IPN: Wałęsa was paid informant

Łukasz Kamiński, head of The Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) said on Thursday that among documents seized in the house of late communist interior minister Czesław Kiszczak are papers indicating that Lech Wałęsa was a paid informant to the communist secret service (SB) in the 1970s. "In a briefcase, there is a handwritten obligation to cooperate with SB signed Lech Wałęsa "Bolek".  Among the documents there are also receipts of money received signed "Bolek," said Kamiński. "The briefcase holds 279 pages in their original covers, there are numerous reports of a secret collaborator nicknamed Bolek, and SB officers' notes accounts of meetings with the collaborator. Some of the reports are handwritten and signed Bolek," Kamiński added. The documents concern the period between 1970 and 1976. They were seized on Tuesday after Kiszczak's widow allegedly tried to sell them to the IPN. She denied this version, saying that she wanted to hand over the papers and the IPN offered her to pay. Briefly after the action in Kiszczak's house, Lech Wałęsa, who has been denying accusations of being a paid informant since early 90s said: “They even fight over the dead body of Kiszczak...You are not able to change the true facts through lies, slander and forgeries.” Wałęsa's first reaction to the IPN's Thurdsay press conference was a blog entry, which read: "There can not be any of the materials coming from me... I will prove it before the court." The alleged cooperation between Wałęsa occured after the Gdańsk strikes in 1970, in which Wałęsa participated. He broke ties with the secret service in 1976 and became later a legendary leader of the Solidarity movement and the president of Poland in 1990. Czesław Kiszczak was one of the masterminds behing the imposition of the martial law in 1981.