As a highly placed officer of the Polish army, Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski was privy to the Soviet Union’s most detailed military plans, including scenarios for a possible invasion of Europe. As a Polish citizen, though, Kuklinski detested Soviet domination and feared the devastation a Soviet invasion would wreak in his homeland. He couldn’t sit idly by. In 1972, he contacted the United States, and for the next nine years he led the perilous double life of a secret CIA agent, providing the West with thousands of highly classified documents about Soviet and Warsaw Pact weapons, targets, and war plans.

Over that time, most of his communiqués to and from America were with “Daniel” -- an alias for CIA officer David Forden ‘53 (M.P.A.). Forden was Kuklinski’s case manager for secret meetings outside Poland. He was also responsible for all CIA stations in Eastern Europe, including Warsaw. Under his supervision, CIA officers conducted 63 covert exchanges of letters, film, and other materials with the Colonel. Unable to share his double life with anyone else, Kuklinski relied on Forden as a confidante and friend -- a relationship that lasted well beyond the Colonel’s hair’s-breadth escape from Poland in 1981.

It’s all detailed in A Secret Life, a fascinating book by New York Times reporter Benjamin Weiser (published in February by PublicAffairs). Using CIA records as a resource, Weiser recounts in astonishing detail the fastidious, almost tedious managerial task that is covert-case management. A Secret Life describes the complicated coordination of chalk-mark signals, drive-by pass-offs, and dead-dropped packages by which Kuklinski and his underground associates in Warsaw functioned, and which Forden oversaw. In the end, the duration of the Kuklinski case was a triumph of superior tradecraft. “You can’t rely on luck to make it last and make it secure,” Forden says now. “You have to pay attention to every little detail.” The secret, he says, is flawless communication. Every directive, every communiqué was given a “severe what-if reading.”

As a Maxwell student, all David Forden wanted was to serve the public with a career in government administration. He landed in the CIA largely because, in the early days of the Eisenhower administration, other agencies were downsizing (which he learned on a job-search junket to Washington, D.C., with SU roommate and future actor Peter Falk). As an M.P.A., “I assumed they would put me in an administrative career track,” he recalls; but within two years he was a junior case officer in clandestine operations. In the mid-1960s he served as CIA station chief in Warsaw, and knew the turf and language. In 1973, while working Soviet affairs in Mexico City, he was called back to CIA headquarters to take over the Kuklinski case.

The complexity of the case proved Forden’s administrative mettle, certainly. But it hinged even more on the personal bond that grew between Forden and the Colonel -- a bond that embodied Kuklinski’s trust in and hopes for the West. His motivation to betray the Polish and Soviet military was heartfelt, principled, and morally complicated, yet he could admit his actions to no one. “He had a very close, loving family relationship with his wife and sons. But he couldn’t drop the slightest hint to any of these people,” Forden says. “There had to be somebody.”

Only in his moving, eloquent letters to “Daniel” could he pour out such feelings. Kuklinski’s emotional reliance on and affection for “Daniel” sit at the core of the case (and, thus, Weiser’s book).

In his messages to Kuklinski, Forden tried to bolster the sense of mission. “I wanted him to know that I respected who we were and what we were doing together,” Forden recalls. “I wanted him to know we were good people doing good things. Mostly, I wanted to be honest with him.”

After escaping Poland, Kuklinski settled near Forden’s suburban Virginia home and the two remained friends until Kuklinski’s death earlier this year (just days after the book’s publication). Forden, who retired in 1988, is gratified that, near the end of his life, Kuklinski saw widespread recognition of his contribution to European peace, even in Poland (where in 1984 he had been tried in absentia by the Polish regime and sentenced to death). 

“He did it for his country,” Forden concludes. “There was no doubt in his mind he was doing this for his country.”                              

                                                                                                             -- Dana Cooke

This article appeared in the Fall 2004 print edition of Maxwell Perspective; © 2004 Maxwell School of Syracuse University. To request a copy, e-mail dlcooke@maxwell.syr.edu.