Marian Zacharski

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Marian Zacharski (born in Polish town of Gdynia in 1951, raised in Sopot, was a Polish Intelligence officer arrested in 1981 and convicted of espionage against the United States. After four years in prison, he was exchanged for American agents on Berlin's Glienicke Bridge. ZACHARSKI case The Spy Who Went Back to the Cold Marian Zacharski knows what it's like to feel wanted. About 2004 two arrest warrants were issued against Marian Zacharski, once most famous agent of the former communist intelligence service, back in 1996. Prosecutors in Warsaw have charged him with "flagrant mismanagement" at Pewex company, and Gorzów Wielkopolski police want to question him about illegal car trading.

[edit] Espionage

MARIAN ZACHARSKI, president of the Polish American Machinery Company (POLAMCO), lived in the United States from about 1977-1981. Zacharski acting as the commercial representative, was an officer of the Polish intelligence service. BELL, WILLIAM HOLDEN, project manager of the Radar Systems Group at Hughes Aircraft in El Segundo, California, and MARIAN ZACHARSKI, were arraigned in June 1981 on espionage charges. For the apprehension of Marian Zacharski credit belongs to Polish diplomat at UN who blow the whistle, while he asked for political asylum in US Jerzy Koryciński.

Under thisguise of business activities, and over a period of several months, Marian Zacharski developed a relationship with William Bell. According to a court affidavit filed by the bureau, he had paid Bell about U$ 110,000 in cash and U$ 60,000 in gold coins, over the past three years to photograph highly classified documents detailing Hughes Aircraft radar and weapons systems. The documents through were lish agency "Office of State Protection" (Urząd Ochrony Państwa). The government proposed to put him in charge of Poland's intelligence by The Internal Affairs Ministry by August 1994. Lech Walesa promoted Marian Zacharski to the rang of the General. Upon protest from the US Department of State, as his appointment was rejected, and he was warned that he is in US under "life" sentence he submitted his resignation. By than President of Poland, Lech Walesa confirmed that under protest of US Government, his nomination as a condemned in US spy with life sentence, jeopardized relations with the United States and Warsaw's new ties with the West. He formally resigned and The Internal Affairs Ministry said it would accept the resignation from Poland's intelligence chief appointment.

Among other things, Zacharski won access to material on the then-new Patriot and Phoenix missiles, the enhanced version of the Hawk air-to-air missile, radar instrumentation for the F-15 fighter, F-16, "stealth radar" for the B-1 and Stealth bomber, an experimental radar system being tested by the U.S. Navy, submarine sonar and tank M1 Abrams.

According to Kenneth Kaiser, an agency counterintelligence supervisor in Chicago, Poland was particularly active in industrial espionage. "While the Soviet KGB got all the press, Polish intelligence was perhaps superior. They, however, could not care less about military intelligence; they wanted economic and scientific secrets. Their objective was to short-circuit development costs and undersell us." And, as the Zacharski case suggests, they were good at finding friends in the right places." Zacharski disclosed the activities of a Russian spy in Poland who under code name "Olin" (known as affair of Olin - | Polish Security Services and Oleksy Case "Olingate" cooperated with one of the best connected KGB agents and the most powerful Russian spies Vladimir Alganov and another "Russian diplomat", Georgiy Yakimishin. This consequently resulted in fall of Polish government under Prime Minister Oleksy. *Afery Prawne(Polish).

Zacharski at one time was a head of Polish chain of stores for privileged citizens where the purchases could be made only with hard currencies (U$ dollar). In June of 1996 Marian Zacharski left Poland for Switzerland, and the tracks of his whereabouts vanished. There were rumors he might have been hiding at Mayoress.

At the present time the director Wojciech Bockenheim Polish TV (TVN) Polska produced the six TV sequences entitled Szpieg (eng. for Spy) "in search of Marian Zacharski", which is dedicated to disclose some of activities of Zacharski. official movie site.