ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF THE POPE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000100700005-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 21, 2007
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: May 12, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO 1V REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 656-4068
20/20
May 12, 1983 10:00 PM
STATION WJLA-TV
ABC Network
Attempted Assassination of the Pope
Washington, DC
HUGH DOWNS: Two years ago tomorrow, Pope John-Paul II
was shot down and nearly killed by an assassin in the crowd in
St. Peter's Square at the Vatican.
For two years now, while the Italian police and the
security agencies of several countries have investigated, there
have been theories, stories of elaborate plots, and finally a
strong suggestion which has gained worldwide credence that the
shooting of the Pope was ordered by the KGB, the intelligence
agency of the Soviet Union, and planned and directed by the
Bulgarian government.
Well, for the past four months, a number of ABC News
producers and correspondents have examined that theory. This
is a unique investigation, and one we're proud of. And here
tonight to pull it together is Tom Jariel.
TOM JARIEL: Hugh, the investigation took our ABC News
team to 12 countries. Our people evaluated all of the theo-
ries. We talked with those named in the Communist conspiracy
theory. And, more important, we checked their alibis, quite
possibly the first journalists ever to do so.
Our investigative team work is called the "Communist
Plot Theory," and a very serious question, as you'll see.
Our ABC news team will take you step-by-step through
the complicated investigation, beginning with the arrest of the
gunman in St. Peter's Square.
Material supplied by Radio TV Reports, Inc. may be used for file and reference purposes only. It may not be reproduced, sold or publicly demonstrated or exhibited.
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Mammet All Agca, a 23-year-old Turk, shot the Pope.
He was captured on the spot and made no attempt to deny the
shooting. As a matter of fact, he seemed proud of it. But why
he did it is the big mystery.
He told police he was a terrorist. Just a terrorist,
tied to no group. He said, "I decided to do something to draw
the attention of the whole word to me, and so I saw myself
forced to kill the Pope." Agca said he acted completely alone.
But there were doubts this young Turk could have
traveled as he had from Turkey, to England, to at least eight
countries using several passports, without help. One possible
explanation, international smuggling techniques.
Drug enforcement experts in Europe have told ABC News
Agca's travels would be consistent with those patterns of an
international drug smuggler, but there was no evidence of any
conspiracy presented at the Agca trial.
Yet, when the time came for sentencing, Judge Severino
Santiaopochi(?) startled the court saying this, he was con-
vinced "Agca was just the emerging point of a conspiracy".
Agca was sentenced to life and disappeared into
Italian prisons. After 18 months, though, he sent out word
that, "yes, there was a conspiracy." He said it was directed
by Turkish gun and drug smugglers and by Bulgarian officials in
Rome.
This is Agca's current story. He claims that after
escaping jail in Turkey, he made his way to Bulgaria. There,
he met a Turkish businessman authorities of several countries
consider a top smuggler, Bekir Celenk, and later, Musar Celebi,
one of Celenk's rightwing contacts.
Eventually, Agca says, Celebi, claiming to speak for
Celenk, offered him the equivalent of a million-and-a-half
dollars to shoot the Pope. He was given a gun, went to Rome,
and there through their contacts met three Bulgarians, two
diplomats, Todor Aivazov, and Yeliov Vassilev, and the Rome
manger for Bulglarian Airlines, Sergei Antonov.
They all denied being part of a plot and, more
significantly, provide alibis. Essentially, it's the case of
one man's word against that of others -- Agca's words against
those he accuses.
Can this self-styled terrorist be believed?
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Bill Blakemore, the ABC News Bureau Chief in Rome,
looked into Agca's background.
BILL BLAKEMORE: Tom, Mammet All Agca comes from a
poor family in Eastern Turkey. In 1979, he was arrested for
the murder of a well-known Turkish newspaper editor, Abdi
Epecci(?). While on trial, he escaped from jail, obviously
with outside help and money, and, promptly sent a message to a
newspaper saying he would now kill the Pope. Then All Agca
disappeared until he turned up in Rome a year-and-a-half later.
Today, All Agca lives here behind bars in this Rome
prison revelling in all the attention he gets. Only one
journalist has been permitted to be present during an Agca
interrogation, a Turkish newspaper reporter, who described Agca
this way for ABC.
UGUR MUNGU: I believe that he is a psychopath. He is
a very fast tempered person who is delighted to put his name in
the limelight.
BLAKEMORE: He is allowed newspapers and television,
and follows his own case with obvious relish.
Italian investigators describe Agca as extremely
intelligent, skillfully mixing lies with the truth, always
giving them just enough facts to keep them going.
JARIEL: And so, 18 months after the shooting, as a
result of Agca's testimony, they arrest a Bulgarian Airlines
official, Sergei Antonov. The other two Bulgarian officials
Agca named, Vassilev and Aivazov, have already returned to
Bulgaria.
