[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 46 (Monday, April 18, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E678-E683]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 HONORING THE LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF HIS HOLINESS POPE JOHN PAUL II 
              AND EXPRESSING PROFOUND SORROW ON HIS DEATH

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                    HON. F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR.

                              of wisconsin

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, April 6, 2005

  Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I was honored to support H. Res. 190, 
a resolution passed April 6 that commended the life and achievements of 
His Holiness Pope John Paul II. Likewise, I am proud to say I was the 
lead sponsor of legislation that was passed by the House and Senate in 
2003, House Concurrent Resolution 313, that urged President Bush to 
present the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the Pope. Thankfully, 
President Bush did just that in June of last year.
  In a time when many leaders look to the polls and test political 
winds for guidance, Pope John Paul II stood unflinching at the center 
of the most controversial moral debates of our time, and held firm, 
always supporting the sanctity and dignity of every human life. His 
presence will be sorely missed, but his accomplishments will long be 
relished.
  Mr. Speaker, as a reminder of the Pope's enduring and historic 
contributions to world peace, human freedom and to the security and 
national interests of the United States, I request that the following 
remarks that I delivered on the House floor on November 18, 2003 be 
printed in the Record.

       Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman 
     from Florida. I rise to pay tribute to His Holiness, Pope 
     John Paul II, who in October marked his 25th year as Bishop 
     of Rome and Supreme Pastor of the Catholic Church.
       I also wish to offer my sincere appreciation to all my 
     friends and colleagues in the House who have joined together 
     to urge the President to present the Medal of Freedom to Pope 
     John Paul II.
       The celebration of the Silver Jubilee of Pope John Paul 
     II's pontificate is but the latest in a series of remarkable 
     milestones that have characterized his life and his ministry.
       From his birth on May 18, 1920, Karol Jozef Wojtyla's life 
     has been intertwined with the fate of his native Poland and 
     synonymous with the struggle for his individual freedom and 
     dignity.
       In 1978 when then-Cardinal Wojtyla, the Archbishop of 
     Krakow, was elected Pope, the world was a much different 
     place. For the more than 3 decades since Winston Churchill 
     delivered his famous ``Iron Curtain'' speech, people around 
     the world prepared for what many regarded as the inevitable 
     new war that would someday engulf the East and the West. To 
     win the Cold War, geopolitical strategists honed and 
     implemented various policies including the doctrines of 
     containment and mutual-assured destruction.
       At this pivotal moment in history, when the status quo 
     included the subjugation of half the populations of Europe 
     and the omnipresent threat of nuclear annihilation, a 
     remarkable and energetic new Pope set foot on the world 
     stage. To many in the West, this new Polish Pope was an 
     unknown entity. While we recognized immediately his energy, 
     courage and leadership, these same qualities were reviewed 
     with suspicion by some in the East, particularly the 
     communist rulers in Poland.
       Pope John Paul II's commitment to freedom, his affection 
     for his native Poland, and the devotion of his countrymen to 
     him were never more evident than the summer of 1980. That 
     August, the Solidarity Workers Union, which Cardinal Wojtyla 
     had nurtured and protected, organized a peaceful strike at 
     the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk.
       With the Pope's portrait suddenly appearing everywhere and 
     the admonition from his inaugural sermon, ``Do not be 
     afraid,'' on the lips of the workers, his support and 
     reassurance provided vital sustenance for the strikers and 
     ignited a spiritual spark in their struggle to secure dignity 
     and freedom. Ultimately, that spark would lead to the demise 
     of Soviet communism and the liberation of hundreds of 
     millions in Eastern and Central Europe.
       History has recorded the remarkable achievement of Pope 
     John Paul II and his relentless advocacy in pursuit of 
     individual dignity, freedom, and peace. The Pope has not 
     confined his efforts solely to the struggle against 
     totalitarianism. He has engaged wherever people are 
     downtrodden and oppressed.
       Mr. Speaker, the Congress should pass House Concurrent 
     Resolution 313 and urge the President to present the Medal of 
     Freedom, our Nation's highest civilian award, to His 
     Holiness.

[[Page E679]]

       In authorizing the first Medals of Freedom in 1963, 
     President Kennedy proclaimed that persons who have made 
     especially meritorious contributions to the security or 
     national interests of the United States, world peace or 
     cultural or other significant public or private endeavors 
     should be so recognized. By any measure it is apparent that 
     there is no individual more deserving of this recognition 
     than Pope John Paul II.
       Two other recipients of the Medal of Freedom, President 
     Ronald Reagan and Lady Margaret Thatcher, shared the Pope's 
     commitment to Solidarity in the 1980s. In my estimation, 
     their leadership changed the course of human history. In 
     1984, while welcoming the Pope to the United States, 
     President Reagan spoke of the connection between freedom, the 
     founding of our own Nation, and America's debt to His 
     Holiness.
       President Reagan stated, ``I can assure you, Your Holiness, 
     that the American people seek to act as a force for peace in 
     the world and to further the cause of human freedom and 
     dignity. Indeed, an appreciation for the unalienable rights 
     of every human being is the very concept that gave birth to 
     this Nation. Few have understood better than our Nation's 
     founding fathers that claims of human dignity transcend the 
     claims of any government, and this transcendent right itself 
     has a transcendent source.''
       The President went on to state, ``To us, Your Holiness, the 
     Holy See and your pastorate represent one of humanity's 
     greatest moral and spiritual forces,'' and ``your words, your 
     prayers and your example have made you, for those who suffer 
     oppression or the violence of war, a source of solace, 
     inspiration and hope.'' It is no exaggeration to recognize 
     that this remarkable man has brought hope, comfort and faith 
     to literally billions of people around the world during the 
     course of his ministry.
       Three weeks ago today I was honored to be joined by 30 
     Members of the House in introducing this resolution. Since 
     that time we have gained additional support for which I am 
     grateful, and I particularly appreciate the work of the 
     gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis) and the Committee on 
     Government Reform who reported our resolution to the floor in 
     such a timely manner.
       As stated previously, our bipartisan resolution calls upon 
     the President on behalf of all the people of the United 
     States, to present the Medal of Freedom to Pope John Paul II 
     as a sign of our gratitude for his significant, enduring, and 
     historic contributions to the causes of freedom, human 
     dignity, and peace. We urge the President to do so without 
     delay.
       Finally, I include an article by Carl Bernstein entitled 
     ``The Holy Alliance,'' which appeared in the February 24, 
     1992, edition of Time, as well as an article by Father Robert 
     A. Sirico entitled ``The Cold War's Magnificent Seven; Pope 
     John Paul II; Awakener of the East,'' which was published in 
     the Winter 1992 edition of Policy Review.
       In closing, Mr. Speaker, I would invoke President Reagan 
     once more. When asked his assessment of the Pope before 
     meeting him the first time, the President replied, ``He is an 
     example of what so many people have always said about 
     Christian and Judaic tradition, and that is, that when really 
     needed, God provides a man. And I think in Pope John Paul he 
     did just that.''
       Billions around the world are thankful that God has 
     provided such a man.
       The articles referred to are as follows:

