How CIA's `QRHELPFUL' Covert Action Program Helped Polish `Solidarity' Group In 1980s: Part 3

During the 1980s a group in Poland that Lech Walesa led, called "Solidarity," was apparently secretly supported by the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] of the Republican Reagan administration. As the Chair and Director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies [CSIS]'s Transnational Threats Project, Seth G. Jones, recalled in his 2018 book, A Covert Action: Reagan, The CIA, and The Cold War Struggle in Poland:

"In January 1983, John Stein, the CIA's deputy director for operations, sent a memorandum to the CIA comptroller asking for...$1 million...to jump-start covert aid to Solidarity...Overall, Stein asked for several types of support to help Solidarity, which totaled roughly $2 million: $600,000 for communications equipment, $300,000 for printing material, $100,000 to assist the families of Solidarity prisoners, over $500,000 for Solidarity members living outside of Poland and more than $400,000 for propaganda...

"On March 1, 1983, the CIA assigned the Polish program a cryptonym, QRHELPFUL, along with its own file and financial authorization numbers. CIA headquarters, back in the United States, ran QRHELPFUL. But the CIA's Paris station, based out of the U.S. embassy, was a key hub. Other CIA stations in Western Europe and Latin America were also involved in Solidarity support activities, especially London and Bonn...

"Assets...were essential to the success of the CIA's covert action program in Poland. Celia Larkin and other CIA case officers began a sustained effort to recruit individuals...including human rights activists, underground smugglers, and philanthropists. The CIA gave them codenames like QACARROTTOP and QTOCCUR...By mid-1983, QRHELPFUL had increased to roughly 20 assets. Over the next year, the number of assets rose to around 30. These assets were divided into 3 categories. The first were covert action assets, who conducted a broad set of activities...The next were media assets...These individuals were involved in influencing day-to-day media coverage by publishing articles or talking to reporters, as well as organizing political demonstrations in Europe...The final category included the surrogate funders, who helped raise money and moved it through clandestine human networks to Solidarity officers and individuals in Poland, Belgium, and other countries throughout Europe...

"...The CIA now began devoting funds to...purposes like buying communications equipment for...Solidarity...The CIA's covert aid to Solidarity was secret...The program had to be secret, Reagan concluded, because public awareness of CIA support could severely undermine Solidarity's legitimacy..." (end of Part 3)