Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 17, 1992 TAG: 9202170116
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
SOLIDARITY ASSISTANCE DISCLOSED
President Reagan, in cooperation with Pope John Paul II, approved a plan a decade ago to secretly supply Poland's outlawed Solidarity movement, Time magazine reports.Spokesmen for the former president could not be reached Sunday, but Time quoted Reagan as saying that he and the pope felt the division of Europe at the Yalta conference after World War II was "a great mistake . . . and something should be done."
"Solidarity was the very weapon for bringing this about, because it was an organization of the laborers of Poland," Reagan says in the Feb. 24 issue of the magazine, which is available today.
Reagan didn't discuss any such plan in his memoirs, but he did say in discussing Solidarity: "I wanted to be sure we did nothing to impede this process and everything we could to spur it along. This was what we had been waiting for since World War II. . . . But our options were limited."
Time said its account, written by Carl Bernstein, was the result of several months of reporting in which more than 75 officials of the Reagan administration and the Vatican were interviewed.
Attempts by The Associated Press to reach several officials Sunday were unsuccessful. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, who was Reagan's spokesman during part of his second term, said he knew nothing about the plan.
Solidarity was outlawed by a declaration of martial law in Poland in 1981. Subsequently, Time said, "tons of equipment - fax machines, printing presses, transmitters, telephones, shortwave radios, video cameras, photocopiers, telex machines, computers, word processors - were smuggled into Poland via channels established by priests and American agents and representatives of the AFL-CIO and European labor movements."
The magazine said the supply network had its genesis in a meeting between the president and the pope in the Vatican Library on June 7, 1982. Time said money for the project came from CIA funds, the congressionally created National Endowment for Democracy, secret accounts in the Vatican and Western trade unions.
The magazine said the project was part of a policy of covert operations aimed at encouraging reform movements in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland.
It said Reagan telephoned the pope for his advice shortly after the declaration of martial law.
Major decisions on funneling aid to Solidarity were made by Reagan, CIA Director William Casey and National Security Adviser William Clark, in consultation with the pope, Time said.