                  [From Time Magazine, Feb. 24, 1992]

                           The Holy Alliance

                          (By Carl Bernstein)

       Only President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II were 
     present in the Vatican Library on Monday, June 7, 1982. It 
     was the first time the two had met, and they talked for 50 
     minutes. In the same wing of the papal apartments, Agostino 
     Cardinal Casaroli and Archbishop Achille Silvestrini met with 
     Secretary of State Alexander Haig and Judge William Clark, 
     Reagan's National Security Adviser. Most of their discussion 
     focused on Israel's invasion of Lebanon, then in its second 
     day; Haig told them Prime Minister Menachem Begin had assured 
     him that the invasion would not go farther than 25 miles 
     inside Lebanon.
       But Reagan and the Pope spent only a few minutes reviewing 
     events in the Middle East. Instead they remained focused on a 
     subject much closer to their heart: Poland and the Soviet 
     dominance of Eastern Europe. In that meeting, Reagan and the 
     Pope agreed to undertake a clandestine campaign to hasten the 
     dissolution of the communist empire. Declares Richard Allen, 
     Reagan's first National Security Adviser: ``This was one of 
     the great secret alliances of all time.''
       The operation was focused on Poland, the most populous of 
     the Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe and the birthplace of 
     John Paul II. Both the Pope and the President were convinced 
     that Poland could be broken out of the Soviet orbit if the 
     Vatican and the U.S. committed their resources to 
     destabilizing the Polish government and keeping the outlawed 
     Solidarity movement alive after the declaration of martial 
     law in 1981.
       Until Solidarity's legal status was restored in 1989 it 
     flourished underground, supplied, nurtured and advised 
     largely by the network established under the auspices of 
     Reagan and John Paul II. Tons of equipment--fax machines (the 
     first in Poland), printing presses, transmitters, telephones, 
     shortwave radios, video cameras, photocopiers, telex 
     machines, computers, word processors--were smuggled into 
     Poland via channels established by priests and American 
     agents and representatives of the AFL-CIO and European labor 
     movements. Money for the banned union came from CIA funds, 
     the National Endowment for Democracy, secret accounts in the 
     Vatican and Western trade unions.
       Lech Walesa and other leaders of Solidarity received 
     strategic advice--often conveyed by priests or American and 
     European labor experts working undercover in Poland--that 
     reflected the thinking of the Vatican and the Reagan 
     Administration. As the effectiveness of the resistance grew, 
     the stream of information to the West about the internal 
     decisions of the Polish government and the contents of 
     Warsaw's communications with Moscow became a flood. The 
     details came not only from priests but also from spies within 
     the Polish government.


