Lech comes out fighting

Former Polish president and Nobel laureate Lech Walesa said Sunday he has published on the Internet about 500 pages of files kept on him by the communist-era secret police in order to disprove allegations he collaborated with them in the 1980s.

Walesa founded and led the Solidarity trade union that helped topple communism in 1989, but has been dogged for years by allegations that he collaborated with the secret police in an attempt to sabotage the freedom movement. Although he has been cleared in court of such charges, Walesa has continued to face allegations from leading Solidarity activists Anna Walentynowicz and Andrzej Gwiazda, and Gwiazda's wife, Joanna Duda-Gwiazda.

Walesa said the files show that Gwiazda and Walentynowicz were themselves manipulated by the secret police without realizing it, and that the secret services pursued a strategy of deepening discord among the key Solidarity leaders.