WARSAW, Poland (AP) – Lech Walesa, the legendary anti-communist leader who played a historic role in bringing down communism in Poland and across Eastern Europe, had served as a paid informant in the 1970s for the same communist regime that he later fought, according to documents revealed publicly Thursday.
It is not yet clear how damaging the revelations will be to Walesa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for his defiant opposition to the communists and who became Poland’s first democratically-elected president after the 1989 fall of communism.
Walesa, now 72, has long admitted that he signed a document in the 1970s agreeing to provide information to the generally-hated communist secret police, although he insisted he never informed on anyone and never took any money. In 2000, he was cleared by a court, which said it found no evidence of collaboration.
On Thursday, Walesa suggested that the newly uncovered papers were fake and vowed to fight to clear his name.
“There can exist no documents coming from me,” Walesa said in a written message from Venezuela, where he is traveling. “I will prove that in court.”