                            down with yalta

       According to aides who shared their leaders' view of the 
     world, Reagan and John Paul II refused to accept a 
     fundamental political fact of their lifetimes: the division 
     of Europe as mandated at Yalta and the communist dominance of 
     Eastern Europe. A free, noncommunist Poland, they were 
     convinced, would be a dagger to the heart of the Soviet 
     empire; and if Poland became democratic, other East European 
     states would follow.
       ``We both felt that a great mistake had been made at Yalta 
     and something should be done,'' Reagan says today. 
     ``Solidarity was the very weapon for bringing this about, 
     because it was an organization of the laborers of Poland.'' 
     Nothing quite like Solidarity had ever existed in Eastern 
     Europe, Reagan notes, adding that the workers' union ``was 
     contrary to anything the Soviets would want or the communists 
     [in Poland] would want.''
       According to Solidarity leaders, Walesa and his lieutenants 
     were aware that both Reagan and John Paul II were committed 
     to Solidarity's survival, but they could only guess at the 
     extent of the collaboration. ``Officially I didn't know the 
     church was working with the U.S.,'' says Wojciech Adamiecki, 
     the organizer and editor of underground Solidarity newspapers 
     and now a counselor at the Polish embassy in Washington. ``We 
     were told the Pope had warned the Soviets that if they 
     entered Poland he would fly to Poland and stay with the 
     Polish people. The church was of primary assistance. It was 
     half open, half secret. Open as far as humanitarian aid--
     food, money, medicine, doctors' consultations held in 
     churches, for instance--and secret as far as supporting 
     political activities: distributing printing machines of all 
     kinds, giving us a place for underground meetings, organizing 
     special demonstrations.''
       At their first meeting, Reagan and John Paul II discussed 
     something else they had in common: both had survived 
     assassination attempts only six weeks apart in 1981, and both 
     believed God had saved them for a special mission. ``A close 
     friend of Ronald Reagan's told me the President said, `Look 
     how the evil forces were put in our way and how Providence 
     intervened,' '' says Pio Cardinal Laghi, the former apostolic 
     delegate to Washington. According to National Security 
     Adviser Clark, the Pope and Reagan referred to the 
     ``miraculous'' fact that they had survived. Clark said the 
     men shared ``a unity of spiritual view and a unity of vision 
     on the Soviet empire: that right or correctness would 
     ultimately prevail in the divine plan.''
       ``Reagan came in with very simple and strongly held 
     views,'' says Admiral Bobby Inman, former deputy director of 
     the CIA. ``It is a valid point of view that he saw the 
     collapse [of communism] coming and he pushed it--hard.'' 
     During the first half of 1982, a five-part strategy emerged 
     that was aimed at bringing about the collapse of the Soviet 
     economy, fraying the ties that bound the U.S.S.R. to its 
     client states in the Warsaw Pact and forcing reform inside 
     the Soviet empire. Elements of that strategy included:
       The U.S. defense buildup already under way, aimed at making 
     it too costly for the Soviets to compete militarily with the 
     U.S. Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative--Star Wars--became 
     a centerpiece of the strategy.
       Covert operations aimed at encouraging reform movements in 
     Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland.
       Financial aid to Warsaw Pact nations calibrated to their 
     willingness to protect human rights and undertake political 
     and free-market reforms.
       Economic isolation of the Soviet Union and the withholding 
     of Western and Japanese technology from Moscow. The 
     Administration focused on denying the U.S.S.R. what it had 
     hoped would be its principal source of hard currency in the 
     21st century: profits from a transcontinental pipeline to 
     supply natural gas to Western Europe. The 3,600-mile-long 
     pipeline, stretching from Siberia to France, opened on time 
     on Jan. 1, 1984, but on a far smaller scale than the Soviets 
     had hoped.
       Increased use of Radio Liberty, Voice of America and Radio 
     Free Europe to transmit the Administration's messages to the 
     people of Eastern Europe.
       Yet in 1982 neither Reagan nor the Pope could anticipate 
     the accession of a Soviet leader like Mikhail Gorbachev, the 
     father of glasnost and perestroika; his efforts at reform 
     unleashed powerful forces that spun out of his control and 
     led to the breakup of the Soviet Union. The Washington-
     Vatican alliance ``didn't cause the fall of communism,'' 
     observes a U.S. official familiar with the details of the 
     plot to keep Solidarity alive. ``Like all great and lucky 
     leaders, the Pope

[[Page E680]]

     and the President exploited the forces of history to their 
     own ends.''


                             the crackdown

       The campaign by Washington and the Vatican to keep 
     Solidarity alive began immediately after General Wojciech 
     Jaruzelski declared martial law on Dec. 13, 1981. In those 
     dark hours, Poland's communications with the noncommunist 
     world were cut; 6,000 leaders of Solidarity were detained; 
     hundreds were charged with treason, subversion and 
     counterrevolution; nine were killed; and the union was 
     banned. But thousands of others went into hiding, many 
     seeking protection in churches, rectories and with priests. 
     Authorities took Walesa into custody and interned him in a 
     remote hunting lodge.
       Shortly after Polish security forces moved into the 
     streets, Reagan called the Pope for his advice. At a service 
     of meetings over the next few days, Reagan discussed his 
     options. ``We had a massive row in the Cabinet and the 
     National Security Council about putting together a menu of 
     counteractions,'' former Secretary of State Haig recalls. 
     ``They ranged from sanctions that would have been crushing in 
     their impact on Poland to talking so tough that we would have 
     risked creating another situation like Hungary in '56 or 
     Czechoslovakia in '68.''
       Haig dispatched Ambassador at Large Vernon Walters, a 
     devout Roman Catholic, to meet with John Paul II. Walters 
     arrived in Rome soon after, and met separately with the Pope 
     and with Cardinal Casaroli, the Vatican secretary of state. 
     Both sides agreed that Solidarity's flame must not be 
     extinguished, that the Soviets must become the focus of an 
     international campaign of isolation, and that the Polish 
     government must be subjected to moral and limited economic 
     pressure.
       According to U.S. intelligence sources, the Pope had 
     already advised Walcsa through church channels to keep his 
     movement operating underground, and to pass the word to 
     Solidarity's 10 million members not to go into the streets 
     and risk provoking Warsaw Pact intervention or civil war with 
     Polish security forces. Because the communists had cut the 
     direct phone lines between Poland and the Vatican, John Paul 
     II communicated with Jozef Cardinal Glemp in Warsaw via 
     radio. He also dispatched his envoys to Poland to report on 
     the situation. ``The Vatican's information was absolutely 
     better and quicker than ours in every respect,'' says Haig. 
     ``Though we had some excellent sources of our own, our 
     information was taking too long to filter through the 
     intelligence bureaucracy.''
       In the first hours of the crisis, Reagan ordered that the 
     Pope receive as quickly as possible relevant American 
     intelligence, including information from a Polish Deputy 
     Minister of Defense who was secretly reporting to the CIA. 
     Washington also handed over to the Vatican reports and 
     analysis from Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski, a senior member of 
     the Polish general staff, who was a CIA informant until 
     November 1981, when he had to be smuggled out of Poland after 
     he warned that the Soviets were prepared to invade if the 
     Polish government did not impose martial law. Kuklinski had 
     issued a similar warning about a Soviet military action in 
     late 1980, which led the outgoing Carter Administration to 
     send secret messages to Leonid Brezhnev informing him that 
     among the costs of an invasion would be the sale of 
     sophisticated U.S. weapons to China. This time, Kuklinski 
     reported to Washington, Brezhnev had grown more impatient, 
     and a disastrous harvest at home meant that the Kremlin did 
     not need mechanized army units to help bring in the crops and 
     instead could spare them for an invasion. ``Anything that we 
     knew that we thought the Pope would not be aware of, we 
     certainly brought it to his attention,'' says Reagan. 
     ``Immediately.''


