Every year, counterintelligence of the Polish People's Republic conducted over 100 secret searches in embassies and consulates

Photographer: You had to be careful by pulling out documents.It is known not to mistake the cards or even do not violate the dust too much in the safe.

Bearded: we often used gloves.Before we touched anything, the polaroid photos were taken, which then allowed us to arrange everything in the same way as it lay at the beginning.Sometimes, if there was a suspicion that an institution's employee is extremely pedantic, then a man looked at each subject a thousand times before he touched his finger at all.

Tourist: Of course, the main goal of our activities was to get to the safes.In some facilities, they were simply in offices, in others they could be hidden behind some grille, and in the case of American consulates and the Swedish embassy we were dealing with the most terrible thing, i.e. the so -called bunker.Sometimes there was also "treasury", "ciphers", "protected zone".It was a room where the mostrest documents of the entire facility and equipment for communication landed, or spare keys to all castles and diplomats' residences, which we could immediately copy.

And at the same time it was the most important place from the point of view of officers of intelligence services of these countries.The CIA made sure that their bunkers meet all the standards provided for such a place, and the Swedes are the same.Portuguese also had something like a bunker, but it wasn't that safe room.The hardest was in the Americans and the Swedes, where to get to the bunker at all, we had to go through the entire labyrinth of security inside the facility.One, second, third doors, key locks, mechanical combination, and there was even one electronic in Poznań.Just getting into the vestibule of such a bunker was a great success.

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Bearded: Do you remember how we broke the world record one day?The situation was that in Krakow they changed the locks in the door between the rooms.They touched the key castle, Yale's with seven pins, i.e. the one that many people have at home, only much longer and more difficult to open.In addition, there was a Simplex cipher in the same door, in which there were a few buttons and you had to press them in a specific way, for example left, right, middle or two side at the same time, then middle and so on.I remember that this day, when we came to open these castles, there was a head with us.As soon as we went through the main entrance to the consulate, the boss immediately sat in the armchair and says that he is going to sleep for an hour, because he will take some time to deal with these security.

Największa tajemnica służb specjalnych PRL. Dziennikarz ujawnia szczegół

Okay, I'm the first to take a key castle, I know that it may not be easy, so I say "tourists" that if I get tired, it will be a change.Thirty seconds haven't passed, the "Pyk" lock, open.Well, I was doing so quickly, a good day.The head saw it, he lost his desire to sleep a bit and straightened up in this chair.

Well, but we still have a fight with Simplex, and the way for it was just that we had a list of all possible combinations and we had to try one by one.Sir, you could stand on this death, the perspective of non -good.Well, but we start - I read and the "tourist" sticks.The combination does not work, not another one either.Reading the third or fourth, I made a mistake and dictated badly.After a second I realized and corrected, but the "tourist" had already drove this wrong.CYT - Open doors.Well, such.

The night is still young, I suggest that we will take this earlier key lock out of the door, spread it, measure what you need, and make a key right away."Tourist" agreed, so we went to the desk of the consul, the towels lay down, our handy vice and bach, bach, bach went to the key - we are pyking quickly the key.We finished, the boss comes, our work of art looks at it and says that after his corpse we will put it in the lock.Well, we know what we are doing, so we start to convince him that nothing will happen.He finally allowed and sliding the key.And what?It goes like a butter.

So you see, once the work went quickly, and at other times a man stood over a castle for hours and thought that he would die there.For example, there was such a terrible, extremely complicated castle at the Swedes.Literally a few nights in a row, he had to rummage in it, and then the man came on, as he had to close him.We had such sprained articles for this and imagine that while when opening everything was okay, when closing they just started to start, because the pressure of the spring inside was so great.I remember the situation that the bottles with milk were already buzzing outside, the opening time of the facility was approaching, and we still fought to close this door behind us.Stress quite a lot.

Tourist: A man often barely returned home, he was so tired.But the effects were, which can talk a lot.You know, today I can't even replace all the facilities where I was.

There were so many of these actions that it is really impossible to calculate it from my memory.The operational departments let us know where they need documents, and we went there.Not only to Americans, Spaniards, Italians, Danes, Swedes and so on.We were in various facilities, I remember Indian, Argentine, Mexican, Portuguese.Today I find myself that I remember a building, I have a door, a safe, a office in front of my eyes, but it is difficult for me to assign it to a specific country, because it was simply a facility where the documents were less interesting and it was only entered once in a while.I think more than flags in my memory.

