Polish spy Marian Zacharski was escorted across the famed “Bridge of Spies” near Potsdam, East Germany in 1985 after spending the previous four years in prison on a life sentence for espionage-related crimes. After moving to the Los Angeles area from Poland as a machine tool salesman, Zacharski was recruited by Polish intelligence.
Despite no previous training or experience, he turned out to be a natural. Outgoing, athletic, and attractive, he easily made friends wherever he went. One of these friends was William Bell, who lived in Zacharski’s neighborhood and played tennis with him. Bell was an engineer for Hughes Aircraft, and in serious debt after an acrimonious divorce. Furthermore, his young son had passed away in an accident several years earlier, and Zacharski reminded Bell of his own son in many ways.
Zacharski gradually drew Bell in and eventually convinced him to provide incredibly sensitive documents from Hughes Aircraft in exchange for cash and gold. These technical documents were so good in fact, that Polish intelligence analysts initially believed they must have been provided deliberately by the US government in order to demoralize their adversaries with how advanced American technology was at the time.
Bell became the subject of an FBI counterespionage investigation and admitted his role in the scheme almost immediately. In exchange for his testimony against Zacharski, he received a reduced prison sentence.
But even though Poland was aligned with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, America’s long history with Poland and Polish immigrants meant the animosity reserved for the Soviets was never present in their relationship. In fact, just a year after the end of the Communist government there, Polish intelligence operatives would go on to rescue American personnel from Baghdad, Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
For episode 27 of the Spycraft 101 podcast, I spoke with John Pomfret, author of From Warsaw With Love about the nuanced and fascinating history between US and Polish intelligence personnel, dating back to the Revolutionary War.