                           the catholic team

       The key Administration players were all devout Roman 
     Catholics--CIA chief William Casey, Allen, Clark, Haig, 
     Walters and William Wilson, Reagan's first ambassador to the 
     Vatican. They regarded the U.S.-Vatican relationship as a 
     holy alliance: the moral force of the Pope and the teachings 
     of their church combined with their fierce anticommunism and 
     their notion of American democracy. Yet the mission would 
     have been impossible without the full support of Reagan, who 
     believed fervently in both the benefits and the practical 
     applications of Washington's relationship with the Vatican. 
     One of his earliest goals as President, Reagan says, was to 
     recognize the Vatican as a state ``and make them an ally.''
       According to Admiral John Poindexter, the military 
     assistant to the National Security Adviser when martial law 
     was declared in Poland, Reagan was convinced that the 
     communists had made a huge miscalculation: after allowing 
     Solidarity to operate openly for 16 months before the 
     crackdown, the Polish government would only alienate its 
     countrymen by attempting to cripple the labor movement and, 
     most important, would bring the powerful church into direct 
     conflict with the Polish regime. ``I didn't think that this 
     [the decision to impose martial law and crush Solidarity] 
     could stand, because of the history of Poland and the 
     religious aspect and all,'' Reagan says. Says Cardinal 
     Casaroli: ``There was a real coincidence of interests between 
     the U.S. and the Vatican.''
       The major decisions on funneling aid to Solidarity and 
     responding to the Polish and Soviet governments were made by 
     Reagan, Casey and Clark, in consultation with John Paul 
     II. ``Reagan understood these things quite well, including 
     the covert side,'' says Richard Pipes, the conservative 
     Polish-born scholar who headed the NSC's Soviet and East-
     European desks. ``The President talked about the evil of 
     the Soviet system--not its people--and how we had to do 
     everything possible to help these people in Solidarity who 
     were struggling for freedom. People like Haig and Commerce 
     Secretary Malcolm Baldrige and James Baker [White House 
     chief of staff at the time] thought it wasn't realistic. 
     George Bush never said a word. I used to sit behind him, 
     and I never knew what his opinions were. But Reagan really 
     understood what was at stake.''
       By most accounts, Casey stepped into the vacuum in the 
     first days after the declaration of martial law in Poland 
     and--as he did in Central America--became the principal 
     policy architect. Meanwhile Pipes and the NSC staff began 
     drafting proposals for sanctions. ``The object was to drain 
     the Soviets and to lay blame for martial law at their 
     doorstep,'' says Pipes. ``The sanctions were coordinated with 
     Special Operations [the CIA division in charge of covert task 
     forces], and the first objective was to keep Solidarity alive 
     by supplying money, communications and equipment.''
       ``The church was trying to modulate the whole situation,'' 
     explains one of the NSC officials who directed the effort to 
     curtail the pipeline. ``They [church leaders] were in effect 
     trying to create circumstances that would head off the 
     serious threat of Soviet intervention while allowing us to 
     get tougher and tougher; they were part and parcel of 
     virtually all of our deliberations in terms of how we viewed 
     the evolution of government-sponsored repression in Poland--
     whether it was lessening or getting worse, and how we should 
     proceed.''
       As for his conversations with Reagan about Poland, Clark 
     says they were usually short. ``I don't think I ever had an 
     in-depth, one-on-one, private conversation that existed for 
     more than three minutes with him--on any subject. That might 
     shock you. We had our own code of communication. I knew where 
     he wanted to go on Poland. And that was to take it to its nth 
     possibilities. The President and Casey and I discussed the 
     situation on the ground in Poland constantly: covert 
     operations; who was doing what, where, why and how; and the 
     chances of success.'' According to Clark, he and Casey 
     directed that the President's daily brief--the PDB, an 
     intelligence summary prepared by the CIA--include a special 
     supplement on secret operations and analysis in Poland.
       The Pope himself, not only his deputies, met with American 
     officials to assess events in Poland and the effectiveness of 
     American actions and sent back messages--sometimes by letter, 
     sometimes orally--to Reagan. On almost all his trips to 
     Europe and the Middle East, Casey flew first to Rome, so that 
     he could meet with John Paul II and exchange information. But 
     the principal emissary between Washington and Rome remained 
     Walters, a former deputy director of the CIA who worked 
     easily with Casey. Walters met with the Pope perhaps a dozen 
     times, according to Vatican sources. ``Walters was sent to 
     and from the Vatican for the specific purpose of carrying 
     messages between the Pope and the President,'' says former 
     U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Wilson. ``It wasn't supposed 
     to be known that Walters was there. It wasn't all 
     specifically geared to Poland; sometimes there were also 
     discussions about Central America or the hostages in 
     Lebanon.''
       Often in the Reagan years, American covert operations 
     (including those in Afghanistan, Nicaragua and Angola) 
     involved ``lethal assistance'' to insurgent forces: arms, 
     mercenaries, military advisers and explosives. In Poland the 
     Pope, the President and Casey embarked on the opposite path: 
     ``What they had to do was let the natural forces already in 
     place play this out and not get their fingerprints on it,'' 
     explains a analyst. What emerges from the Reagan-Casey 
     collaboration is a carefully calibrated operation whose scope 
     was modest compared with other CIA activities. ``If Casey 
     were around now, he'd be having some smiles,'' observes one 
     of his reluctant admirers. ``In 1991 Reagan and Casey got the 
     reordering of the world that they wanted.''


