From Warsaw with Love: Polish Spies, the CIA, and the Forging of an Unlikely Alliance

Summary

From the award-winning and acclaimed author of The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom, From Warsaw with Love tells the epic story of how Polish intelligence officers forged an alliance with the CIA in the twilight of the Cold War. In 1990, soon after the Polish people voted in their first democratic election since the 1930s, the young Polish government sent a veteran spy, who’d battled the West for decades, to rescue six American officers trapped in Baghdad. As the U.S. cobbled together a coalition to undo Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, the CIA asked the Polish government for help. The American officers held valuable intelligence that, if discovered by Saddam, could have spelled ruin for Desert Storm. John Pomfret’s gripping account of the cliffhanger in Iraq is just the beginning of a saga about intelligence cooperation between Poland and America, cooperation that a CIA director would describe as “one of the two foremost intelligence relationships that the United States has ever had.” Poland’s ex-communist spies snooped for America from Havana to Moscow, Pyongyang to Tehran. Pomfret also reveals shocking details about the CIA’s “black site” program that held suspected terrorists in Poland after 9/11 as well the role of Polish spies in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. As the U.S. teeters on the edge of a new cold war with Russia and China, Pomfret explores these little-known events as a reminder of the challenges and importance of alliances in a dangerous world. Contributor Bio(s) John Pomfret, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, served as a correspondent for the Washington Post for two decades, covering wars, revolutions, and China. His most recent book, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom, won the Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations. The recipient of numerous journalism awards, he lives with his wife and three children in Berkeley, CA.