Poland’s super-secretive ‘school of spies’ marks 50 years of operation

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. Read more of this post