                          the secret directive

       Less than three weeks before his meeting with the Pope in 
     1982, the President signed a secret national-security-
     decision directive (NSDD 32) that authorized a range of 
     economic, diplomatic and covert measures to ``neutralize 
     efforts of the U.S.S.R.'' to maintain its hold on Eastern 
     Europe. In practical terms, the most important covert 
     operations undertaken were those inside Poland. The primary 
     purposes of NSDD 32 were to destabilize the Polish government 
     through covert operations involving propaganda and 
     organizational aid to Solidarity; the promotion of human 
     rights, particularly those related to the right of worship 
     and the Catholic Church; economic pressure; and diplomatic 
     isolation of the communist regime. The document, citing the 
     need to defend democratic reform efforts throughout the 
     Soviet empire, also called for increasing propaganda and 
     underground broadcasting operations in Eastern Europe, 
     actions that Reagan's aides and dissidents in Eastern Europe 
     believe were particularly helpful in chipping away at the 
     notion of Soviet invincibility.
       As Republican Congressman Henry Hyde, a member of the House 
     Intelligence Committee from 1985 to 1990, who was apprised of 
     some of the Administration's covert actions, observes, ``In 
     Poland we did all of the things

[[Page E681]]

     that are done in countries where you want to destabilize a 
     communist government and strengthen resistance to that. We 
     provided the supplies and technical assistance in terms of 
     clandestine newspapers, broadcasting, propaganda, money, 
     organizational help and advice. And working outward from 
     Poland, the same kind of resistance was organized in the 
     other communist countries of Europe.''
       Among those who played a consulting role was Zbigniew 
     Brzezinski, a native of Poland and President Jimmy Carter's 
     National Security Adviser. ``I got along very well with 
     Casey,'' recalls Brzezinski. ``He was very flexible and very 
     imaginative and not very bureaucratic; if something needed to 
     be done, it was done. To sustain an underground effort takes 
     a lot in terms of supplies, networks, etc., and this is why 
     Solidarity wasn't crushed.''
       On military questions, American intelligence was better 
     than the Vatican's, but the church excelled in its 
     evaluations of the political situation. And in understanding 
     the mood of the people and communicating with the Solidarity 
     leadership, the church was in an incomparable position. ``Our 
     information about Poland was very well founded because the 
     bishops were in continual contact with the Holy See and 
     Solidarnosc,'' explains Cardinal Silvestrini, the Vatican's 
     deputy secretary of state at that time. ``They informed us 
     about prisoners, about the activities and needs of Solidarity 
     groups and about the attitude and schisms in the 
     government.'' All this information was communicated to the 
     President or Casey.
       ``If you study the situation of Solidarity, you see they 
     acted very cleverly, without pressing too much at the crucial 
     moments, because they had guidance from the church,'' says 
     one of the Pope's closest aides. ``Yes, there were times we 
     restrained Solidarnosc. But Poland was a bomb that could 
     explode--in the heart of communism, bordered by the Soviet 
     Union, Czechoslovakia and East Germany. Too much pressure, 
     and the bomb would go off.''


                           casey's cappuccino

       Meanwhile, in Washington a close relationship developed 
     between Casey, Clark and Archbishop Laghi. ``Casey and I 
     dropped into his [Laghi's] residence early mornings during 
     critical times to gather his comments and counsel,'' says 
     Clark. ``We'd have breakfast and coffee and discuss what was 
     being done in Poland. I'd speak to him frequently on the 
     phone, and he would be in touch with the Pope.'' Says Laghi: 
     ``They liked good cappuccino. Occasionally we might talk 
     about Central America or the church position on birth 
     control. But usually the subject was Poland.''
       ``Almost everything having to do with Poland was handled 
     outside of normal State Department channels and would go 
     through Casey and Clark,'' says Robert McFarlane, who served 
     as a deputy to both Clark and Haig and later as National 
     Security Adviser to the President. ``I knew that they were 
     meeting with Pio Laghi, and that Pio Laghi had been to see 
     the President, but Clark would never tell me what the 
     substance of the discussions was.''
       On at least six occasions Laghi came to the White House and 
     met with Clark or the President; each time, he entered the 
     White House through the southwest gate in order to avoid 
     reports. ``By keeping in such close touch, we did not cross 
     lines,'' says Laghi. ``My role was primarily to facilitate 
     meetings between Walters and the Holy Father. The Holy Father 
     knew his people. It was a very complex situation--how to 
     insist on human rights, on religious freedom, and keep 
     Solidarity alive without provoking the communist authorities 
     further. But I told Vernon, `Listen to the Holy Father. We 
     have 2,000 years' experience at this.' ''
       Though William Casey has been vilified for aspects of his 
     tenure as CIA chief, there is no criticism of his instincts 
     on Poland. ``Basically, he had a quiet confidence that the 
     communists couldn't hold on, especially in Poland,'' says 
     former Congressman Edward Derwinski, a Polish-speaking expert 
     on Eastern Europe who counseled the Administration and met 
     with Casey frequently. ``He was convinced the system was 
     falling and doomed to collapse one way or another--and Poland 
     was the force that would lead to the dam breaking. He 
     demanded a constant [CIA] focus on Eastern Europe. It wasn't 
     noticed, because other stories were more controversial and 
     were perking at the moment--Nicaragua and Salvador.''
       In Poland, Casey conducted the kind of old-style operation 
     that he relished, something he might have done in his days at 
     the Office of Strategic Services during World War II or in 
     the early years of the CIA, when the democracies of Western 
     Europe rose from the ashes of World War II. It was through 
     Casey's contacts, his associates say, that elements of the 
     Socialist International were organized on behalf of 
     Solidarity--just as the Social Democratic parties of Western 
     Europe had been used as an instrument of American policy by 
     the CIA in helping to create anticommunist governments after 
     the war. And this time the objective was akin to creating a 
     Christian Democratic majority in Poland--with the church 
     and the overwhelmingly Catholic membership of Solidarity 
     as the dominant political force in a post communist 
     Poland. Through his contacts with leaders of the Socialist 
     International, including officials of socialist 
     governments in France and Sweden, Casey ensured that 
     tactical assistance was available on the continent and at 
     sea to move goods into Poland. ``This wasn't about 
     spending huge amounts of money,'' says Brzezinski. ``It 
     was about getting the message out and resisting: books, 
     communications equipment, propaganda, ink and printing 
     presses.''


