DURING THE COLD WAR, Poland hosted the Eastern Bloc’s only known intelligence training facility for operations officers situated outside of the Soviet Union.
The highly secretive training facility
operated out of a heavily guarded compound located near the northern
Polish village of Stare Kiejkuty in Gmina Szczytno county, approximately
65 miles from the Polish-Soviet border. Today, 50 years after its
establishment, the facility continues to train the operations officers
of post-communist Poland’s intelligence services.
During World War II, and in the immediate
post-war period, Soviet authorities trained Polish intelligence
personnel in Kuybyshev (in 1991 renamed to Samara) in southwestern
Russia. This setup continued following the establishment of the
Soviet-controlled Polish intelligence community. By the 1960s, the
Polish intelligence community was being led by the Ministry of Public
Security, referred to by its Polish initials, SB. The SB’s elite
operations officers, which staffed its First Department, were all
trained in the Soviet Union and in a Soviet-controlled facility in
Warsaw.
But in 1970, Poland’s reformist
President, Edward Gierek, put in motion a plan to modernize the Polish
intelligence services. Gierek’s goal was for Polish intelligence to
catch up with the pace of technological development, especially in the
emerging digital realm. He also wanted Polish spy organizations to be
able to compete directly against rival agencies in Western Europe. The
rapid establishment of the Intelligence Personnel Training Centre near
Stare Kiejkuty was the centerpiece of Gierek’s intelligence reforms.
Construction began in 1971 and was mostly
completed within two years. In 1973, the heavily guarded training
facility, which had been disguised as a “holiday resort” in official
government maps, welcomed its first students. Students were taught how
to operate undercover in the West and how to recruit sources in
countries like West Germany, France and the United Kingdom. They were
taught about Western European lifestyles and had access to Western
products, including soft drinks and vending machines, which were absent
from Polish life.
Today the secretive facility is referred
to as “the staff training center”, or “JW 2669”, with “JW” standing for
“Jednostka Wojskowa”, or “Training Facility”. It has continued
to function as a personnel training facility even after the major
reform of the Polish intelligence community, which occurred in 2002. The
reform resulted in the formation of two new agencies, with defined
internal and external missions, which continue to exist today. They are
the Internal Security Agency (ABW, pictured) and the Foreign
Intelligence Agency (AW).
It is extremely rare for JW 2669 to be
mentioned in the news. A major exception to the rule occurred between
2005 and 2008, when a number of intelligence whistleblowers alleged
that the training facility had hosted so-called ‘black sites’ that were
run by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The term
‘black sites’ refers to a global network of secret prisons that were
established by the CIA and operated jointly with allied intelligence
agencies around the world. The US used these facilities to detain and
interrogate enemy detainees during the US-led ‘global war on terrorism’.