WARSAW -- On a stretch of highway in the mountains of northern Iraq one chilly autumn evening in 1990, a Polish intelligence officer pulled four bottles of Johnnie Walker Red out of a satchel and passed them to six new friends -- from the United States.


"Drink," he ordered.


Although they hadn't had a bite to eat all day, the Americans, all intelligence officers, obeyed the order and downed the whisky in silence. The booze was meant to help camouflage the Americans as drunken Eastern Europeans. Perhaps it was their training, or maybe nerves, but when the six agents and their Polish chaperons reached the border crossing between Iraq and Turkey at sunset, they were stone-cold sober.


This was the culmination of one of the most remarkable clandestine operations of the Persian Gulf War, following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August of 1990. Polish intelligence agents trained to serve the Warsaw Pact smuggled six American intelligence officers out of Iraq via Turkey.


The escape came after the six agents had spent weeks on the run in Kuwait and Baghdad while White House and CIA officials desperately searched for a way to save them. Eventually, they turned to the Poles, who had ties throughout Iraq because of construction work done there by Polish engineering firms. And with the help of a senior spy flown in from Warsaw and a civilian Polish technician-turned-refugee-bus-driver with a knack for improvisation, they finally made their way out.


"It was high risk," said William Webster, who directed the CIA at the time and traveled to Poland in early November 1990 to commend the Polish government for its help. The Poles "deserve a lot of credit. It was a good beginning for our relationship in the future."


The Polish rescue operations helped prompt the United States to change its policy and back Poland's demands to renegotiate the $33 billion it owed to 17 foreign governments, including the United States, U.S. officials said.


When Iraqi tanks rolled into Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, the six American officers were in Kuwait on a covert mission near the border with Iraq and were unable to seek the support of the U.S. Embassy because they did not have diplomatic cover identities.


The Americans fled to Baghdad with hundreds of other foreigners scrambling to stay ahead of Iraqi intelligence.


"They were the most sensitive people there," even though they were not taken hostage as other Americans were, a former U.S. official said. "It was a big deal for us," said another. "They were in terrible jeopardy." In late August, a representative from the CIA contacted a high-ranking Polish intelligence officer in Warsaw and asked for assistance in slipping the Americans out of Iraq.


"We knew it was very essential, very important for our new relationship," said the former Polish minister of internal affairs, Krzysztof Kozlowski. "We needed cooperation from the Americans. We knew your support was essential for the creation of our new democracy."


Kozlowski assigned one of his best officers to the case. For weeks the officer labored in Warsaw attempting to figure out a way to help the six Americans. Meanwhile, the agents took refuge at a Polish construction camp outside of Baghdad.


"Every week as we prepared the action the situation changed in Iraq," a Polish intelligence officer said. "Every day was worse. New restrictions on foreigners, people getting taken hostage."


Polish intelligence officers were smuggled into Iraq to run things from Baghdad. Soon after their arrival they met the American agents. By one Polish account they were in dire need of rescue.


"When we met the chief, he was in bad shape, completely wet (with sweat), worn out," one Pole recalled. "We told him, 'We have come as Polish officers to take you out of Iraq.' We felt very proud. We, as officers of a small country, were coming to save an American chief. For him it was real tension, life and death. For us it was just an operation."


The Poles provided the Americans with fake passports from a Slavic country, but the Americans were unable to pronounce their new names. So the Poles banned them from speaking in the presence of Iraqis.


After several weeks an Iraqi acquaintance told one of the Poles that people had begun to ask questions. But the officers needed help. The activities of one man in particular caught their eye.


On Aug. 18, a middle-aged Polish technician had guided a convoy of 13 buses carrying Vietnamese, Filipinos, Americans, Germans and Poles to Iraq's border post at Trebil before the crossing into Jordan. The crossing had descended into chaos. But in the madness, the Pole took a walk and found a small gap in the border fence. Ever the technician, he began to untwist the wires. Soon he had a gaping hole. About an hour later, his 430 charges were in Jordan. Word of his creative heroics spread quickly in the Polish community and the technician was summoned to the Polish Embassy and engaged to assist in the operation.


The morning of the planned escape arrived. The six Americans piled into a convoy and headed north toward Turkey.


Just north of the Iraqi city of Mosul, a nightmare came true. At a military checkpoint, an Iraqi officer approached one of the cars, looked at some of the passports, and said in perfect Polish, "How lucky I am to see my best friends." Thousands of Iraqis had studied in Poland in the 1980s.


"My heart was going through my mouth and out the other way at the same time," the technician recalled.


He leaped from the car, grabbed the security agent and planted three kisses on his cheeks followed by a classic bear hug, moving him away from the car. They exchanged pleasantries, the technician complimented his Polish, they talked about the weather and the world.


"Ah," the technician said, showing the passports, "you must check these."


"No problem," the Iraqi replied, "You are friends, you can go."


South of the Turkish border, the Polish officer stopped the convoy and walked to the technician's car. Pulling whisky from his satchel, he advised the American passengers to drink and then to walk slowly to the Turkish side to meet Polish officials waiting for them there. They didn't. "They ran like sportsmen," the technician said.