THE ATTACK ON THE POPE: THERE'S MORE TO THE STORY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505110020-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 27, 2010
• Sequence Number: 20
• Publication Date: August 7, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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ARTICLE APPEARED
9,N FAGE_
Claire Sterling
WASHINGTON POST
7 August 1984
FRE Mr
The Attack on the Pope: There's
More to the Story
ROME-The attempted assassination of
Pope John Paul 11 has now been the subject of
two lengthy articles in The Washington Post by
Michael Dobbs. The second, published July 22,
contains numerous omissions or misstatements
of considerable substance. The record ought to
be set straight, Since there isn't space to cover
all the points, I will elaborate here only on the
most important.
Confusion begins with the article's headline:
"Probers. Divided Over Evidence in Pope At-
tack." Of course, Dobbs did not write the head-
line. Those described as "divided," far from
being "probers," turn out to be "many magis-
trates and lawyers not directly involved with
the case." Regrettably, Dobbs does not add
that there is no discernible disagreement
among the half-dozen magistrates who do have
some involvement in the case.
This omission is particularly noticeable in re-
gard to Ferdinando Imposimato, marginally in-
volved but perhaps the most experienced Ital-
ian judge in the field. Dobbs hints that Imposi-
mato is really among the disbelievers. But Im-
posimato has told Rome reporters repeatedly
that he believes the essentials of Mehmet All
Agca's confession. On July 24, for example, he
said, "To back up his story, which has some
small errors in timing, as anybody would after
a long time lapse, Agca added untrue details.
-But the substance of his story is all true."
Early on, Dobbs shows a curious ignorance
of how this investigation developed. "Although
Italian investigators initially concluded that
Agca had acted alone, [Judge Ilario] Martella
reopened the case in November 1981," he
writes.
There is a shady ring to that, as if the inves-
tigation might somehow have been contrived
after something was cooked up to investigate.
In reality, Italian investigators had "docu-
mented proof that Agca did not act alone"
within 48 hours of the shooting. This was said
on May 15, 1981, by the first magistrate to in-
terrogate Agca-who was not Domenico Sica,
as Dobbs asserts, but Luciano Infelisi.
The existence of an elaborate plot was con-
firmed dramatically soon after Agca's trial that
July. The two distinguished judges presiding,
Severino Santiapichi and Antonio Abbate, filed
a Statement of Motivation for his life sentence
on Sept. 24, 1981, saying: "Everything points
to the conclusion that Agca was no more than
ian's defense counsel, Dobbs presents an Ital-
ian customs official named Maurizio Lucchetta,
who swore that embassy treasurer Todor Aiva-
zov was with him (and the truck) at the fateful
hour. The whole episode provided Aivazov with
a supposedly ironclad alibi.
, Dobbs does indicate prosecutor Albano's
warning about accepting Lucchetta's story. But
the prosecutor's report contains more than a
warning. It was an unqualified statement re-
jecting Lucchetta's testimony. "The alibi pre-
sented by Aivazov for May 13 and indications
he gave for May 11 and 12 are not only uncon-
firmed but contradicted by authentic'and unim-
peachable documents, and the testimony of six
disinterested witnesses, other customs officials
included, who affirmed with certainty that the
hours, dates and circumstances specified by
Aivazov for his alibi are completely different."
The six witnesses, including customs officials,
are all named, the only group of witnesses to
be given such importance in his report.
Claire Sterling, a writer based in Europe, is
author of "The Time of the Assassins" and a
recent lengthy article in The New York Times,
both of which explore-and argue-a connec-
tion of the Bulgarian government with the at-
tempted assassination of the pope.
,
the emerging point of a deep conspiracy, com- for Agca (who was caught and arrested in-
forces and threatening, orchestrated by secret and was to have taken off to the border
forces carefully planned and directed down to stead)
an accomplice of Agca. Citing the Bulgar-
the smallest detail."
It was because of this strong statement that
the investigation was reopened six weeks later:
not by Judge Martella, who had no such
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.powers, but by Rome's attorney general, who
named him.
While describing Martella as "a meticulous
magistrate," Dobbs lends considerable cre-
dence to the Bulgarian argument that Agca
learned many (or most) of the details about his
three alleged Bulgarian accomplices by reading
the papers. "Allegations about a 'Bulgarian
connection' . . . were first published in Read-
er's Digest in August 1982," Dobbs writes;
"'the Italian press had carried extensive arti-
cles" about other nefarious Bulgarian activities
in the country.
Actually, the Reader's Digest article, which I
wrote, contains nothing about the three Bul-
garians in question because, at the time, I had
not heard of them. No reporter had an inkling
of their existence until Sergei Antonov was ar-
rested three months later.