In the Italian Parliament, government ministers
accused the Bulgarian secret policy of complicity in the plot
to kill the Pope. And because Bulgaria is the Soviet Union's
most obedient satellite, there was widespread speculation that
the Soviets must have been behind the Bulgarian plot.
Why would the Soviets conspire with the Bulgarians to
kill the Pope?
The answer suggested, Poland. At the time of the
shooting, Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement was at the height
of its power. Poland appeared on the verge of bolting from the
Eastern Bloc, and the driving force behind this was the
Polish-born Pope John-Paul who, Vatican sources tell ABC News,
was running Poland from the Vatican and had little time for
anything else.
So threatened, the Soviets started a series of
menacing military maneuvers on the Polish border.
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The Pope had sent a message to Leonid Brezhnev.
Earlier reports pointed to that message as a key motive in the
scenario of a Russian plot against the Pope. According to
those earlier reports, the letter, in Russian in the Pope's own
hand, threatened that if there were an invasion of Poland the
Pope would lay down his crown and return to Poland to stand
with his compatriots.
But ABC sources, including some at the very highest
level of the Vatican say those accounts are wrong. They say
there was no letter handwritten in Russian, but rather a spoken
message delivered by an intermediary reading from notes, and
the message itself was conciliatory, the Pope offering to
mediate, urging caution on both sides, and making clear that if
there were an invasion, then the Pope's heart would be with his
people.
John-Paul did not say he would quit as Pope and return
to Poland. All-in-all, a considerably less threatening
message.
The Vatican appointed Cardinal John Krol to speak to
ABC News on this subject.
CARDINAL JOHN KROL: Not only was there not such a
letter, but such a letter from -- directly from the Pope to
Brezhnev would be a total departure from all normal procedures.
No way could you conceive of the Holy Father saying "I would
resign."
JARIEL: What about the alleged Bulgarian-Soviet plot?
What's the evidence to prove it?
ABC News correspondent Chris Harper traveled to
Bulgaria to talk face-to-face with those Agca accused of
complicity. They deny it.
CHRIS HARPER: Tom, Agca names Turkish businessman
Bekir Celenk as the mastermind. Now under a form of house
arrest in Bulgaria, Celenk is bitter about his detention,
scoffing at the accusations that he would set up a plot to kill
the Pope.
[INTERPRETER FOR BEKIR CELENK]: What do I have to do
with the Pope? The Pope is a religious leader. What business
do I have with the Pope? Where is the money?
HARPER: Agca says Turkish rightwing leader Musar
Celebi was the man who delivered Celen's orders, and the man
who offered him a million-and-a-half dollars to kill the Pope.
Celebi is jailed in Italy now on suspicion of being
part of that plot. But before his arrest, he told ABC News
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correspondent Bob Brown that Agca impressed him as a lone
gunman seeking attention.
That's what the Turks had to say.
What about Antonov and the other Bulgarians in Rome,
the ones Agca says actually participated in the attack on the
Pope?
Boyan Trikov(?), a key official in Bulgaria, told ABC
News that no Bulgarians were involved in any plot.
It's not surprising that the Bulgarians deny any role,
but if Bulgarians were involved they violated basic rules of
spycraft.
Why were the Bulgarians still in Rome 18 months after
the attempt?
plotter?
Why was there a planning meeting in the home of a
Why was there direct contact with the assassin?
JARIEL: The ABC News investigation raises more
questions, finding major discrepancies in Agca's testimony
describing the days leading up to and including the shooting.
May 10th, 1981. Agca claims he took part in a
strategy meeting at the Antonov apartment, in this building, up
on the third floor. Agca has described the apartment, and says
those who were there included Antonov, his wife and daughter,
two other Bulgarians, and four Turks. Agca says Mrs. Antonov
served tea.
Our investigation found holes in that story. Chris
Harper again.
HARPER: Tom, ABC News has learned that Agca made
several mistakes in his description of this apartment. The
most important was his description of sliding doors made of
woods. Such doors do exist in every other apartment in this
building, but not in the Antonovs. Their door was broken and
replaced by a curtain main of cloth.
The most interesting discrepancy in Agca's story
concerns his claim that Mrs. Antonov and her daughter were in
the apartment. She denies it.
[INTERPRETER FOR ROSSITZA ANTONOVI: I learned the
name Ali Agca the day they arrested my husband.
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HARPER: She says that she had left Rome two days
before the alleged meeting, drove to this border point in
Northern Italy, stayed at this hotel in Yugoslavia, and then
went on to Bulgaria.
The Bulgarians say this is the register at the hotel
in Yugoslavia, and the bill she paid. But any travel documents
confirming the date she left Italy are not available.
She says she was in Sofia, hundreds of miles from
Rome, when Agca says she was serving tea.
JARIEL: Agca's story continues on May 11th. Agca
claimed at first that Antonov and Aivazov went with him to St.
Peter's Square on a reconnaissance mission at about 5:00 PM.
