The Miernik Dossier - Charles McCarry [113]
12 August
Dear Paul:
There are a good many things I want to say to you that are better said in a personal letter than in an official communication. I hope that you will read this note patiently and with an open mind—and with some awareness of the value I place on our friendship and the high regard in which you are held by the company as a whole.
First of all, I think (and so does everyone else) that you did an absolutely first-class job in connection with Miernik and the ALF. Knowing your feelings about this assignment, I hesitated a long time before writing up a proposal that you be decorated for your work. I suspect that you do not want recognition of this sort, in this particular case, but all here agree that you richly deserve it, and perhaps in later years you will look more kindly on your medal. (Not that you’ll ever actually look on it—after it’s awarded it will be locked up forever in the Director’s safe along with all the others earned by men like you.)
All of us here have considered very carefully the reservations you expressed to Bill concerning the mistake you think we made about Miernik. It was an eloquent and persuasive statement. I do not for a moment discard the possibility that your judgment is correct. If it is true that we shoved Miernik toward a useless death out of a misunderstanding of his role, then we have a great deal to be sorry for. However, I believe that the evidence is sufficiently weighty on the other side of the question to merit your keeping open the possibility that Miernik was exactly what we suspected him to be.
I will not review all the bits and pieces you already know about, although I think you should give some consideration to such things as his being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time (with a radio homing device in his camera) to be picked up by the ALF.
(We do have information from a sensitive source in Warsaw that a colonel in the Polish intelligence service—the man in charge of their part of the ALF operation—was demoted at the request of the Russians three days after the ALF was destroyed and Miernik got himself killed. Moreover, on the day of Miernik’s contact with Firecracker [Qemal], the Soviet transmitter in Dar es Salaam made no fewer than six attempts to raise their agent “Richard” in coded broadcasts to the ALF. They got no answer. If Miernik was not Richard,” then where was the real “Richard”? The Sudanese scoured the desert for this elusive character, but never found him. Isn’t it possible that you found him, hanging on that cross?)
I would like to tell you about Miernik’s diary, which is available to us thanks to your good work, and which we have had translated. It is a remarkable document. It reveals a man torn between two parts of his nature. One part is the one you came to believe in so strongly—the sensitive, intelligent, ugly, and misunderstood Miernik. The other part, less specifically drawn, but nevertheless very easy to see between the lines, is the one we believe to be the “real” Miernik.
After reading the diary, there is no question in my mind that he was an agent, and an exceptionally clever one. This conclusion is not based on any specific confession of Miernik’s, but rather on the style and tone of what he wrote. The diary is a chart of his inner thoughts. The dominant thought was a fear of discovery, a suspicion of the motives of everyone he came in contact with, a determination to do his duty however distasteful he found it. If you wish, you can read the whole thing the next time you’re home; I think that doing so would make you feel better—but I think, too, that you should put a little time between yourself and the events that have so disturbed you before you sit down with the diary. The file cards carried by Miernik are a detailed rundown on every aspect of the country and its leading personalities. It is impossible to explain why he would compile such data in the absence of an operational purpose.
Whether Miernik was or was not the agent sent out by our friends in Moscow to case-officer