The former head of the State Protection Office ("UOP"), General Gromosław Czempiński, and others have described a process by which counterfeit top-secret files and faked police reports were produced by the Communist secret service in the People's Republic of Poland. Their purpose was to undermine the credibility of prominent opponents of the ruling party and many other persons by ruining their good names as private individuals. "Fałszywka" (pl: "fałszywki") contained fake revelations about opposition members' working as alleged police informants under the communist system. The communist secret service used them frequently, said Czempiński, adding that often the officers who "signed" them were created out of thin air. Writer Jerzy Urban noted that, if available, signatures of alleged collaborators on unrelated documents were xeroxed and pasted into "fałszywkas" before their reprinting.