The Foreign Intelligence Agency ( pl, Agencja Wywiadu (; or ) is a Polish

intelligence agency An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy objectives. Means of inf ...

tasked with the gathering of public and secret information abroad for the

Republic of Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

. It was created in 2002 from the reform and split of , which was split into () and (). The current Head of the Foreign Intelligence Agency is

Lieutenant colonel Lieutenant colonel ( , ) is a rank of commissioned officers in the armies, most marine forces and some air forces of the world, above a major and below a colonel. Several police forces in the United States use the rank of lieutenant colon ...

Piotr Krawczyk.

Roles

The Foreign Intelligence Agency usually operates out of the territory of the Republic of Poland. Its activity within the territory of the Republic of Poland may be conducted only within a limited scope, exclusively in connection with its activity out of the state's frontiers. The roles of the Foreign Intelligence Agency include: * Obtaining, analyzing, processing and forwarding information that may be significant to the security and international position of the Republic of Poland, as well as to its economic potential; * Recognizing and counteracting external threats to the security, defense, independence and inviolability of the Republic of Poland; * Protecting foreign diplomatic missions of the Republic of Poland and their officials from the activities of foreign intelligence services and other activities negatively that may affect the interests of the Republic of Poland; * Ensuring protection of

cryptographic Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or '' -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adv ...

communication with the Polish diplomatic missions and consulates, and of diplomatic pouch; * Recognizing international

terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

extremism Extremism is "the quality or state of being extreme" or "the advocacy of extreme measures or views". The term is primarily used in a political or religious sense to refer to an ideology that is considered (by the speaker or by some implied sha ...

and international organized crime groups; * Recognizing international trade in weapons, ammunition and explosive materials,

narcotics The term narcotic (, from ancient Greek ναρκῶ ''narkō'', "to make numb") originally referred medically to any psychoactive compound with numbing or paralyzing properties. In the United States, it has since become associated with opiate ...

, psychotropic substances, as well as in goods, technologies and services of strategic importance to the state's security, recognizing international trade in

weapons of mass destruction A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or any other weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to numerous individuals or cause great damage to artificial structures (e.g., buildings), natu ...

and threats related to the proliferation of those weapons and their carriers; * Recognizing and analyzing threats occurring in the regions of tensions, conflicts and international crises that exert influence on the state's security, as well as actions undertaking aimed at eliminating those threats; * Conducting

signals intelligence Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is intelligence-gathering by interception of '' signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly used in communication ...

;

Structure

The Foreign Intelligence Agency comprises the following organizational units: #Bureau I #Bureau II #Bureau III #Bureau IV #Bureau V #Bureau VI #Bureau VII #Bureau VIII #Staff Training Centre #Independent Legal Unit However, the Head of the Foreign Intelligence Agency is authorized to form or appoint units of a permanent or ad hoc character (e.g. task units).

Current management

*Head of the Foreign Intelligence Agency: Colonel Grzegorz Małecki *Deputy Head of the Foreign Intelligence Agency: Piotr Krawczyk

List of heads

References

External links