                        Look for the Union Label

       In almost every city and town, underground newspapers and 
     mimeographed bulletins appeared, challenging the state-
     controlled media. The church published its own newspapers. 
     Solidarity missives, photocopied and mimeographed on 
     American-supplied equipment, were tacked to church bulletin 
     boards. Stenciled posters were boldly posted on police 
     stations and government buildings and even on entrances to 
     the state-controlled television center, where army officers 
     broadcast the news.
       The American embassy in Warsaw became the pivotal CIA 
     station in the communist world and, by all accounts, the most 
     effective. Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO, which had been the largest 
     source of American support for Solidarity before martial law, 
     regarded the Reagan Administration's approach as too slow and 
     insufficiently confrontational with the Polish authorities. 
     Nonetheless, according to intelligence sources, AFL-CIO 
     president Lane Kirkland and his aide Tom Kahn consulted 
     frequently with Poindexter, Clark and other officials at the 
     State Department and the NSC on such matters as how and when 
     to move goods and supplies into Poland, identifying cities 
     where Solidarity was in particular need of organizing 
     assistance, and examining how Solidarity and the AFL-CIO 
     might collaborate in the preparation of propaganda materials.
       ``Lane Kirkland deserves special credit,'' observes 
     Derwinski. ``They don't like to admit [it], but they 
     literally were in lockstep [with the Administration]. Also 
     never forget that Bill Clark's wife is Czechoslovak, as is 
     Lane Kirkland's wife. This is one issue where everybody was 
     aboard; there were no turf fights or mavericks or 
     naysayers.''
       But AFL-CIO officials were never aware of the extent of 
     clandestine U.S. assistance, or the Administration's reliance 
     on the church for guidance regarding how hard to push Polish 
     and Soviet authorities. Casey was wary of ``contaminating'' 
     the American and European labor movements by giving them too 
     many details of the Administration's efforts. And indeed this 
     was not strictly a CIA operation. Rather, it was a blend of 
     covert and overt, public policy and secret alliances. Casey 
     recognized that in many instances the AFL-CIO was more 
     imaginative than his own operatives in providing 
     organizational assistance to Solidarity and smuggling 
     equipment into the country. According to former deputy CIA 
     director Inman, Casey decided that the American labor 
     movement's relationship with Solidarity was so good that much 
     of what the CIA needed could be financed and obtained through 
     AFL-CIO channels. ``Financial support wasn't what they 
     needed,'' says Inman. ``It was organization, and that was an 
     infinitely better way to help them than through classic 
     covert operations.''
       The Solidarity office in Brussels became an international 
     clearinghouse: for representatives of the Vatican, for CIA 
     operatives, for the AFL-CIO, for representatives of the 
     Socialist International, for the congressionally funded 
     National Endowment for Democracy, which also worked 
     closely with Casey. It was the place where Solidarity told 
     its backers--some of whose real identities were unknown to 
     Solidarity itself--what it needed, where goods and 
     supplies and organizers could be most useful. Priests, 
     couriers, labor organizers and intelligence operatives 
     moved in and out of Poland with requests for aid and with 
     detailed information on the situation inside the 
     government and the underground. Food and clothing and 
     money to pay fines of Solidarity leaders who were brought 
     before Polish courts poured into the country. Inside 
     Poland, a network of priests carried messages back and 
     forth between the churches where many of Solidarity's 
     leaders were in hiding.
       In the summer of 1984, when the sanctions against Poland 
     seemed to be hurting ordinary Poles and not the communists, 
     Laghi traveled to Santa Barbara to meet with Reagan at the 
     Western White House and urge that some of the sanctions be 
     lifted. The Administration complied. At the same time, the 
     White House, in close consultation with the Vatican, refused 
     to ease its economic pressures on Moscow--denying technology, 
     food and cultural exchanges as the price for continuing 
     oppression in Poland.
       Much of the equipment destined for Solidarity arrived in 
     Poland by ship--often packed in mismarked containers sent 
     from Denmark and Sweden, then unloaded at Gdansk and other 
     ports by dockers secretly working with Solidarity. According 
     to Administration officials, the socialist government of 
     Sweden--and Swedish labor unions--played a crucial role in 
     arranging the transshipment of goods to Poland. From the 
     Polish docks, equipment moved to its destination in trucks 
     and private cars driven by Solidarity sympathizers who often 
     used churches and priests as their point of contact for 
     deliveries and pickups.


