Spying, lying charges follow Polish reporter to grave (News Feature)

By Dominika Maslikowski 00000400073165, others, of Kapuscinski available Mar 3, 2010, 14:52 GMT

Warsaw - Ryszard Kapuscinski was, for many, a globe-trotting correspondent who fearlessly covered a civil war in Angola and the fall of the last shah of Iran.

But a controversial book released Wednesday claims the star Polish journalist - famed for his dispatches from the Third World - twisted the truth to create his myth and spied for the Communist party.

The 565-page book, titled Kapuscinski: Non-Fiction, claims Kapuscinski portrayed himself as a brave foreign correspondent by sensationalizing the dangers he faced and exaggerating the risks he took in his reporting.

The book, which is partly based on anonymous sources, also claims the famed writer cheated on his wife and collaborated with the Polish Communist government by giving them information on secret CIA operations in the Third World.

The book was released despite fierce protests from Kapuscinski's widow, Alicja, who sought to stop publication on grounds the biography violated her right to privacy and her husband's good name. A court on February 22 rejected Alijca's efforts to bar the book's publication.

The biography's author, Artur Domoslawski, has called Alicja's claims 'preventative censorship,' and says the biography doesn't diminish Kapuscinski's reputation.

The book renews a long-standing debate in Poland on the extent to which public figures can be blamed for collaborating with Communists, and if national heroes should be subjected to close scrutiny.

Domoslawski said the famed correspondent lived in complicated times and should be judged according to his motives.

'I wrote about Ryszard with great kindness and sympathy, and I tried to show his world and the motives for the decisions he made,' Domoslawski told the Polish News Agency PAP. 'I think we need honest discussions on our greats, our myths.'

Kapuscinski served as foreign correspondent for PAP from 1958 to 1972. He rose to international fame after his travels to Ethiopia and Iran, which he used as the basis for two books: The Emperor, on the decline of Haile Selassie's regime in Ethiopia, and Shah of Shahs,on the fall of Iran's last shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

His best-known work, The Soccer War, sealed his reputation as Poland's best reporter with its portrayal of a four-day war between El Salvador and Honduras, fought in 1969 when tensions broke out after a football game.

But his iconic image was more myth than reality, Domoslawski wrote.

'Despite the worldwide fame, which should have given him self- confidence ... something weighed him down,' Domoslawski wrote in his biography, suggesting that maybe he was burdened by the secrets that he kept.

Kapuscinski had been previously accused of spying in 2007 in an article in the Polish edition of Newsweek, which claimed the author worked for the secret service in the 1960s and 1970s.

Former Solidarity union leader Lech Walesa, whose strikes in the Gdansk shipyards helped topple Poland's Communist regime, was similarly accused of being a Communist spy in Walesa and the Security Service, released in June 2008.

Walesa's defenders saw the accusations as driven by political motives or jealousy.

Those who have defended Kapuscinski say his collaboration with the Communists was the price he paid for the freedom to travel during that time. The release of the biography raises anew old questions about the line between reporting and storytelling.

It isn't the first time Kapuscinski has been accused of disregarding journalism's basic rules. A 2007 article in Slate magazine told of 'embellishments, fabrications, errors, and fictions' in his work, and concluded, 'Nice try, but no journalism.'

Domoslawski said he still regards Kapuscinski as a master but that some of his books belong on the fiction shelf.

'It turns out that the master of the literature of fact sometimes treated facts nonchalantly,' Domoslawski told PAP. 'He crossed the lines between reportage and literature more often than we previously suspected, which raises the question about which direction reportage should go as a genre.'

Kapuscinski answered his critics in an 1987 interview in Granta, a literary magazine.

'There are so many complaints: Kapuscinski never mentions dates, Kapuscinski never gives us the name of the minister, he has forgotten the order of events,' Kapuscinski said. 'If those are the questions you want answered, you can visit your local library.'