THE PAPAL SHOOTING: MOSCOW'S ROLE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505100069-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 23, 2010
• Sequence Number: 69
• Publication Date: June 4, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/23 :CIA-RDP90-005528000505100069-7
P~~ a. ~-17 k
Jvseph Kraft
The Papal
Shooting:
1l~Ioscow's
Role
The opening shots of the papal as-
sassination hearings in Rome set some
I limits on what has been an unbounded
universe of suspicion.
The strong probability is that the
'' assassin is a weirdo from the far right.
- The Russians may have played a role
through the Bulgarian connection. But
if so, they probably acted only within a
sharply defined window of time.
Before the current round of testi-
mony began, conspiracy theories ran
riot. To consider plausibility was to in-
vite attack as a communist dupe. In
:~ those conditions, there evolved a view
of total Soviet guilt.
The plot was supposedly set in mo-
i tion on' the accession of John Paul II in
1978: Mehmet Ali Agca was picked
'. for the assassin's job and trained for
years by communist secret police affi-
cials ultimately responsible to the
KGB in Moscow. Agca's right-wing
~ connections were written off as disin-
j formation-designed to obscure the
communist source.
But in the first days of the current
hearings two points emerged with clar-
~~ ity. First, Agca defined himself more
sharply. He told the court: "I am Jesus
Christ. It's true. I announce the end of
the world. Everyone will be destroyed."
~ Theorists of elaborate conspiracy
still see in that pronouncement a sig-_
nal to co-conspirators. But some close
students of the affair-notably the
Turkish journalist Ugur Mumcu-
have long put down Agca as a "mega-
lomaniac." His recent outburst lends
weight to that view. Thus Robert Kup-
perman, an American student of ter-
- rorism not prone to discount conspira- .
cies, acknowledged the other day that
Agca was a "psychopath."
The second bit of evidence came
from Omar Bagci, the Turk who
smuggled into Italy the gun Agca used
for the attempted murder. On the
stand, Bagci acknowledged that he
brought in the gun-though not that
WP,SHINuTON POST
4 June 1985
he had foreknowledge of a plot against
the pope. He also named three other
Turks whom he associated with Agca.
All three were members of the same
right-wing organization. They had ties
to Bulgaria through a smuggling
operation (guns for drugs) which the
gangster state managed in cooperation
with a Turkish combine that linked
right-wing activities and crime.
The systematic role .played by.
Turkish right-wingers is thus con-
firmed. They did work with Agca, and
it is now harder to take seriously the
claims that he was deliberately given a
right-wing profile to disguise the com-
munist role. in the assassination plot.
They were all involved in smuggling.
It thus becomes legitimate to look, in a.
reasoned way, at the exact circum-
stances that drew Agca and the Bul-
garians together.
The odds are strong that, at the
beginning at least, Agca was not em-
ployed to murder John Paul. Agca.
reached Sofia in or slightly before July,
1980. At that time the Bulgarians had
two uses for a hit man of their own.
One was for patrolling the drug traffic
through Western Europe. A .second
was as a tool of revenge on Bulgarians
who deserted the secret police. So
there is reason to believe Agca started
out as a terrorist working for the Bu]-
garian-Turkish connection.
According to Agca, he began work-
ing in the papal .assassination plot in
July 1980. But that date has some
problems when set against the back-
ground of Russian-Polish relations.
The election of John Paul II as pope in
1978 would not have jolted the Rus-
sians so much. After all, Moscow had
worked with many Polish clerics, in-
cluding the pope in his previous role as
archbishop of Cracow. Matters got
truly hot in Poland only when the inde-
pendent trade union movement, Soli-
darity, was recognized in .August
1980.
Even then all signs were that the
..Russians could? manage-Solidaiity.arid
its leader, Lech Walesa, through the
communist party machine in Poland.
But early in 1981, the' party organiza-
tion fell apart on the issue of Solidari-
ty. The party secretary, Stanislaus
Kania, was prepared to use force
against the workers. But the defense
minister, Wojciech Jaruzelski, refused.
In January 1981 Jaruzelski took- over
as prime minister, and by March he
had consolidated his power.
At that point the Russians did face
' an agonizing choice. For Jaruzelski and
the Polish army were clearly working
in cooperation with the Catholic
Church to avoid confrontation with
Solidarity. If Russian troops moved in,
they would have to shoot their way,
fighting a formidable combination that
included the church, the army and
Solidarity. In those conditions, and in
those conditions almost alone, assassi-
nation, with its huge .risks, 'made
sense. So it is plausible that between
January and May 13, 1981, when the
attempt was made, the Russians
wanted to kill the pope.
Whether Moscow actually commis-
sioned the deed, we may never know.
But a better sense of what happened
does have a bearing on the tone of
public debate in this country. For in
the past few years balanced- analysis
has been on the defensive. Ghosts and
bombast have dominated the political
dialogue.
Several signs show a return to ra-
tional calculation. It would be a special
blessing to see reason applied to dis-
cussion of terrorism-a field where
the rule has been mindlessness.
~c>19&i, Los Angeles Tlmes 3yntllcate
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/23 :CIA-RDP90-005528000505100069-7