                         ``solidarity lives!''

       ``The Administration plugged into the church across the 
     board,'' observes Derwinski, now Secretary of Veterans 
     Affairs. ``Not just through the church hierarchy but through 
     individual churches and

[[Page E682]]

     bishops. Monsignor Bronislaw Dabrowski, a deputy to Cardinal 
     Glemp, came to use often to tell us what was needed: he would 
     meet with me, with Casey, the NSC and sometimes with 
     Walters.'' John Cardinal Krol of Philadelphia, whose father 
     was born in Poland, was the American churchman closest to the 
     Pope. He frequently met with Casey to discuss support for 
     Solidarity and covert operations, according to CIA sources 
     and Derwinski. ``Krol hit it off very well with President 
     Reagan and was a source of constant advice and contact,'' 
     says Derwinski. ``Often he was the one Casey or Clark went 
     to, the one who really understood the situation.''
       By 1985 it was apparent that the Polish government's 
     campaign to suppress Solidarity had failed. According to a 
     report by Adrian Karatnycky, who helped organize the AFL-
     CIO's assistance to Solidarity, there were more than 400 
     underground periodicals appearing in Poland, some with a 
     circulation that exceeded 30,000. Books and pamphlets 
     challenging the authority of the communist government were 
     printed by the thousands. Comic books for children recast 
     Polish fables and legends, with Jaruzelski pictured as the 
     villain, communism as the red dragon and Walesa as the heroic 
     knight. In church basements and homes, millions of viewers 
     watched documentary videos produced and screened on 
     the equipment smuggled into the country.
       With clandestine broadcasting equipment supplied by the CIA 
     and the AFL-CIO, Solidarity regularly broke into the 
     government's radio programming, often with the message 
     ``Solidarity lives!'' or ``Resist!'' Armed with a transmitter 
     supplied by the CIA through church channels, Solidarity 
     interrupted television programming with both audio and visual 
     messages, including calls for strikes and demonstrations. 
     ``There was a great moment at the half time of the national 
     soccer championship,'' says a Vatican official. ``Just as the 
     whistle sounded for the half, a Solidarity Lives! banner went 
     up on the screen and a tape came on calling for resistance. 
     What was particularly ingenious was waiting for the half-time 
     break; had the interruption come during actual soccer play, 
     it could have alienated people.'' As Brzezinski sums it up, 
     ``This was the first time that communist police suppression 
     didn't succeed.''
       ``Nobody believed the collapse of communism would happen 
     this fast or on this timetable,'' says a cardinal who is one 
     of the Pope's closest aides. ``But in their first meeting, 
     the holy Father and the President committed themselves and 
     the institutions of the church and America to such a goal. 
     And from that day, the focus was to bring it about in 
     Poland.''
       Step by reluctant step, the Soviets and the communist 
     government of Poland bowed to the moral, economic and 
     political pressure imposed by the Pope and the President. 
     Jails were emptied, Walesa's trial on charges of slandering 
     state officials was abandoned, the Polish communist party 
     turned fratricidal, and the country's economy collapsed in a 
     haze of strikes and demonstrations and sanctions.
       On Feb. 19, 1987, after Warsaw had pledged to open a 
     dialogue with the church, Reagan lifted U.S. sanctions. Four 
     months later, Pope John Paul II was cheered by millions of 
     his countrymen as he traveled across Poland demanding human 
     rights and praising Solidarity. In July 1988, Gorbachev 
     visited Warsaw and signaled Moscow's recognition that the 
     government could not rule without Solidarity's cooperation. 
     On April 5, 1989, the two sides signed agreements legalizing 
     Solidarity and calling for open parliamentary elections in 
     June. In December 1990, nine years after he was arrested and 
     his labor union banned, Lech Walesa became President of 
     Poland.
       [Correction (Apr. 27, 1992): A short article accompanying 
     our report on the cooperative effort of President Reagan and 
     Pope John Paul II to assist Poland's Solidarity movement 
     [Cover, Feb. 24] incorrectly stated the U.S. position on 
     financial aid for family planning in foreign countries. The 
     U.S. announced in 1984 that it would withhold funds for 
     abortion or coerced birth control--but not for all family 
     planning.]
                                  ____


                 [From the Policy Review, 1992 Winter]

 The Cold War's Magnificent Seven; Pope John Paul II; Awakener of the 
                                  East

                       (By Fr. Robert A. Sirico)

