Polish PM seeks to prevent new president’s security chief from having security clearance

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

The office of Prime Minister Donald Tusk has filed an appeal to Poland’s highest administrative court in an effort to prevent Sławomir Cenckiewicz, the top security advisor to new opposition-aligned President Karol Nawrocki, from having his security clearance restored.

Cenckiewicz was last year stripped of his clearance. This year, he was charged by prosecutors with aiding and abetting the disclosure of classified military plans.

Should he take up his new position as Nawrocki’s security advisor without security clearance, he would in theory be unable to access state secrets and participate in certain high-level meetings, including within NATO. One ally warns that it would “paralyse” his work.

In early July, Nawrocki announced that, upon becoming president, he would appoint Cenckiewicz, a historian specialising in Poland’s communist period, as the head of the National Security Bureau (BBN), the body tasked with advising the head of state on defence and security issues.

At the time, in response to media reports claiming that he had been stripped of security clearance, Cenckiewicz announced that it had in fact been restored by a court ruling issued in June.

That ruling came in response to an appeal by Cenckiewicz against a decision made the previous year by Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the Military Counterintelligence Service (SKW) to revoke his clearance.

However, on Tuesday this week, the day before Nawrocki was sworn in as the new president, the spokesman for the security services, Jacek Dobrzyński, announced that Tusk’s chancellery had filed an appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court against June’s decision to restore Cenckiewicz’s security clearance.

Dobrzyński then claimed that, under the law on protecting classified information, filing the appeal meant that “Sławomir Cenckiewicz does not have access to classified information”.

Cenckiewicz himself responded on social media, writing: “I accept the terms of war!” Regarding Dobrzyński’s claim that he remained without access to classified information, Cenkiewicz said he would “leave that to the lawyers”.

Last month, the SKW also issued a statement saying that, because the June ruling was not yet final and could still be appealed, “the person concerned by the proceedings cannot use the security clearances that are the subject of the ongoing proceedings”, reports broadcaster RMF.

The government’s decision to file an appeal was criticised by Janusz Cieszyński, an MP from the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party and former minister in the previous PiS government.

“You are denying access to classified information to the future head of the BBN, effectively paralysing his work,” Cieszyński wrote on social media. “Is political revenge really a sufficient reason to hinder cooperation concerning the security of all Poles?”

However, last month, the minister in charge of the security services, Tomasz Siemoniak, said that the decision to revoke Cenckiewicz’s clearance had been “guided solely by the regulations, not politics”.

Siemoniak also noted the “additional context to this situation”, which is that Cenckiewicz is facing criminal charges for disclosing state secrets.

Those charges were filed in May by prosecutors, who accuse Cenckiewicz of in 2023 helping the then PiS defence minister, Mariusz Błaszczak, abuse his powers by declassifying and publishing secret military plans.

Błaszczak, who has also been charged over the incident, used the declassified materials as part of an effort during the 2023 election campaign to claim that Tusk’s Civic Platform (PO) party, when previously in power, had planned to to give up half of Poland if Russia invaded.

At the time that Błaszczak accessed the files in question, Cenckiewicz was director of the Military Historical Office (WBH). If found guilty of aiding and abetting Błaszczak, he could face up to ten years in prison. He denies committing any crime.

In 2023, Cenckiewicz was also head of a controversial commission set up by the then PiS government to investigate Russian influence in Poland. It issued a report recommending that Tusk, Siemoniak and other leading PO figures not be allowed to hold positions responsible for state security.

Its findings were ignored when PiS left office in December of that year and a new government was formed with Tusk as prime minister. Last year, the new ruling coalition passed a bill to abolish Cenckiewicz’s commission, but it was vetoed by PiS-aligned President Andrzej Duda.

When announcing Cenckiewicz as his pick to lead the BBN last month, Nawrocki cited his “outstanding” work heading the Russian influence committee and WBH.

However, speaking today, Tomasz Trela, an MP from the ruling coalition, called on the new president not to go ahead with Cenckiewicz’s appointment for the time being, telling Polskie Radio that it would be “terrifying” to have someone without security clearance as head of the BBN.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Mikołaj Bukaj/KPRP

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.