A Tale of Misinterpretation, Manipulation, and Mismanagement: The Unaccredited Polish Counterintelligence “NATO Centre”

How counterintelligence officers who played with the Russians wanted to hide from responsibility.

Nine years ago this day, on the December night from 17 to 18 in 2015, a peculiar scandal unfurled behind the scenes of Polish counterintelligence (SKW) and the media outlets that supported certain key officers. At the heart of this controversy lay an entity that was touted as a NATO-endorsed Counter Intelligence Centre of Excellence (CEK NATO), yet had never actually secured proper accreditation. Some of the principal figures behind this enterprise were officers directly involved in an earlier, notorious deal with Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) in 2013. They attempted to create a “safe haven” for themselves under NATO’s umbrella, all while their media allies—whom, following Vladimir Volkoff¹’s lead, we might call Montażyści (Assemblers) and their Montażownie (Assembly Shops)—cast any government attempt to reassert control as an “attack on NATO.”

This saga, also mentioned in the book “ZGODA – rząd i służby Tuska w objęciach Putina” by Professor Sławomir Cenckiewicz and (our own) Michał Rachoń, offers a stark lesson in the art of political manipulation, the hazards of intelligence mismanagement, and the dire consequences of disregarding international security standards.

Gen. Piotr Pytel was one of the SKW officers responsible for the scandalous agreement between the Polish counterintelligence service and the FSB in 2013.