Wildstein list

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The Wildstein List is a list which is believed to contain the name of some 240,000 individuals who allegedly worked for the Polish intelligence service of the communist era. It is named after the reporter who supposedly secretly copied the list from the national archives, Bronislaw Wildstein. The list eventually found its way to the Internet. At least one Polish official has confirmed^{[citation needed]} which is believed to contain the names of at some current agents working abroad.

The list contains names from archives of former (communist) Polish political police, military intelligence and other secret agencies. This list could contain former workers of those agencies and their secret agents (confidants), but also there are names of people that secret police wanted to make confidants but never succeeded. It is not clear how this list leaked from the IPN (Institute for National Memory), but it is commonly assumed that it was Bronislaw Wildstein who copied that list to his pendrive and then made it available for journalists.

The list has generated much heated debates. Gazeta Wyborcza the most influential Polish newspaper is very strongly against publishing the communist archives without a thorough historical analysis, because the documents can contain many false information generated by officers who spread disinformation. But the huge quantity of the information in the archives means that it would probably never be available for public viewing.