“More than 90 souls, including many high officials of the Polish state, President Lech Kaczynski and his wife, MPs, the highest military, banking officers and many other people were lost. I knew several persons who died in the crash today. Some of them were my friends,” Dastych, who had to return to hospital for further cancer tests on his lungs wrote that day. Dastych, an active, courageous warrior against Communism, was imprisoned by the Polish KBG in the early 1980s. Sentenced to eight years, he served three, finding release when Communism collapsed. Today down but not out, Dastych is bedridden in his Warsaw apartment. Florida-based writer P.J. Wilcox, who has travelled the same international circles as Dastych, is gallantly trying to have a petition to clear his name sent from CFP to Polish authorities. Godspeed.)
The Red Mole
- By P.J. Wilcox
“The spying will never stop, but the covers of these fresh spies was done haphazardly,” says David Dastych regarding the 11 Russian spies recently uncloaked. If anyone should know about spy covers, it would be Mr. Dastych, a Russian spy during the Cold War who became a double agent working for the CIA. He’s also been known to help out Israeli intelligence, occasionally the French, but then served time in a Communist prison on trumped up charges of aiding the Japanese. This is a man who knows about spies.
“It’s ridiculous because these spies were not properly placed and had no experience. They were not operating in the right circles such as in Washington DC. What were they infiltrating, the PTO? Maybe Russia was to so eager to rebuild their spy network, that in desiring quick results, they compromised their actions. In the old Soviet Union, they were more clever and would have spent years cultivating the right results.”
David M. Dastych, or “Mariusz” in his native Poland, became a renowned international journalist, but was marked at a young age by Polish intelligence for his intellect, gift of languages and international family that could provide multiple covers in a variety of countries. Approached after high school, he agreed to a life of intrigue and spying, only to find out that the Soviet way was to let young recruits do it all on their own -- make their own way in the world and even struggle with bills. The goal was to let alter egos develop “naturally”. Only later, in some cases years, would intell contact such recruits again to start doing their job after they were well established in a new world.
“I know the methods used by Russian intelligence to place spies not only in the US but in England, Australia and all over the world. And there is something gravely wrong with the recent spy infiltration. It appears that Russia was trying to rebuild in haste.”
Dastych knows that intelligence is a waiting game – not just years but sometimes even decades.
And David’s career as a spy would span decades, multiple continents, two attempts on his life, Communist prison, posing as a nuclear arms dealer to Saddam Hussein and terrorists, and ultimately ending in the death of his son as alleged retribution for being a turncoat to the CIA. Aside from the latter heartbreak, he would not change a thing. Dastych goes on record for the first time in his life as to how it all really happened.
The Making of a Spy
“We know your family fought against the Germans and in the Warsaw uprising,” said the secret police officer, or SB as it was known, in a clandestine meeting with David, just 20 years young in 1960. “Finish your studies. Then help your homeland and prepare to go abroad.”
“How do I go abroad?” David was perplexed, a student of meager means.
“You have family in the US. Arrange an invite in a natural way, but you must do it yourself. We will not help you.”
David tucked the conversation away in the back of his mind and then moved on with his studies. But soon as serendipity would have it, relatives from the US visited Poland and official affidavits later arrived from the US inviting David to visit with that family.
From that moment, Polish intelligence took over. But they displayed the inevitable patience that was the hallmark of Soviet intelligence telling David, “Go to the US, find a way to become a citizen, but we will not give you money or supplies. Show initiative, but don’t mix yourself in intelligence. Just finish your studies. We will contact you in a few years.”
And so began the waiting game. All good things will come, especially intelligence.
It was the fall of 1962 when David made his way to Ohio just as the Cuban missile crisis began. His American relatives watched spellbound as a nuclear holdout played out on national TV. They feared for young David’s life should he return to Communist Poland. Already, one of his uncles, Stanislaw (“Stan”) Jamrosz, a decorated World War II veteran, had defected to the US to avoid Communist chaos. So David stayed. He helped out on the farm and made guest appearances on local radio stations commenting on European and Polish affairs.
It was at that point that his inner voice asked, “Why am I going to work against the US?” The seeds of his later work for democracy were planted.
