Hero or snoop?

POLAND | WARSAW — Lech Walesa, the legendary anti-communist leader who played a historic role in bringing down communism in Poland and across Eastern Europe, had served as an informant in the 1970s for the same communist regime that he later fought, according to documents revealed publicly Thursday.

Walesa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for his defiant opposition to the communists and became Poland’s first democratically elected president after the 1989 fall of communism.

Walesa, now 72, has long admitted that he signed a document in the 1970s agreeing to provide information to the secret police, although he insisted he never informed on anyone. In 2000, he was cleared by a court, which said it found no evidence of collaboration.