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Podcast Episode #122 - How Polish CI Officers Penetrated Foreign Embassies with Tomasz Awlasewicz
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Podcast Episode #122 - How Polish CI Officers Penetrated Foreign Embassies with Tomasz Awlasewicz
Declassified photos from Polish government archives showed methods for breaking into US State Department diplomatic mail pouches during the Cold War.
Diplomatic mail is protected both by international agreements and various anti-tamper mechanisms, but it also represents a valuable target for any intelligence organization. During the Cold War, the Polish People’s Republic routinely hijacked, exploited, and returned State Department mail, always undetected.
A small team codenamed Typhoon from Department II of the Secret Service was stationed in a secret room at Okecie Airport in Warsaw. When diplomatic pouches arrived, they would be passed through a trap door to the Typhoon team. Seals would be broken, and the internal black plastic bags were destroyed. The contents would be photographed and then the black bags were replaced with exact copies they’d created after extensive examinations of earlier packages. The seals would also be replaced, and the package would be returned to the diplomatic courier, who was none the wiser.
But opening diplomatic pouches was just one part of Department II’s operations. Another team formed Section IX, tasked with surreptitiously entering foreign embassies and consulates at night when they were unoccupied. The team didn’t just break in once, but regularly entered many of the supposedly secure facilities on a weekly basis, disabling security systems, picking locks, and photographing documents.
One of the keys to their success was also their greatest danger: radiation. Section IX built powerful, portable x-ray machines to bombard vault doors and reveal their inner workings. Team members were exposed to radiation 500x greater than was safe, and many succumbed to cancer later in life.
For episode 122 of the Spycraft 101 podcast I spoke with Tomasz Awlasewicz, author of Invisible: The Greatest Secret of the Secret Services of the Polish People’s Republic. We discussed the methods used to access the most secure rooms of foreign embassies and consulates inside Poland, and the heavy price the technicians and operatives of Section IX paid for their groundbreaking work.
Declassified photos from Polish government archives showed methods for breaking into US State Department diplomatic mail pouches during the Cold War.
Diplomatic mail is protected both by international agreements and various anti-tamper mechanisms, but it also represents a valuable target for any intelligence organization. During the Cold War, the Polish People’s Republic routinely hijacked, exploited, and returned State Department mail, always undetected.
A small team codenamed Typhoon from Department II of the Secret Service was stationed in a secret room at Okecie Airport in Warsaw. When diplomatic pouches arrived, they would be passed through a trap door to the Typhoon team. Seals would be broken, and the internal black plastic bags were destroyed. The contents would be photographed and then the black bags were replaced with exact copies they’d created after extensive examinations of earlier packages. The seals would also be replaced, and the package would be returned to the diplomatic courier, who was none the wiser.
But opening diplomatic pouches was just one part of Department II’s operations. Another team formed Section IX, tasked with surreptitiously entering foreign embassies and consulates at night when they were unoccupied. The team didn’t just break in once, but regularly entered many of the supposedly secure facilities on a weekly basis, disabling security systems, picking locks, and photographing documents.
One of the keys to their success was also their greatest danger: radiation. Section IX built powerful, portable x-ray machines to bombard vault doors and reveal their inner workings. Team members were exposed to radiation 500x greater than was safe, and many succumbed to cancer later in life.
For episode 122 of the Spycraft 101 podcast I spoke with Tomasz Awlasewicz, author of Invisible: The Greatest Secret of the Secret Services of the Polish People’s Republic. We discussed the methods used to access the most secure rooms of foreign embassies and consulates inside Poland, and the heavy price the technicians and operatives of Section IX paid for their groundbreaking work.
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