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Poland Security Service
Kiszczak's reforms primarily affected the security
service.
The SB had been a plainclothes force of the Ministry of
Internal
Affairs, charged with seeking out subversive elements at
home and
abroad and investigating sabotage. Established in 1944 and
controlled by the Soviet Union through the early 1950s,
the SB
faded during the Gomulka reform period, then revived as a
totally
secret force that stood over Polish society throughout the
rest
of the communist era.
The 1990 reform cut about 70 percent of SB personnel
and most
of the departments that had been most active in protecting
the
communist regimes from internal dangers. Department Three,
which
had monitored the activities of social, cultural, and
political
organizations and the press, was abolished. So was
Department
Four, which had monitored religious organizations and was
assumed
to be responsible for the murder of dissident leader
Father Jerzy
Popieluszko in 1984. Three new, nominally apolitical
departments
were established in place of those abolished, and the name
was
changed from SB to the Office of State Protection (Urzad
Ochrony
Panstwa--UOP). In mid-1990 an independent screening
commission
was established for former employees of abolished
departments
seeking jobs in remaining agencies of the ministry. All
applicants over fifty-five years of age were rejected in
an
attempt to remove as many as possible of the communist-era
SB
administrators.
In 1992 the reputation of new UOP was clouded by the
discovery that many records from the communist era had
been
destroyed before the reform took place. An air of scandal
surrounded the ministry as many top government figures,
including
Walesa, were implicated as collaborators in SB activities.
Some
Poles demanded that all SB records be opened to the
public.
However, the remaining files could not be relied upon to
identify
accurately the remaining government officials guilty of SB
collaboration. In 1992 accusation of SB collaboration was
a
frequently used weapon in Poland's fractious political
system.
Data as of October 1992
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