Ryszard Kukliński's sculpture

Krakow,

Poland

Plac Jana Nowaka-Jeziorańskiego, 30-001, Krakow, Poland

The monument project was selected in a competition in 2011. It was designed by Czesław Dźwigaj and Krzysztof Lenartowicz. The monument takes the form of a steel arch with concrete plates emerging from the ground. The plates are inscribed with the most significant dates from Ryszard Kukliński's life, as well as the date of Karol Wojtyła's election as pope and the date of the founding of the Solidarity trade union (NSZZ Solidarność).

Ryszard Jerzy Kukliński

Ryszard Jerzy Kukliński, codenamed "Jack Strong" and "Mewa" (born June 13, 1930, in Warsaw, died February 11, 2004, in Tampa), was a colonel in the Polish People's Army, deputy chief of the Operational Department of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces. In 1970, he became an agent for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Shortly before the imposition of martial law in 1981, he was evacuated by the CIA to West Berlin. He was posthumously promoted to the rank of brigadier general in the Polish Armed Forces.

From 1971 to 1981, Kukliński provided over 40,000 pages of documents to the West concerning the Polish People's Republic (PRL), the Soviet Union, and the Warsaw Pact. These documents revealed Soviet plans for the invasion of Western European countries during the Cold War, as well as plans for the use of nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union. They also contained technical data on the latest Soviet weapons, such as the T-72 tank and Strzała-2 missiles, information about the deployment of Soviet anti-aircraft units in Poland and the German Democratic Republic, methods used by the Soviet Army to evade satellite surveillance of its facilities, and plans for the imposition of martial law in Poland.

Zbigniew Brzeziński, the National Security Advisor to the United States, described him as the first Polish officer in NATO.