The Spying Game, Continued

What was the nature of Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy's links with the communist-era secret service? And what other leading Hungarian politicians worked as spies and informers for the former regime? These questions, which exploded on the Hungarian political scene just days after Medgyessy's election victory in April, have dominated the news in Hungary over the past two weeks, as a long line of senior figures and former ministers appeared before two committees set up to investigate the pre-1989 history of all of Hungary's top politicians.

One committee is dedicated to unravelling the role of Medgyessy alone. When summoned to appear before the commission on 1 August, Medgyessy admitted to having been an active and successful secret service officer 25 years ago. Medgyessy, who heads a Socialist Party coalition with the Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ), said that he was not blackmailed into taking the job and feels no shame at his involvement with the Communist secret service between 1978 and 1982. He held different positions at the finance ministry, which at the time was urging reforms and a cautious rapprochement to the West.

During a three-hour grilling by the parliamentary committee hearing, Medgyessy said that his work entailed writing annual summaries about Hungary's economic situation, reporting on possible national security risks, and suggesting how to counter the threats. He said that he had never written reports about his colleagues, nor had he had any connection with the Soviet KGB. He had, he claimed, acted only in Hungary's interests.

Medgyessy said he had been enlisted specifically to prevent confidential financial data from reaching the hands of foreign intelligence agencies, including the KGB, and thereby threatening Hungary's bid to join the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Soviet Union frowned on Hungary's bid and had already in 1968 prevented Hungary from joining the IMF. When the country eventually joined the IMF in 1982, his work with the secret service ended, and he was discharged from the service. According to recently declassified documents, his work was deemed excellent by the secret services.

Medgyessy was not paid by the secret services, but he did receive rewards. He emphasized that he had received an award in 1982 together with Jozsef Antall, a pointed reference to the first conservative prime minister of democratic Hungary, who is revered by much of the conservative opposition.

A number of former officials who might have known about Medgyessy's past were called in to give testimony. However, only one, Istvan Horvath, said he had been aware of Medgyessy's stint with the secret service. Horvath, who was the last interior minister before the fall of the communist regime, signed Medgyessy's discharge papers in 1982.

However, Medgyessy now faces the possibility of fresh hearings, albeit remote. After making public some documents on Medgyessy's past on Wednesday, the chairman of the committee, Laszlo Balogh, a member of the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF), said that in many areas the documents contradicted Medgyessy's statement. He has now asked for a new hearing to be called. Time, though, is against Balogh, as the committee is due to complete its work by 15 August. Although some ministers of the communist regime will be questioned this week, Socialist Party colleagues of Medgyessy who are members of the committee have already drafted their summary report, in which they defend Medgyessy's role as lawful and as an attempt to promote Hungary's financial interests and reduce national security risks.

The scandal first broke in a conservative newspaper with close ties to the previous, conservative government headed by Viktor Orban, and a constitutional crisis appeared to be in the cards. Orban's Fidesz party called for a vote of no confidence in the prime minister, and for a time it appeared that the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) might leave the coalition. SZDSZ includes several people imprisoned, put under surveillance, or persecuted by the communist system, and it was set up with a strongly anti-communist platform in 1988.

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The possibility that the government might collapse just weeks after it was formed was prevented by the establishment of the committee investigating Medgyessy's past and Medgyessy's proposal to "pour clear water into the public glass" by proposing a new law that would make public all documents related to former communist-era secret agents. Hungary has a law aimed at weeding former secret agents and informers from public office and other key positions, but there is no law on making the former secret-police files public.

The coalition currently appears secure, although a prominent philosopher and legendary founding father of the SZDSZ party, Janos Kis, and another founding member, Peter Hack, have resigned from the party. Indeed, according to the latest opinion polls, support for the government and for Medgyessy personally has risen.

However, the question of politicians' cooperation with the Communist regime has developed into a full-scale battle across the political scene. The head of the committee investigating Medgyessy, Laszlo Balogh, said on 7 August that he had found a bullet lodged in the back of a chair in his office and said that he has received a number of threatening phone calls. Several officials of former governments have been accused of removing documents from the archives. These claims, however, have not been proven.

What is clearer, though, are the battle lines over the work of another parliamentary committee set up, at the request of the SZDSZ, to investigate the record of all 193 public officials of the past 12 years for links to the secret service agents before 1990. The opposition argues that the committee was set up in order to distract attention away from the Medgyessy investigation. The Socialists claim that opposition leaders are afraid that the investigation may reveal that some members of the previous government also collaborated with the former regime.

The committee is due to submit a report by early September, after which it will be sent to information-gathering agencies — the Interior Ministry, the Information Office, the Defense Ministry, the Historical Office, and the National Security Agency — to decide whether a list of names can be made public.

The possibility of names being published prompted opposition members of the committee to boycott the committee on 9 August. They believe that disclosing a list is a breach the Hungarian constitution on at least under five counts. The ombudsman for data protection, Attila Peterfalvi, has also said that the names of the politicians concerned cannot be made public without their personal approval or without legal authorization.

How many names might appear on the list, if one is published, has been the subject of a great deal of speculation in the media. One report suggested that at least 20 cabinet members over the past 12 years had worked with the secret service. However, after looking more closely at some of the documents, the final list will be shorter, the chairman of the committee, Imre Mecs (SZDSZ) suggested, as some government figures recruited by the communist security services had not written reports and were therefore too lower-ranking to be named. The committee had, however, found former communist agents in all but one (short-lived) cabinet to have held power since the fall of the communist system. All members of the Medgyessy cabinet agreed to have their names and any information relating to their past made public.

*This article was edited and adapted from Transitions Online. A longer version is available at: www.tol.cz

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