Foreign Intelligence Agency
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The Foreign Intelligence Agency ( (; or ) is a Polish
intelligence agency An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, Intelligence analysis, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy obj ...
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 extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...
. It was created in 2002 from the reform and split of , which was split into () and (). Current Head of the Foreign Intelligence Agency is
Colonel Colonel ( ; abbreviated as Col., Col, or COL) is a senior military Officer (armed forces), officer rank used in many countries. It is also used in some police forces and paramilitary organizations. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, a colon ...
Bartosz Jarmuszkiewicz.


Genesis

When the People's Republic of Poland ended in 1989, the new authorities faced the challenge of reforming the special services, which were viewed very negatively by most Poles. In April 1990, a law was passed creating the Office of State Protection (UOP), which replaced the Departments I and II of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This marked the abolition of the Security Service (SB). The UOP was a separate, neutral institution that was not part of the Ministry of the Interior, indicating the depoliticization of the intelligence services. The Office of State Protection was supervised by the Ministry of the Interior in terms of personnel policy, the general policy of the head of the UOP and its compliance with state policy. Even then, however, there was a realization that intelligence should rather be under the authority of foreign affairs. The reason why the separation of intelligence and counterintelligence had not yet been decided upon in 1990 was the costliness of such an undertaking. Even before the 2002 Law came into effect and two separate agencies were established, the position of Head of the UOP had already become the subject of a constitutional dispute. Indeed, this function was entrusted to Zbigniew Siemiątkowski, who was both an MP and secretary of state. The dispute concerned the issue of combining the MP's mandate with other government employment. According to Article 103(1) of the Polish Constitution, this is prohibited. On the other hand, however, in the same place in the Polish Constitution, an exception to this rule appears, stating that members of the Council of Ministers and secretaries of state in government administration may sit in parliament. The Constitutional Court spoke on the matter, ruling in 2004 (after the 2002 reform) that giving the heads of the ABW and AW the rank of secretaries of state is unconstitutional, as it circumvents the prohibition on combining a parliamentary mandate with employment in government administration. According to the CT ruling, the only legal effect of conferring the rank of secretary of state is the possibility of combining the position of agency head with a parliamentary mandate.


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 Sacrosanctity () or inviolability is the declaration of physical inviolability of a place (particularly temples and city walls), a sacred object, or a person. Under Roman law, this was established through sacred law (), which had religious conno ...
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 "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or '' -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adversarial behavior. More gen ...
communication with the Polish diplomatic missions and consulates, and of diplomatic pouch; * Recognizing international
terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war aga ...
,
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'', "I make numb") originally referred medically to any psychoactive compound with numbing or paralyzing properties. In the United States, it has since become associated with opiates ...
, 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 Biological agent, biological, chemical weapon, chemical, Radiological weapon, radiological, nuclear weapon, nuclear, or any other weapon that can kill or significantly harm many people or cause great dam ...
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 the act and field of intelligence-gathering by interception of ''signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly u ...
;


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 Bartosz Jarmuszkiewicz *Deputy Head of the Foreign Intelligence Agency: Colonel Dominik Duda *Deputy Head of the Foreign Intelligence Agency: Colonel Anetta Maciejewska


List of heads


See also

*
History of Polish intelligence services History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some theorists categ ...


References


External links

* {{Authority control Polish intelligence agencies