In 2003, two senior CIA officers arrived at the US Embassy in Warsaw to pick up a pair of large cardboard boxes which contained 15 million dollars. The boxes were delivered via German diplomatic pouch. The Polish intelligence service received the money, and the CIA received a secret prison — a remote villa in the Polish lake district — to interrogate al-Qaeda suspects.

The CIA prison in Poland was one of the most important of all sites created by the agency after the 9/11 attacks.