DOUBLE EAGLE: The Autobiography of a Polish Spy Who Defected to the West

Mr. X is a former lieutenant colonel in the Polish Intelligence Service who has defected to the West. His memoir is ingratiating and welcome, despite his open admission and description of a horrible assassination he was party to in Paris in 1960. At that time, the high-ranking Polish agent Mroz was suspected of acting as a double-agent for the West; Mr. X and three others kidnapped Mroz, drove him to the city dump, shot him (each man fired several times), kicked his face into a pulp, and dropped him clown a deep well. Even earlier, X had begun to be disenchanted with Polish Communism, but this death sentence without benefit of trial turned his conscience into a gnawing horror, and he still suffers from memories of that incident. Born in Warsaw in 1930, he endured the Nazi occupation and as a child helped Jews escape from their walled-in ghetto. When the Russians took over from the Nazis, he converted to Communism, became a campus activist, and was recruited into Polish Intelligence. His first assignment abroad was in Stockholm, but he was expelled from Sweden for spying. After his Paris assignment, he engaged in propaganda and espionage back in Warsaw but lost his faith and decided to work against the system. In Oslo, he began work for the CIA. But false charges were brought against him in Warsaw and he defected, being the highest-ranking Pole ever to do so. Today he lives in the States and is trying to regain his son. A clear-eyed rebirth.