Pipes was said to have alleged that he knew well that large sums of money had been transferred to Solidarity through several accounts operated by the CIA. There were reports Pipes had challenged Brzezinski that the money had never reached Solidarity—where did it go? It was a question Brzezinski did not answer then, and has not since.
At best, only a small portion of foreign money—which was urgently needed by Solidarity to pay its members a token weekly wage while on strike—was ever received by the Brussels headquarters of Solidarnosc. Elizabeth Wasiutynski, whose parents had served in the NSZ, part of the Polish resistance, became head of Solidarnosc in Brussels. She insisted that money for Solidarnosc came from the AFL-CIO, international trade union organizations, and the National Endowment for Democracy. Further sums came later through an organization called the Stanton Group in the United States. It was donated on behalf of American taxpayers.
“We received no more than two hundred thousand dollars annually. There was no large or even small amount of money I’m aware of funded to the Solidarnosc leadership from the CIA. Nor is there an echo of any such activity since Poland’s independence in 1989. I think the CIA is taking credit for something it did not do,” she said. “Had the CIA indeed been involved, we would have had some sort of more fertile ground in Washington.”
Sources at the Bank Lambert in Brussels insist it had no record of such a large payment coming into its coffers from the Vatican Bank. So where did it go? Enter now, not for the first time, one of the undisputed grand villains of financial chicanery—Robert Maxwell.
The Israeli-doctored Promis software had been sold to General Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland’s Communist ruler, by Maxwell. It was to be used—and was—against Solidarity and anyone who supported Poland’s then fledgling democratic opposition. But during his global sales drive for Promis, Maxwell had, in 1985—when the money transfer to help Solidarity had already taken place—sold Promis to Belgium’s counterespionage service, the Sûreté de l’Etat. It gave Mossad a window into Belgium’s intelligence operations—including financial operations by Semion Yukovich Mogilevich.
At that time, still operating from his base in Budapest, Hungary, Mogilevich was rapidly establishing himself as a specialist in major financial crime in preparation for stepping into the post-Communist financial world. By 1985, he had offices in Geneva, Nigeria, and the Cayman Islands. He also held an Israeli passport, which Maxwell had arranged. Mogilevich had been introduced by Maxwell to a Swiss banker who ran an investment brokerage in Geneva, and had regular business dealings with the Vatican Bank and Bank Lambert.
Marcinkus already was deeply ensnared in massive financial scams involving the bank, which had led Pope John Paul to agree to reimburse those swindled by Marcinkus’s activities. In one of the more remarkable documents publicly issued by any bank, the Vatican stated in May 1984 that “international banks will get back approximately two-thirds of the 600 million dollars they had loaned to the Vatican Bank. Of that some 250 million dollars will be paid by June 30, 1984. This payment is being made by the Vatican on the basis of non-culpability but in recognition of a moral involvement.”
By then, Marcinkus was a virtual prisoner inside the Vatican, not daring to step outside its walls for fear of arrest. A mounting number of criminal charges awaited his appearance in court. But Marcinkus still went to his office every weekday to “supervise”—the word the Vatican used—the daily affairs of the bank.
Somewhere in that tangled web—the CIA, Marcinkus money laundering, Polish intelligence, Mossad, and Maxwell—lay the answer to that question asked publicly by the distinguished Richard Pipes. Where did the $200 million for Solidarity go? The answer turned out to be staggeringly simple. Using Promis, the money had been intercepted by Mossad to finance its own black operations.
In the past, the intelligence service had used its doctored version of the software to access foreign bank accounts held by Israeli millionaires that they hoped had been discreetly transferred out of a country strapped for cash. Mossad had not only seized the sums, but had also summoned the hapless millionaires to a meeting. They were told that they would be levied a “fine” for their breach of the country’s strict currency regulations. To refuse would mean a trial and certain imprisonment. “They all paid,” Rafi Eitan said (to the author) with undisguised satisfaction.
In March 2004, William Hamilton, president of Inslaw, told the author that using Promis would “make it a relatively simple operation for Mossad to have stolen the money.”
