Kukliński, who was posthumously promoted to general, was on Thursday remembered in his native Poland, including in the capital Warsaw, where he is buried at a military cemetery.
Officials have said that Kukliński, who was born in Warsaw on June 13, 1930, deserves praise because he served his country when it was under Soviet control during the communist era.
The state-run Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) said in a social media post on Thursday that Kukliński risked his life to pass top-secret Warsaw Pact documents, including plans of "nuclear war against NATO," to the CIA.
Photo: PAP/CAF
The history institute noted that a Polish military court sentenced Kukliński to death in absentia under communism. Eleven years later, the sentence was lifted.
Kukliński passed Warsaw Pact files to the CIA between 1971 and 1981, including plans for a military onslaught on the West and for the imposition of martial law in Poland to crush the Solidarity movement, according to the IPN.
Shortly after the declaration of martial law in December 1981, Kukliński was spirited out of Poland by the CIA, along with his family.
In 1984, a military court in Warsaw sentenced him to death in absentia. The sentence was annulled after the fall of communism in Poland in 1989.
Ryszard Kukliński, pictured in 1996. Photo: PAP/CA
Kukliński died in the United States on February 11, 2004 at the age of 73.
He was posthumously elevated to the rank of brigadier general by Polish President Andrzej Duda in 2016.
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Source: IAR, PAP, IPN
