Will the annex to the WSI report be public? What is hidden in the document blocked by Kaczyński, Komorowski and Duda?

President Karol Nawrocki's decision regarding the annex to the report on the liquidation of the Military Information Services is of a state nature, not a political one, said the president's spokesman, Rafał Leśkiewicz. This is the implementation of citizens' right to know about the mechanisms operating in state institutions – he added.

Earlier on Thursday, in a post on the X platform, Leśkiewicz announced that President Nawrocki had moved to the formal and legal stage “directly aimed at declassifying and making public the Annex to the Report on the liquidation of the Military Information Services“The annex was sent to the Speakers of the Sejm and Senate for their opinion, which – as he emphasized – is a formal element, because these opinions are not binding.

At a later conference, Leśkiewicz said that the annex to the report on the liquidation of the WSI on Thursday “will definitely reach” the Chancellery of the Sejm and the Chancellery of the Senate and that it would be provided in the form of an anonymized copy. He also emphasized that until the president decides to publish it and appear in Monitor Polski, the annex is classified as “top secret”.

The Military Information Services were established in 1991 and disbanded in the fall of 2006 by the PiS government. The WSI was accused of many irregularities, including: lack of verification from the times of the Polish People's Republic, tolerance of espionage for Russia, participation in the FOZZ scandal, illegal arms trade. The report on the liquidation of the WSI was prepared by the verification commission headed by Antoni Macierewicz. In February 2007, President Lech Kaczyński published a report signed by Macierewicz.

In 2008, the Constitutional Tribunal found that the very publication of the report in 2007 by President Kaczyński was legal. However, the Constitutional Tribunal found it unconstitutional to deprive the persons included in the report – before its publication – of the right to be heard by the WSI verification commission, to have access to the case files and to appeal to the court against the decision to include them in the report. The Constitutional Tribunal also found the phrase in the act to include in the report persons whose “activities went beyond defense” to be too vague.

Previous presidents did not want to publish an amendment to the report

After this final judgment of the Constitutional Tribunal, President Kaczyński did not publish the finished annex to the report. He said that “there are too many fragments in which facts are replaced by interpretations.” This position was maintained by President Bronisław Komorowski. Similarly, President Andrzej Duda, who said that he “did not see any reason to disclose it.”

Leśkiewicz said on Thursday that President Nawrocki's decision that the annex to the report on the liquidation of the WSI is to be declassified and published is “an extremely important element in closing an important stage of organizing the state after the political transformation.” – For years, this issue remained unresolved and was burdened by numerous political disputes and doubts about the method of disclosing information – he added.

He noted that the president “drawing conclusions from previous experience, complies with the standards resulting from the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Tribunal, but also responds to social expectations,” and his decision implements “citizens' rights to information, to knowledge about the mechanisms operating in the institutions of the Polish state, in this case the Military Information Services, liquidated several years ago.”

Leśkiewicz assured that the president's decision is of a state, not political nature, and “the goal is not to escalate disputes or use this annex for the current political fight” but to “separate facts from assessments and opinions” and to create conditions for “calm and substantive reflection on our past.”

The spokesman was asked whether the resignation of Sławomir Cenckiewicz from the position of head of the National Security Bureau, announced on Thursday, was related to his desire to publish an annex on the WSI regardless of the president's actions and thus “get ahead of the curve”.

Leśkiewicz replied that one of the tasks of the head of the National Security Bureau was to finalize the process of first declassifying and then making public the annex to the report on the liquidation of the WSI. He emphasized that this publication can only take place in Monitor Polski and can only be ordered by the President of the Republic of Poland. Therefore, he stressed, no one can publish this document beforehand.

The president said on April 17 that the decision-making process regarding the annex to the WSI report was nearing completion. In an interview with Kanał Zero, the president said that “if there are no legal contraindications”, he will make this annex public. (PAP)

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