walesa from winning the Nobel Peace Prize. He won it anyway in 1983.

Before going into court Friday, Walesa denied suggestions that he spied on fellow dissidents under the code name Agent Bolek. He described the hearings as part of a "laughable" political vendetta against him by former communist enemies.

"The case shows the power of the secret services is still considerable," Walesa said.

President Alexander Kwasniewski, who is favored to win re-election Oct. 8, was cleared by the screening court Thursday of similar allegations. The prosecutor in that case also had asked that it be dropped because of insufficient evidence.

In a closed session in the Walesa case Friday morning, the court heard from two former intelligence agency chiefs: Piotr Naimski, a political opponent of Walesa who held the job in 1992; and Gromoslaw Czempinski, a Walesa backer who held the post from 1993-96.

Naimski refused to reveal his testimony afterward, but repeated to reporters his belief that agent Bolek was Walesa. Czempinski emerged later and said he did not believe Walesa could have been Bolek, and that he found it deplorable that the "symbol of Solidarity" had to undergo such treatment.

The screening law reflects Poland's often awkward struggle to come to erms with its communist past since the old regime was toppled in 1989.

Critics say the procedures are flawed because they require potentially embarrassing hearings even on flimsy evidence. But the Solidarity-led government argues that the law is appropriate and must be followed.

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