CONSPIRACY TO ASSASSINATE THE POPE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000100010005-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 14, 2007
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: December 30, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20015 656-4068
ABC World News Tonight
STATION WJLA TV
ABC Network
DATE December 30, 1981 7:00 PM CITY Washington, D.
Conspiracy to Assassinate the Pope
PETER JENNINGS: In other news overseas, Pope John Paul
-- he was again today worried publicly about Poland. At Vatican
City, he told his weekly audience anxiety about the situation in
his native country was increasing. He spoke particularly of his
trepidation and concern for those Poles arrested under martial
law.
Last spring, it was at an outdoors audience in St.
Peter's Square that John Paul was shot by Mehmed Ali Agca. At
Agca's trial, there was talk of a conspiracy. ABC's Bill Blakemore
on special assignment has been pursuing evidence. In this report
tonight, some results of his investigation.
BILL BLAKEMORE: Italian investigators now believe Ali
Agca had at least two accomplices with him in St. Peter's Square
that day and support from others outside of Italy. ABC News has
learned that this man standing next to Agca just before the shoot-
ing, and his face still visible just below Agca's gun at the moment
of firing, has now been identified by Turkish authorities as this
man, named Omar I, a wanted Turkish terrorist and longtime associate
of Agca. Omar I disappeared from St. Peter's Square that day and
is still at large. But investigations into a third possible accom-
plice in the square are more surprising.
Lowell Newton of Detroit, Michigan was a tourist in St.
Peter's Square on the day of the shooting and was flown back here
to Rome this week by Italian authorities to give evidence, which
the presiding judge has told me is now of extreme importance in
the case. He reconstructed for us what he told the judge.
LOWELL NEWTON: I was standing on top of the fountain
to get a better view, had just raised the camera and taken one
OFFICES IN: WASHINGTON D.C. ? NEW YORK ? LOS ANGELES ? CHICAGO ? DETROIT ? AND OTHER PRINCIPAL CITIES
Material supplied by Radio N Reports, Inc. may be used for file and reference Purposes only. It may not be reproduced, sold or public y demonstrated or e#slbited.
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picture of the Pope before the gunfire. I lowered the camera
and heard three gunshots -- pop, pop, pop -- in rapid succession,
raised the camera and took another photograph, then jumped down
from the fountain, came over this direction about ten feet, when
suddenly I saw a young man running out of the crowd toward me. He
had a gun in his right hand. I later drew a sketch of the man with
the gun. My wife and the friends travelling with us also saw him
with the gun. As he ran past, I turned quickly, took one photograph
of him from ten feet away. I chased him for about 20 feet, stopped,
took one more photograph from about 20 feet away. Then the young
man and the gun disappeared in the columns behind the colonade.
BLAKEMORE: ABC News has learned Turkish authorities are
sure this man is not Omar I, the man who was standing next to Agca.
And there is a surprising new lead about who this third man may be.
At this point, the story becomes almost bizarre. We
learned this morning that Turkish authorities and the American
FBI are investigating the possibility that the pointed-nosed man
with the gun Lowell Newton saw in St. Peter's Square could be the
same as this man. This is one of the five identicate pictures which
appeared on ABC and Time magazine and elsewhere as members of a re-
ported Libyan hit squad sent to America to kill President Reagan.
When we showed Lowell Newton the magazine identicate
pictures this morning in our ABC Rome Bureau, without telling him
why, he immediately pointed to the same man on the page and said
"Now this looks like the man I saw in St. Peter's." A few minutes
later for our camera, he explained why.
NEWTON: The thin nose and the lips, pursed and tense.
But the face, the oblong issue of the face, is the primary thing.
BLAKEMORE: There are other suspected conspirators who
may not have been in St. Peter's Square that day. Of all of Ali
Agca's well-financed travels through Europe before the shooting,
it is the 50 days he spent at luxury hotels in Bulgaria that in-
vestigators find most interesting.
Here, by Ali Agca's own admission, he met two men, a
Turkish gun smuggler named Omar Mercene (?) and a Bulgarian who
gave his name as Mustafa Ahof (?). Agca admits meeting these same
two men in Tunisia three months later. Police believe the Bulgarian
Ahof may have had a central role in planning the shooting. From
the Tunisian meeting of these two, Agca, using false identities,
launched a new series of constant travels in and around Italy,
which ended with the assassination attempt.
Finally, All Agca himself remains the most tantilizing
mystery keeping his secrets. Prison sources tell ABC Agca was a
model prisoner up until a couple of weeks ago, even gardening five
or six hours a day. But on-December 20th, he began the hunger strike
he had threatened if he weren't given a new trial. High Italian of-
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ficials say he's become restless and impatient. They believe Agca
was promised an escape from prison by his co-conspirators. Now
that Agca knows that escape is unlikely here, authorities plan to
face him with evidence of the plot to see if he'll begin to talk.
Bill Blakemore, ABC News, in Rome.
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