       The victory of the Free World in the Cold War ranks with 
     the victory of the Allies in World War II, the landing on the 
     moon, and the spectacular advances in health and prosperity 
     around most of the world as the most important achievement of 
     mankind in this century. There were countless heroes in the 
     defeat of Communism--among them the people of the former 
     Soviet empire whose indomitable spirit ultimately triumphed 
     over their enslavers, and the taxpayers of the Western 
     alliance who spent trillions of dollars over more than 40 
     years to protect their countries and civilization from the 
     Soviet threat. The West was also blessed by extraordinary 
     leaders and moral voices who defined the nature of the 
     conflict, galvanized the popular will to resist Communism, 
     and created the institutions that led to eventual victory. 
     Policy Review pays tribute here to seven of those leaders 
     whose words and deeds were essential for the wonderful events 
     of the last few years.
       It was a nervous clique of geriatric Stalinists who watched 
     from Moscow in 1979 as millions of Poles poured into the 
     streets of Krakow to greet their native son Karol Wojtyla 
     when he returned to them as Pope John Paul II. A political 
     awareness dawned among these teeming masses when they saw in 
     one another's boldness the impotence of the dictatorship that 
     claimed dominance over their lives.
       Nor were the only witnesses to these events Politburo 
     members and Poles. Lithuanians and Ukrainians, Hungarians and 
     Czechoslovakians also witnessed with astonishment the 
     unfurling of Solidarity banners in a Communist nation.
       Perhaps it was not so astonishing to the new pope. As a 
     young boy Wojtyla used to pause for a few moments following 
     Mass to offer a series of prayers ``for the conversion of 
     Russia.''
       From the outset, Wojtyla was a robust, intense, strong, and 
     disciplined young man. His charismatic personality was 
     augmented by his facility with languages and further honed by 
     theatrical training. His combination of fervent piety and 
     firm anti-Communism would serve him well in his future as 
     priest, bishop, and cardinal in Poland. In a country that is 
     itself 93 percent Roman Catholic, such a profession would 
     necessitate dealing with Russia's surrogates, sometimes 
     making strategic accommodations, without yielding the 
     moral ground to Communism.
       John Paul comprehended the dynamics of Marxism both 
     intellectually and personally. He knew Communism well, so 
     well that some left-wing theologians initially mistook his 
     familiarity with Marxism for sympathy. They hoped he would 
     lead a new and enriched dialogue between Christianity and 
     Marxism. Instead, by virtue of his philosophical and 
     theological training, he was equipped both to refute 
     Marxism's logical errors, and also to offer a more compelling 
     alternative in its place.
       As leader of the largest Christian religion, John Paul is 
     also the leader of a vast enterprise, joined by thousands of 
     subsidiary organizations. These are linked by a common set of 
     beliefs and symbols, enabling the transcendence of the usual 
     barriers of language, culture, and geographic border. This 
     expansive umbrella enabled him, through gesture, encyclical, 
     and homily, to inspire millions of people living under 
     regimes that violated their ability to work for authentic 
     liberty.


                             moral conflict

       During his pontificate, two other figures stepped onto the 
     world stage and occupied with him critical roles in the 
     momentous events that would unfold. A year after John Paul 
     assumed his place at the Vatican in 1978, Margaret Thatcher 
     came to occupy 10 Downing Street. About a year and a half 
     later, Ronald Reagan took up residency in the White House.
       The common thread between John Paul, Thatcher, and Reagan 
     is that while they appreciated the art of politics, they 
     understood the global situation in fundamentally moral 
     categories. They understood, as few world leaders have 
     understood, that the argument in favor of freedom is a moral 
     argument as well as a political and economic one. Without the 
     moral dimension, the battles that these cold warriors waged 
     would have been meaningless and uninspiring.
       The compelling dignity and moral depth of John Paul is 
     especially highlighted when he contrasted with the leaders of 
     another international religious body, and their posture 
     toward the dictatorships of Eastern Europe. I speak here, of 
     course, of the World Council of Churches. Almost from its 
     inception, and throughout the past 40 years, the socialist 
     penchants of the WCC prevented it from offering any kind of 
     principled opposition to the immorality of Communism.
       ``Liberation'' was the central theme of the WCC's Nairobi 
     Assembly in 1975. South Africa was denounced alongside 
     ``white Atlantic nations''; the rights of aborigines in 
     Australia were defended even as the plight of migrant workers 
     in Europe was decried.
       Yet a motion to include in this litany of injustice a 
     mention of religious repression in Russia was turned back. 
     Instead, the assembly would only acknowledge that it 
     ``devoted a substantial period of discussion to the alleged 
     denials of religious liberty in the USSR'' [emphasis added].
       While the officers of the WCC were funding Marxist 
     guerrillas in Africa in the name of ``liberation,'' John Paul 
     was teaching the polish under ground in the effective use of 
     nonviolent resistance to totalitarianism. He did this in 
     his writings, as well as in the numerous meetings and 
     audiences he held with leaders of the underground.
       No doubt historians who write on this period in years to 
     come will not only see the moral dimension, but also the 
     superb tactical insight of the use of nonviolence. Too 
     aggressive a stance on the part of the Polish underground and 
     the Soviet Union might have cracked down at a much earlier 
     and more vulnerable stage. Drawing on a tradition accustomed 
     to martyrs, whose blood, it is said, is the seed of the Roman 
     Catholic Church, prayer and determination in the face of 
     persecution resulted in one of the most radical yet bloodless 
     revolutions in world history.


                           Spirit of Liberty

       If there is one word to characterize the legacy John Paul 
     will leave to history, perhaps that word is liberty.
       Historians will undoubtedly note the amazing move in the 
     Catholic world toward democratic political processes and free 
     economies in the period of this pope's reign. This is clearly 
     evident in Latin America where the Pope has confronted unjust 
     regimes of every stripe.

[[Page E683]]

       How fitting, then, that John Paul, this priest from Poland 
     who lived under what is arguably history's most immoral and 
     destructive political system, should have been the one to 
     write the epitaph for collectivism in its Communist, 
     socialist, and welfare statist incarnations. This he has done 
     in the form of his most recent social encyclical, Centesimus 
     Annus (``The Hundredth Year'').
       Celebrating the centenary of Pope Leo XIII's pastoral 
     letter Rerum Navarum, Centesimus Annus looks at the events of 
     this age and envisions a world where government is strictly 
     limited and based on the rule of law; where free people trade 
     in free markets to produce a more prosperous economy for all 
     the world's needy; and where the social system is rooted in 
     moral and religious tradition.
       It will be interesting to see whether this moral vision 
     will have greater impact on the West or on the former 
     republics of the Soviet empire that John Paul did so much to 
     free.
       Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily 
     reflecting the views of The Heritage Foundation or as an 
     attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before 
     Congress.

                          ____________________