Operation Simoom (film)

Operacja Samum is a 1999 Polish spy film directed by Władysław Pasikowski, starring Marek Kondrat, Bogusław Linda and Olaf Lubaszenko. The film is a fictional account of Operation Simoom, a top secret Polish intelligence operation to withdraw CIA agents before the start of the Persian Gulf War.

The film takes place after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The film opens with retired Major Józef Mayer (Marek Kondrat) in a doctor’s office in Warsaw. Mayer is a former agent of the Polish Office for State Protection (UOP), the main Polish intelligence agency. Mayer’s doctor tells him that he may die from an unspecified disease. The film then shifts to Baghdad, Iraq, where Iraqi security forces raid a CIA safehouse maintained by CIA agent Jeff Magnus (Kristof Konrad). Walton and his two other CIA agents manage to escape into hiding as they prepare to leave Iraq before a possible war. Walton is warned by a Polish-American Mossad agent named Karen Pierce (Anna Korcz) to leave Iraq immediately. Meanwhile, Pierce is having an affair with Mayer’s son Paweł (Radosław Pazura), who is a Polish engineer working in Iraq. Paweł is detained and Pierce escapes after they are stopped by Iraqi secret police. While in a military prison, Paweł is tortured for not disclosing Pierce’s location to the Iraqis. The Iraqis suspect that Paweł is a spy.

Józef Mayer is summoned to UOP. The head official of the agency (Tadeusz Huk) informs Mayer that his son has gone missing after meeting Pierce. Mayer then inquires to an attaché of the American Embassy in Warsaw regarding the whereabouts of Karen Pierce. The film shifts back to Iraq, where two Polish UOP agents, Edward Broński (Bogusław Linda) and Stanisław Kosiński (Olaf Lubaszenko), are inquiring on the whereabouts of Pierce and Mayer’s son. Mayer manages to discover from his embassy attaché that Pierce is a Mossad agent. At the same time, Magnus and the other CIA agents prepare to leave Iraq via a helicopter extraction, until their helicopter is shot down. They escape and go back into hiding. In Poland, the head of the UOP meets with Hayes (Jerzy Skolimowski), a high-level official of the CIA. Because the UOP still has agents in Iraq, Hayes asks the head of the UOP to extract his CIA agents out of Iraq. Hayes says that if the extraction is successful, Poland’s foreign debts to the United States would be decreased dramatically. Hayes stresses that his agents must be evacuated out of Iraq, because they hold sensitive materials viable for war. Meanwhile, Mayer demands to go into Iraq and get his son out, undercover as a construction engineer. Pierce manages to escape Iraq and meets with the head of Mossad, Shopsovitz (Gustaw Holoubek). Shopsovitz reveals that Magnus and his team hold a microfilm containing Saddam Hussein’s daily schedules. Pierce agrees to take the microfilm from Magnus.