Was Lech Walesa a commie spy?

Lech Walesa (pictured here at Euro 2008), Poland's Nobel Prize-winning former president, has been accused of working as a secret police informer before he became the leader of the pro-democracy trade union Solidarity. The potentially devastating charges are contained in a 780-page work, The Secret Police and Lech Walesa, by Slawomir Cenckiewicz and Piotr Gontarczyk. They have uncovered evidence that proves that in the 1970s, before Solidarity was founded, Walesa collaborated with Communist officials under the code name "Bolek". Their information comes from Poland's Institute for National Remembrance (IPN), 54 miles of secret police files covering the country’ Communist era.

"There is positive proof that Lech Walesa was registered with the secret police under that code name between 1970 and 1976," Cenckiewicz insisted in an interview yesterday. "We provide clear evidence in our book including registration cards, entries and notes from secret police files and reports from the so-called informant Bolek."

However, Walesa, who resigned from the Solidarity trade union in 2006 in protest at similar claims made by Poland’s current president Lech Kaczynski, has dismissed the accusations as a "fairy tale". He says that communist officials falsified his secret police file after he became Solidarity leader, as part of a campaign to discredit him.