David pursued scholarships at American universities to continue his studies, but when the process proved too long, he decided to return to Poland much to his American family’s distress. They were convinced that any young man that returned to Communism Poland would end up a Communist.
But this was no ordinary man.
David, who now spoke English with a perfect American accent, was even more desirable to Polish intelligence. He studied additional languages at Warsaw University, and an intelligence officer expressed satisfaction with his choices. He also married and had a daughter. He eventually applied for a position with a Polish delegation to Vietnam, part of a commission under the Geneva Convention. With fluency in French and German in addition to English and Russian, he was quickly hired.
The Saigon Connection
It was in Vietnam that David began to shine as a man who knew how to make connections. He thrived off the adrenaline, choosing to shy away from the safer sidelines to be in the midst of the chaos. Though posing as an interpreter and logistics handler, he had by now received training as a Polish intelligence operative. And, in maneuverings he would repeat in some fashion for decades to come, he learned to arrive through back doors.
His route to Vietnam, for example, took him from Moscow to Bejing, where he slipped out of an Embassy to revel in the cultural revolution happening in real-time on the streets, the Red Guard and rioting everywhere. Such actions, throwing abandon to the wind to witness the world exploding in change, would be traits cemented in the young man’s mind for the rest of his life. This is how the Russians preferred their intelligence officers to “arrive”. Not in a taxicab at Main and Main.
While in Vietnam, David quickly developed diplomatic contacts with well-connected Russians, Indians and Brits in a hazy world marked by smoky card halls, flowing vodka, beautiful women, and rockets for background music. He traveled the country attending press conferences while also conducting tasks for intelligence like copying the serial numbers of downed US planes.
All the while, Vietnamese counter-intelligence was watching the enterprising young man, including when he began to establish contacts with Canadians and Americans. His laissez-faire attitude traveling around the country got him in hot water, and he was expelled from the country by the North Vietnamese.
Things were not much better back home, where David’s wife divorced the absentee husband who seemed to prefer bombs over wedded bliss. But not to worry, Polish intelligence told the spy, impressed with his braveness in Vietnam. They soon arranged that he would marry an attractive Dutch woman, the daughter of a rich entrepreneur, and become a Dutch citizen, a new back-door route and cover for ultimate dispersal to enemy #1, the US.
“But what happens if there’s a problem on a mission and I can’t return to the Netherlands?” David wanted to know.
“No problem, she’s a foreigner so you can just leave her,” i.e. she was dispensable once her purpose had been served.
Any parallel to the recent roundup of Russian spies who had arranged marriages and even arranged children is purely coincidental. David would have no part of such nonsense.
While he agreed to be used for intelligence, he would accept absolutely no interference in his personal life. As fate would have it, he soon married a Polish architect, a woman whom intelligence had also been trying to recruit to go abroad and marry an Italian for her cover. Instead, the couple chose a normal, civilian life, both as journalists, and had a son, Olaf. Intelligence lost interest in David.
At least that’s what he thought.
David’s career soon began skyrocketing. He covered foreign affairs for Polish Radio, wrote for the Economist and reported for the BBC among others. His international experience returned him to Vietnam in 1972 toward the war’s end, where he represented the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs on behalf of yet another international commission aimed at appeasing the conflict.
His diplomatic work including investigations into war blunders such as the bombing of a commission helicopter, coincidentally operated by the CIA’s Air America, a chopper on which David was supposed to have traveled, but missed due to a stomach flu. There were no survivors. David joined a delegation to recover the bodies. (It was later learned that the North Vietnamese, who were building a strategic road at the time to eventually attack Saigon, assumed the diplomatic helicopter was spying and shot it down.)
It was during this time that David also became quite sure that the US was observing him, finding American consulate and military officers particularly helpful.
Yet Polish intelligence demanded his services once again, this time as a “Saigon person to meet representatives from all sides of the conflicts, foreign commissions, the US, Vietnamese government and military, etc.” In reality, he was to be paid a commission for recruiting fellow spies. David agreed, insisting however, on freedom to go where he pleased in the country.
And once again, his personal life was off-limits. He began a torrid love affair with the well-educated daughter of a powerful South Vietnamese Senator and owner of a large newspaper, a man he would later discover had deep ties to the CIA. But by then, he had already made a decision. He planned to go to the CIA himself.