Even after that event, the Italian press had
never carried some of the most persuasive .de-
tails provided by Agca, verified later by wit-
nesses or police investigations: precise interior
details of both Antonov's and Todor Aivazov's
apartments; Antonov's personal habits and
hobbies; the nearly invisible warts on Maj.
Zhelio Vasilev; Aivazov's dentures.
Such details, all subsequently verified, took
on special importance when, on June 28, 1983,
Agca suddenly retracted a number of state-
ments he had made to judge Martella over the
previous year. While Dobbs dwells on the re-
traction, he fails to note prosecutor Antonio Al-
bano's explanation for finding it "unconvincing
and indeed a contrast with objective evidence."
Practically everything Agca tried to take back
had been substantiated already, and not a sin-
gle point in the retraction changed the basic
lines of Agca's story.
Specifically, Agca has never denied knowing
all three of the accused Bulgarians in Rome and
acting on their orders. Nor-apart from with-
drawing a claim of carrying arms and explo-
sives to the scene-has he taken back a word
about the plotting with the same three and a
fourth Bulgarian (Ivan Tomov Dontchev) to as-
sassinate Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa.
A cornerstone of the Italian prosecutor's
case was the revelation that a special truck had
left the Bulgarian embassy grounds in Rome
shortly after the papal shooting. According to
it was presumed to have waited there
Albano
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ON PAGE?___7j 4 August 1984
BEAT THE DEVIL.
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Poper.
Scooper .
How does The.New York Times now plan to cover the.
Agca_sase?. .A_few.__weeks.,ago., at..the_.express.command..of'.
A.M. Rosenthal, The Times ran, across two pages, Claire;
Sterling's overheated and selective digest of the pros-1
ecution's case for a supposed i K.Z'i.B. Bulgarian link in
a plot to kill the Pope. Since it has been tireless in recent
months in exposing purported lapses in journalistic ethics
and decorum, many wondered how the paper could justify
using Sterling as a reporter. She has been a major exponent
..in the plot theory and has profited mightily, -along with
former C.I.A. officer Paul Henze, therefrom.
The case against the plot has always been strong, and
there are those (me) who_ named Bulgarian martyr to cold
war hysteria Sergei Antonov-still rotting in a Roman
cell-Prisoner of Conscience for 1983. But since the publi-
cation of prosecutor Antonio Albano's brief, mainstream
reporters, no doubt irked by the Sterling "scoop," have]
been taking another look at the case. .
Among them is Michael Dobbs of The Washington Post.
Dobbs's latest dispatch flatly challenges the Sterling thesis:
? Agca's repeated claims that he went to St. Peter's
Square the day before the shooting with Antonov and co-
Bulgarian Todor Aivasov are contradicted by -the sworn
testimony of an Italian customs official, Maurizio Lucchet-
ta, who insists that he was with Aivasov on customs business
in another part of Rome at the time. He has produced docu-
mentary evidence to back-up the claim. . . .
? Sterling and the prosecutor (the-two'
the two are impossible to
distinguish) have made great play of the:-famous sealed
truck that allegedly bore Agca's Turkish colleague-Oral
Celik out of the country minutes after the attack on the
Pope. It now turns out that this truck, sealed by the Italian
customs hours before the gunplay, was parked in a public
street outside the Bulgarian Embassy in full view of Italian
merchants, who were no doubt reading Mario Cuomo's
diaries in the peace and quiet of their stores. By the Albano/
Sterling. scenario, the Bulgarians had to have broken the
customs' seals, shoved in the rascally Turk' and resealed the
truck, all in front of those merchants. Surely even Cuomo's
works lack this magnetism.
STAT
? Albano/Sterling exult over the fact that Agca knew the
Bulgarians' home telephone numbers, which he said had
been given to-him in Sofia in the summer of 1980. That may
be, but the numbers were, in fact, available from the Rome
phone directory which Agca has admitted he looked at in
jail after his -conviction, when he was in the process of
developing his account of the plot. He also had full access to
newspapers and television while divulging his accounts: of
his own role in the plot. Thus, as he now admits, his en-
cyclopedic knowledge of the layout of Antonov's apartment
came from the media.
In the March/April issue of Problems of Communism,
put out by the United States Information Agency, there is
an interesting review. by William Hood of Sterling's The
Time of the Assassins and Henze's The Plot to Kill the
Pope. Hood is a veteran of the O.S.S. and then the C.I.A.
and is a loyal servant of the flag. He is scathing about the'
"plot" and concludes with this rather emphatic hint:
Curiously, neither Sterling nor Henze adequately credits the
possibility that Western intelligence already has even some
slight access to Bulgarian or Soviet secrets.... in view of the
skepticism and apparent lack of interest in the attempted as-
sassination expressed by various Western intelligence services,
it is not out of the question to suggest that the real (and
rather unsensational) story mays actually be known-but
cannot be disclosed because the sources must be protected.
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