We overcame the complicated security of the Austrian company Evva, Swiss castles of KABA, German Kromer Novum, American Sargents, Swedish Rosengrens and a terribly difficult to open beans.It would be possible to exchange for a long time.We came, we did not play without sense like some in some rummaging blindfolds, we approached the topic specifically.

So now imagine that these complicated castles were nothing compared to the challenge that waited for us when we stood in front of the bunker.Imagine the safest room of the facility, somewhere in the depths of the building.Already?It is now that you can imagine a CIA specialist and in the interior of this safe room puts a thick, reinforced concrete walls, thus creating another room, after which the works are complemented by, putting in his entrance a treasury door with a mechanical cipher locktop -class.Do you know what the Russians called what we did?"Secret penetration", not a "secret entrance".Why "penetration"?Because you can "enter" to the Ambassador's office, rummaging in the castle with sulfides.But he will get inside such a bunker without leaving the slightest traces of the penetration.Spells-Mary, sir.

***

Tourist: At the beginning of 1983 we took our toys from the building on Rakowiecka and moved to another building.It was the same district, but in total we were divided by about four kilometers - the headquarters of the Ministry of the Interior was on the northern edge of Mokotów, and our department from now on the south.The move was primarily about creating more favorable and safer working conditions for us, but also to provide even better conspiracy.

There were always a lot of people in the building of the Ministry of the Interior, and nobody was supposed to associate us and not be interested in what we are doing.In the new place we were completely isolated from the world.The building had no markings, we had a bodyguard, no one could enter us.When we moved there, everything looked quite harsh, because we didn't even have warm water, but we cared about the building, we worked on it and in time we did everything we needed, including central heating.On the first floor we had our offices and a common room that we treated as much work space.We even touched a ping-pong table from the frame, where you could spread the lumber, when someone needed.The only thing we missed was the kitchen.

Kontrwywiad PRL przeprowadzał co roku ponad 100 tajnych przeszukań w ambasadach i konsulatach

On the other hand, we never had any time for cooking dinner, and there was a place to make coffee and tea, and we had so much work that some were very abusing caffeine.On the ground floor of this building, however, there were: photographic, chemical, mechanical and so on, and at the end of the corridor there was one more door, to the so -called "Z" studio.Only some of the faculty employees had an admission there.There was a social room directly behind this door, and then the toilet and shower, because the regulations required it.

The next door led to the control room, and another to a large room, where a crane with an electric lift was under the ceiling.There was also a camera from which the image could be seen on the monitor in the control room.On the floor, however, a large plate made of lead fittings, i.e. castings that can be connected to each other.After pulling this plate, you would look into a hole of a depth of about 180 cm, which was all lined with stainless steel.

There, at the very bottom, in a special heavy container there were isotopes of cobalt-60 and iridium-192-the basis of our work and our greatest curse.We bought them at the Nuclear Research Institute in Świerk, where we preached ourselves for the army.We paid the employees who helped us there or gave gifts.It was a salary for putting it to our containers that they did not know, which did not have the appropriate certificates and did not meet the safety rules.

Engineer: The new building was a luxury.Earlier, it was a man who endured a container with an isotope to the shelter in the building of the ministry on Rakowiecka, closed the door and goodbye.It was said that nobody should go there, and that's it.

Photographer: I have always laughed that this isotope was sitting in a bread oven, because in this shelter something like such a stove was built.This container lay there and nothing more could be done.It sowed terribly, but we didn't have a better place until we moved to the new building.

Engineer: When did it all start?As I came to the faculty in the first half of the seventies, the isotopes were already used, but I can't answer how many years.It seems that nobody told me about it, I did not ask either.Or maybe I don't remember.Unfortunately.

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Tourist: Radiation was needed primarily to overcome the castles, which we encountered on the door of the most important rooms and armored factions - mechanical cipher locks.Security specialists love them because they are difficult to open and there is no key problem that can be lost and which can be copied.Most people are associated with "vabank" films, where a casker approaches the armored cash register, something turns something, he listens to something and after a while everything is open.

