The Office of State Protection (

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Polish people, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken * Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin ...

: ''Urząd Ochrony Państwa'' (, UOP)''Słownik procedur parlamentarnych''
Kancelaria Sejmu, , p. 401) was the

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 ...

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 ...

from 1990 to 2002, when it was split into two new agencies.

Foundation

The UOP was founded on 6 April 1990 as a department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Krzysztof Kozłowski served as the UOP's first chief from 1990 to 1992. In 1996 UOP was transformed into a separate government agency under the supervision of the

prime minister A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but r ...

. It was responsible for

intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as t ...

counter-intelligence Counterintelligence (counter-intelligence) or counterespionage (counter-espionage) is any activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting ac ...

and government electronic security, including

telephone A telephone, colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that enables two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most ...

wiretaps.

Reasons for formation

The UOP replaced the communist-era

Służba Bezpieczeństwa The Security Service (; ), in full Security Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and commonly known as SB, was a secret police force established in the Polish People's Republic in 1956 as a successor to the Ministry of Public Security (P ...

(SB), I Departament People's Republic of Poland Ministry of Internal Affairs – intelligence, II Departament

People's Republic of Poland The Polish People's Republic (1952–1989), formerly the Republic of Poland (1947–1952), and also often simply known as Poland, was a country in Central Europe that existed as the predecessor of the modern-day democratic Republic of Poland. ...

Ministry of Internal Affairs – counter-intelligence, whose responsibilities had additionally included the suppression of opposition to the government prior to 1989.

Agency split

In June 2002, the agency was split into two separate entities –

Agencja Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego The Internal Security Agency (ISA or ABW; ) is Poland's domestic counterintelligence and security agency. The ABW is responsible for analyzing, reporting and preventing threats to Poland's internal security, including terrorism, foreign espionag ...

(''Internal Security Agency''), which deals with internal security of the country, and

Agencja Wywiadu The Foreign Intelligence Agency ( (; or ) is a Polish intelligence agency tasked with the gathering of public and secret information abroad for the Republic of Poland. It was created in 2002 from the reform and split of , which was split into ...

(''Intelligence Agency''), which deals with foreign intelligence.

Chiefs

* Krzysztof Kozłowski (1990 – 1990) *

Andrzej Milczanowski Andrzej is the Polish form of the given name Andrew. Notable individuals with the given name Andrzej * Andrzej Bartkowiak (born 1950), Polish film director and cinematographer * Andrzej Bobola, S.J. (1591–1657), Polish saint, missionary and m ...

(1990 – 1992) *

Piotr Naimski Piotr Aleksander Naimski (born 2 February 1951) is a Polish politician and academic. He previously served as a Member of the Sejm, the Government Plenipotentiary for Strategic Energy Infrastructure, the Deputy Minister of Economy and the Head of ...

(1992) *

(1992) * Jerzy Konieczny (1992 – 1993) * Gromosław Czempiński (1993 – 1996) * Andrzej Kapkowski, p.o. szefa UOP (1996 – 1996) * Andrzej Kapkowski (1996 – 1997) * Jerzy Nóżka, p.o. szefa UOP (1997 – 1998) * Zbigniew Nowek (1998 – 2001) *

Zbigniew Siemiątkowski Zbigniew Siemiątkowski (born 8 October 1957 in Ciechanów, Poland) is a Polish politician and political scientist. He was Minister of Internal Affairs, 1996–97, and head of the Intelligence Agency (''Agencja Wywiadu'', or ''AW''), 2002 – ...

, p.o. szefa UOP (2001 – 2002) *

Andrzej Barcikowski Andrzej is the Polish form of the given name Andrew. Notable individuals with the given name Andrzej * Andrzej Bartkowiak (born 1950), Polish film director and cinematographer * Andrzej Bobola, S.J. (1591–1657), Polish saint, missionary and m ...

(2002)

References

External links

Agencja Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego
homepage {{DEFAULTSORT:Urzad Ochrony Panstwa 1990 establishments in Poland 2002 disestablishments in Poland Defunct Polish intelligence agencies