Polish Intelligence Base Focus of Probe

STARE KIEJKUTY, Poland (AP) - A cluster of antennas rising over a dense pine forest is all outsiders can see of Poland's Kiejkuty intelligence base, recently the center of speculation over alleged secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe.

The center where Poland has for years trained intelligence officers is shrouded by trees, as well as a double row of barbed-wire fences, guard towers, and surveillance cameras. Security personnel shoo away anyone who stops on the road, and swimming and boating in the lake between the base and the nearest town is forbidden.

It is the Kiejkuty base's location — just 12 miles from Sczytno-Sczymany airport — that has drawn media attention after Human Rights Watch said the airport was used as a stopping point for secret CIA prisoner flights.

The Council of Europe is investigating reports that the CIA held terror suspects in secret detention centers in Eastern Europe.

Poland's government denies it ever housed any such prison. But if there had been one, Kiejkuty seems a likely location.

At least that is the way Polish news media have seen it. Journalists from the Rzeczpospolita newspaper had film confiscated when they approached the base recently, and the TVN24 news channel broadcast from outside the facility on Thursday.

The attention from journalists does not go over well with some of the 250 residents of the muddy village of Stare Kiejkuty. The town, across the lake from the base, consists of a few houses, a small general store, and a mailbox.

"And what if because of all these allegations terrorists attack here? That could happen because of all this," said Marek, 54, an unemployed truck driver who has lived in the village for more than 20 years.

Marek declined to give his last name, adding that most villagers refuse to discuss the intelligence school, possibly because many of them work there.

Polish media report that the intelligence school was launched in the 1970s, and that the famous Soviet mole and British defector Kim Philby visited the facility in the 1980s. The grounds hold, among other things, tennis courts, a swimming pool, and classrooms.

Three different uniformed soldiers in three different cars patrolled the town Friday, keeping an eye on who came and went. They drove by seven times in the half hour that AP journalists tried to talk with villagers outside the general store.

After AP journalists stopped on a road running along the base for directions, a uniformed soldier with an AK-47 assault rifle slung over his shoulder pulled up, got out of his car and told them that stopping was not permitted.

Journalists are only known to have been allowed into the camp once, in 1995, in an apparent effort to show how Poland's intelligence agencies were reforming after the fall of communism and the introduction of democracy.

A former head of Poland's intelligence agency, Zbigniew Siemiatkowski, has openly discussed the existence of the school but disputes claims of any clandestine CIA prisons there.

"It's no secret that in Kiejkuty there is an intelligence school," Siemiatkowski told the PAP news agency. "It's also no secret that Poland cooperates very closely with the CIA."

But, he said, the school "has nothing to do with secret prisons."