I am not saying that this is a complete bujda, because in fact, when you have a huge skill, you can, turning some of such castles, hear some sounds to facilitate the determination of the right code.Especially if a person helps himself with a device like a medical stethoscope.But watching Vabank, you have to remember about two basic problems - first, it would take much, much more time than in the movie.Secondly, the film Kwinto works in the interwar period, when technology was much less advanced than in our time.

Of course, we operated by us, the cipher castles operated in the most part, but they were much more refined and precise, and thus - they walked noiselessly.You have to remember that we are talking here even about the end of the eighties.We did not have time to have such fun in the fifth and sit like fools with a stethoscope, waiting for the sounds that may appear, but probably not, because the mechanism is simply too high quality.There were also various other methods of opening of combination locks, but they were either too time -consuming and uncertain, or too invasive and left traces.[...]

We acted in full conspiracy, usually between eleventh at night and four in the morning, sometimes only with flashlights and sitting in tight rooms, where there was no way to hide from this radiation.These special conditions required sacrifices from us during the transport of radiation sources to the facility.If we wanted to follow all safety rules, then at this stage, from the moment the isotope is removed from the hole in our studio to the moment of bringing it to the object we are interested in, it would have to be in a very, very heavy container that does not pass the radiation.However, we could not afford it, because there was mobility.

How would we get such a boiler upstairs?We had to have something much lighter.The darkest card of the history of our faculty is the old Russian container for isotopes called Berenika, which was equipped when we came to work with "bearded" in the early eighties.Luckily, some time later it all went into hell, scrap.I barely remember what it looked like, probably it was made of lead.We didn't want to use it.When we measured the radiation around this container, it turned out that it exceeds the norm up to several hundred times.Well, it was mobile, there was a need, so it was worn and used, among others, to set ciphers with a method that we called "Zetka".It belonged to the group of gammagraphic methods, i.e. leading to obtaining photographs of the lock.Of us all about "Zet" can say the "engineer" the most.

Engineer: Yes, because I came to work a few years earlier, when this method was used more intensively, so I looked at.But before I tell what "Zetka" was, let's say about the basic problem we were struggling with using the gammagraphic method.It consists in the fact that on one side of the object a cliché is placed, and on the other a source of radiation.In the case of an unknown armored cash register.However, in the case of such a bunker in an American consulate, there was a problem.

We couldn't just put the isotope to the other side because we didn't have access there.Of course, theoretically it was possible to put a strong source of radiation behind the bunker and let the beam break through the back wall and door, but the chance that something could be seen in such a photograph was rather poor - too much distance, too thick walls.The Americans secured themselves well, the bunker construction was thought out.Mr. Zenek, a veteran of the faculty, came up with an idea, namely that in the door frame at the bunker door in the Poznań American consulate, a hole will be gently drilled, through.He got the head of the Head and he did so.This hole was invisible to the naked eye.There was a thread inside and special traffic jams were made to it, which was camouflaged after the work, painted precisely with paint.

The source of radiation translated into the bunker through this hole.How?Cobalt isotopes, which we used in the department, looked like a six -meter long piece of graphite with pencil.Baby, but the power was huge and this is all the magic of radiation.Such an isotope, for various reasons, among others purely practical, closed in a tiny metal capsule.Mr. Zenek came up with himself that this capsule would simply wind on the rod - initially bent, and that's why the method was called "Zetka" and later in the shape of the letter "C".This rod pushed through the hole to the other side and set a piece behind the castle, and on our side, in front of the castle, there was a cliché.After some time, you had a photo.

Tourist: Okay, and now let's analyze what the "engineer" said, from the health side, OHS and so on.I remember very well and I will never forget the first time I saw it.First, our superior Mr. Bohdan, still in the faculty's rooms, opened the container and simply pulled the isotope from him in a capsule with a thread, which he shot on the rod.

Engineer: Bogdan's pity.Nice, decent guy.

Tourist: I felt weak as I saw it.Then we slipped this whole rod into such a lead "brick" and transported to the facility, but it was not Poznań at that time, but an embassy in Prague, if I remember correctly - Portugal.With radiation, of course, it is very important to keep a safe distance, and we stood in such a small room and there was not even nowhere to move away, and the creator of this method, Mr. Zenek, pushed this isotope through the electric tube to the interior of the room, which had a steel door with a lockcipher, and set this source in such a way that the cliché is correctly illuminated.And this method was used for years, but mainly at the American consulate in Poznań.

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