It was at a CIA officer’s villa, over drinks, that David made a decision in minutes that would alter the course of his lifetime. He turned.
But David had two critical conditions to helping out the US; He would never work against Poland, and never perform intelligence for the US within Poland. His goal, he told the CIA, was to work against Communism and Soviet interests, not his beloved homeland. With the aid of democracies like the US, David hoped, Poland might some day be free.
David was now a double agent.
Doors of Opportunity
Says Dastych of his crazy, globetrotting life back then, “The Russians are very keen on credible stories. I had diplomatic and journalist access to nearly anyone. I could gain access being exactly who I was. That is what is so strange about the recent spies. Their covers were far too easily blown. Their lives were contrived, and that opened them to suspicion. The manner in which their new personas were created, it was done in a manner where the tracks were not lost. There were not enough back doors.”
Dastych points out, for example, that nuclear “spies” are typically true nuclear scientists, albeit often low-level ones in need of money, but they are also sometimes highly experienced scientists like the Iranian, Shahram Amiri, recently alleged to have cooperated with the US in return for $5 million.
“The best cover,” says Dastych, “is to be exactly who you are. It is far more difficult and dangerous to pretend you are someone that you are not.”
From what he has gleaned about the recent Russian spy infiltration, many achieved success and wealth too quickly. Red flags, says Dastych. “Russia used to sit in wait for years and even decades, as they did with me. Not so with the recent spies. They were rushed.”
Mariusz Dastych, on the other hand, would continue being himself, now aiding the CIA. Little did the Soviets know that he had picked the Westernized nickname of “David” long before because he was preparing to one day take on that red Goliath.
Double Dares
David began receiving CIA technical training, learning about strategic “microdots” adhered to letters that when enlarged, contained critical information, or chemicals that created optical illusions and so on. He passed lie-detector test after test, as well as psychological tests barraging him with questions switched among multiple languages to gauge his dexterity. Those too, he passed with flying colors. Unbeknown to him, Langley’s code-name for him was “Stan”, a familial connection from another CIA recruit.
Then there was the grave error.
Dastych had received mission orders from the CIA in Moscow, which he’d memorized. It was with great astonishment, therefore, that he watched his CIA handler, Steve Kostic, the man who’d recruited him in Vietnam, pull out a telex with those same orders in a restaurant outside Paris, dismissing David’s concerns of observers. David was not as dismissive. He knew that if Soviet intelligence happened to be watching, the incident would be his death sentence.
So David did the only thing he deemed plausible. He told the CIA he had to go to Polish intelligence and tell them the CIA was trying to recruit him. In that way, maybe Polish intell would want him to work for the CIA and report back. In other words, the Poles would consider him their double agent. The case, of course, would be opposite. It worked.
It would be years later that David found out he had done the right thing; the chief of French counter-intelligence later told him that they had observed him that day in Paris, so there was no telling who else might have watched.
But David’s ploy had worked, and he remained a double agent helping the US for years fighting Communist interests. His journalism career also flourished with access to important players on the world stage including those involved in nuclear proliferation. And he reported on personal interests such as human rights and the Holocaust.
Twice, during those years there were attempts on his life. He assumes perhaps the Soviets knew of his aid to the Polish Solidarity movement or his help to the US. In one case, his car was run off the road, rolling over several times. He was left dangling by his seatbelt but managed to cut himself free. The second time, a car tried to maul him while walking, but he rolled down a hill into the safety of bushes.
Never, in all those years, was he afraid. “My only fear ever, was the fate of my family.” He also had hundreds of chances during those years to escape to the West. But his fight had never been with his homeland, which he continued to cherish.
Check, Checkmate
Then in 1987, his long career at last came unraveled. Soviet-Polish intell was sure David was cavorting with the enemy but had no proof, as David had long been adept at covering his tracks.
David was about to embark on a journey to interview Gorbachev, in concert with a colleague, Georgie Anne Geyer, an award-winning American journalist. The two were also planning a book to chronicle the changes overtaking the Soviet Union.
