Amint megjosoltam korabban, a Gorka Sebestyen megvilagositja a kulfold szamara a D-209 ugyet es annak parhuzamait mivel nem szuletett magyarkent nem megy a fejebe ez az egesz magyaros megoldas. :-)
Ime itt van az elso cikk amelyet talaltam. Szerintem mar keszuloben van a tobbi is a NATO es egyebb szakfolyoiratok szamara.
The Budapest Sun
September 12, 2002 - Volume X, Issue 37
Questions to ask yourself - Opinion
By Sebestyen L v Gorka
Not a day passes nowadays in Hungary without there being a cover-story or lead news item on the television concerning the unravelling "Agent
Scandals". The initiator for this series of events was, of course, the unveiling of PM Péter Medgyessy as a former secret police officer of the pre-1990 Communist regime.
This revelation, which was followed for a day by vociferous denials from Medgyessy, later proved to be true and led to the creation of a very short-lived Parliamentary investigation committee on which I had the honor of serving as adviser.
At the same time, in a predictable game of political tag, the Government coalition parties stood up another committee mandated to lustrate all ministers and State secretaries of the last 12 years.
Since then the press has been full of leaks, accusations, denials and counter accusations. It is clear that one crucial question through all these occurrences is ‘what can we say with surety at this point in time?’ more than a decade since the momentous events of 1989/90 that brought democracy back to Hungary and the region and decades after some of the implicated individuals actually supported the regime’s organs of oppression?
As far as the scandal surrounding the Prime Minister is concerned, despite the unrealistic deadline set for our committee and the obstructionist behavior of various Government officials and the Socialist members of the committee - most especially the deputy chairman - we can now state the following. Either Medgyessy was lying when he finally discussed his past in the press and before the committee, or he was the most unique and exceptional SZ.T (deep cover) agent the secret police ever used.
Based on the testimony of former secret police agent handlers and the recently declassified internal regulations and orders of the then Communist Interior Ministry, we have managed to recreate a relatively detailed picture of SZ.T agents and their responsibilities.
From this it is apparent that such officers were only appointed after a lengthy selection and recommendation process; were themselves then trained by the secret police; were used not only to identify foreign Western agents but also to support the "global counter-intelligence" brief as it was put to us by one officer.
This meant that they were obliged to identify any Hungarians in their work or social environment that expressed anti-Communist views or could otherwise represent a threat to the dictatorship and its monopoly of the "truth".
Of course, all of this was done with the assistance and close supervision of the KGB which was resident in every important ministry and which even ran its own agent networks just to make sure the Hungarians were doing "their bit".
All of the above is in stark contrast to the picture Medgyessy has painted of himself as being recruited from one day to the next, of never spying on Hungarians and instead preparing economic analysis or fighting off the KGB as Hungary tried to join the IMF.
The discrepancy between the two versions of reality is cavernous, especially if one does the research on Hungary and the IMF and realizes that Hungary’s accession was the result of a very sudden Communist Party Central Committee decision taken in 1981 at the highest level, without the involvement of Medgyessy who at that time had already left the international department of the Finance Ministry.
It is therefore the job of all Hungarians - if they are interested - to decide which version is more plausible. Having done that we have not yet, however, even begun to address the more significant and overarching issues related to the D-209 scandal.
How can it be that Hungary is the only civilized nation in the modern age that has a head of government who has admitted to being a voluntary pillar of the oppressive mechanisms of a previous dictatorship? Would this have been allowed in Germany after the Second World War?
If transparency and accountability are founding tenets in any democracy, can we countenance a scenario in which such important information on a candidate is kept secret not only from the electorate that empowered the new Government but also from the President of the Republic that appointed the Prime Minister?
It is for each Hungarian to answer these questions for themselves. Whatever they conclude, one can justifiably predict that the issue will not be resolved in a hurry.
Whilst it has always been common to lie in politics, one cannot build a political reality on lies themselves. To state that everybody was a cog in the machine and therefore no one is responsible for the crimes of a dictatorship is untenable.
As is the denial of the historic fact that the secret police was not a power unto itself and that it served a very specific master: The Communist Party.
If we Hungarians can face these two realities, we may have a chance of clearing the air to everyone’s long-term benefit, be they on the left- or right-hand side of the political spectrum.
l The author was an official expert to the Medgyessy Investigatory Committee, is a former lecturer at the NATO Defense College of Rome and served in the Hungarian Ministry of Defense from 1993-1998 under first the Hungarian Democratic Forum and then the Socialist administrations.