But, when an Italian Airport official testified that Antonov
had been at the airport at that time, Agca changed his story.
Square.
Now, it was only Aivazov who went with him to the
Chris Harper again with the ABC News findings.
HARPER: In an exclusive interview with ABC News,
Aivozov denied ever meeting Agca. He said that on May 11th he
went to this shop south of Rome and bought five bicycles.
[INTERPRETER FOR TODOR AIVAZOV]: It was around 3:30
when we arrived at the store.
HARPER: The owner remembers the sale, and ABC News
has obtained a copy of the bill. Aivazov says he then went to
the airport to ship the bicycles to Sofia. He claims the
shipment was made at 4:30, roughly the same time Agca says they
met in the center of Rome, 20 miles away.
ABC News has obtained a copy of the shipping bill with
what appears to be Aivazov's signature. The bill does not
record the time of the shipment.
JARIEL: The next day was May 12th. Originally, Agca
told investigators that he had a rendezvous at around noon with
Antonov and Aivazov. But, when three Italian police officers
testified that they saw Antonov here in a small office off the
courtyard at the Bulgarian Embassy at that very time, then Agca
changed his testimony again.
No, he said this time, it was only Aivazov that he
met.
Again, Chris Harper with the ABC News findings.
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HARPER: Tom, Aivazov maintains he was at this Italian
customs office to clear a shipment. He said he met a Mrs.
Catina. Mrs. Catina was the customs official here at the time,
but she told us she had too many meetings to recall one in
particular.
But ABC News has learned that another Italian official
has confirmed Aivazov's story.
JARIEL: May 13th, the day Agca shot the Pope. Agca
claims that he was picked up here at the Piazza della Ricuber-
ca(?) at about three in the afternoon by Antonov and Aivazov.
He says they then drove to Aivazov's apartment where they
picked up two pistols and a panic bomb and then went to St.
Peter's Square.
Again, Chris Harper with the ABC News findings.
HARPER: Antonov maintains he was in this Bulgarian
Airlines office at the time of the shooting. Nine Bulgarians
and one Italian have testified to that, but the Italian cannot
be sure of the time she spoke to-Antonov.
Aivazov says he was in the Bulgarian Embassy when two
men came to his office about 45 minutes before the Pope was
shot. One was a Bulgarian magician. The other was the owner
of this Italian nightclub, Luigi Marceo. He told us that he
visited the Embassy that day, but did not meet Aivazov.
So, the two Bulgarians have alibis, but they are not
air-tight.
JARIEL: There are other apparent discrepancies.
Item: How did the alleged conspirators communicate?
Agca says he spoke to Antonov and Aivazov in English,
but an Italian police official says that at the time of his
arrest, Agca was able to speak only a little English, and both
Antonov and Aivazov insists they speak no English.
Item: Agca once claimed this man pictured running
from St. Peter's Square after the shooting was Aivazov. Then
Agca again changed his story. He said it was a close Turkish
friend he would never identify.
Those are some of the most contradictory details about
Agca's testimony we've been able to get from sources close to
the investigation.
The only man to support Agca's claim of a plot was a
Bulgarian defector in Paris, Iordan Mantarov. He told us
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through intermediaries that a month before the shooting he
warned French authorities about a Bulgarian plot to assassinate
the Pope.
However, American intelligence sources say he didn't
tell his story until nine months after the shooting.
In any case, Italian investigators tell us they're not
particularly interested in Mantarov because his knowledge of
any plot is only hearsay.
And so, the spotlight comes back, as it always does,
to Agca, and we're left to speculate, based on the information
we know.
Theory Number One: He is, as he now claims, a
professional killer, a gunman hired by the Bulgarians or others
to kill the Pope. His participation in the murder of the
Turkish newspaper editor, Eppeci, is certainly a credential.
Theory Number Two: Agca was indeed connected to the
ring leader he named, Bekir Celenk, and to the Bulgarians. But
his role was only that of a functionary in their business of
smuggling drugs and guns between Turkey, Bulgaria and Italy.
But he was either a courier or an enforcer for them. This
theory would help explain how Agca was able to name Celenk and
identify the Bulgarians from a photo album shown him by the
police.
So, according to Theory Number Two, Agca was involved
with Turkish and Bulgarian smugglers, but he decided entirely
on his own, for his own tortured reasons, to come to this very
spot to shoot the Pope.
And, there is a third possibility.
Theory Number Three: Agca was, as he described
himself at first, a lone fanatic who decided to assassinate a
famous figure to attract attention. The proof is hard to come
by, but strong opinions are not difficult to find about who was
involved in the shooting of the Pope.
ABC has been told it's the CIA's position. The
evidence so far does not prove any Bulgarian involvement. Top
officials at the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria do not think there
was such a plot.
Two of Italy's policemen most knowledgeable on the
subject also have serious doubts about any Bulgarian plot.
However, at the Vatican, the attitude is different.
The Pope's closest aides and, we're told, the Pope himself, are
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