Instead, Mauriusz “David” Dastych was arrested. It turns out that a side job of his writing economic reports for a Japanese company in Poland had actually been orchestrated by the Polish security service to entrap him; the SB knew the company was run by Japanese intelligence. David was imprisoned in Poland for abetting the Japanese in a crazy twist of fate, undergoing a secret trial and allowed no defense lawyer. (Officially, his crime was violating the Warsaw Pact, a thinly veiled Soviet agenda for totalitarian rule).
But David had one last trump in his pocket. While he could languish in prison under obscure, false charges that would never see the light of day in the press, David knew a way to draw attention to his case.
He told Polish intelligence that he had been abetting the CIA for all those years, writing 30 pages of admission from jail. The Polish government could not hide that admission from the world. David, you see, was placing his bets that at some point, the US would also capture Russian spies, and he hoped for possible release in a swap; it had been one of his conditions for helping the US should he ever be caught. It was a strategy that mirrors what occurred with the recent Russian spies in the US -- the first major spy-swap since the Cold War.
As it was, the Wall fell before the US captured any valuable Russian spies, and David was released in 1990 after three years in prison His freedom was part of an amnesty program for those imprisoned by the Communists.
In retrospect, some believe that Dastych was given up by Aldrich Ames – one of the most abominable traitors ever, a former CIA officer imprisoned for abetting the Soviets. In fact, even as David languished in prison, another Soviet-turned-CIA informant was executed due to Ames, “vyshaya mer” as they say, the “# is shot” as were many others that were betrayed. David’s trump may have been what saved his life.
Even still, upon his release, David went on to track nuclear weapons, intent on passing intelligence that might prevent attacks on countries such as America and Israel, his decades of contacts proving extremely useful. It seems that terrorist organizations figured the former prisoner had great “ins” to the Russian military and its arsenal. Saddam Hussein’s regime was among those with whom he dealt, enough so that he learned of the Russians “cleaning” out biological and nuclear weapons which had been provided to Iraq, just days before the US invaded, while Russian missiles were also evacuated to Syria.
“Russia was quite clever,” admits David. “All that was left were traces.”
And a spy like David Dastych knows about traces, especially in his case, leaving none.
On August 14, 2010, David Dastych celebrated his 69th birthday in a hospital bed, suffering a grave illness – possibly metastasized cancer-- that threatens his life. He is adamant that he will persevere still and continue to write for a free Poland and for democracy. His only wish now is that his country’s new President will exonerate his name for those same causes long ago. David has been fighting for 20 years to clear a blemish on his honor – that he worked against Soviet intelligence. Yes, that’s right. He did. And he’d do it all again for a free Poland.
Postcripts:
David Dastych continues to write prolifically for Polish and foreign media and runs an international media company, David’s Media Agency, from his Warsaw base, providing book translations among other services. He was seriously injured in an accident in 1994 that left him able to walk only with assistive devices.
More suspicious was his active son Olaf’s mysterious death -- within minutes – at the age of 24 while attending college in London in 1996. The cause of death was
ruled “inconclusive”. David, however, has drawn his own conclusions. It may have been due to a non-traceable substance, not unlike Alexander Litvinenko’s death in London in 2006. In all his years of espionage, all David ever feared was for his family.
Stanislaw “Stan” Jamrosz, a Polish patriot turned US intelligence operative, died in his sleep at the age of 83 in Baltimore, MD, prior to meeting his nephew David to relay what he promised would be his “whole story”.
As for the recent spate of Russian spies, David’s confident they’ll be used again but in more obscure locations. But spying, says Dastych, will never go out of style.
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Read about another Polish agent/CIA informant who was nearly executed for aiding the West; A former US Ambassador to Poland believes that work should have garnered the patriot the Nobel Peace Prize:
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PJ Wilcox is an author focusing on international subterfuge and related military and covert operations. Wilcox was formerly involved with intelligence in the 1980s focused on international operations. He was also an entrepreneur involved in selling and advising on communications for mobile command posts in regions of high conflict. He worked from offices in Europe, Africa and North America dealing with UN peacekeeping forces, the World Bank, heads of state in Central America, and Middle-Eastern facilitators, along with commercial businesses. PJ Wilcox’s first book to be released, Unsealed: Nuke Road, unsealednukeroad.com, is a novel drawn from his experiences and contacts with David M. Dastych as a Contributor and Advisor.
P.J. Wilcox can be reached at:pjw@unsealednukeroad.com
