THE TICKING BOMB

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505110047-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 27, 2010
• Sequence Number: 47
• Publication Date: June 19, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/27: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505110047-0
ARTICLE; AkTF&zjaw LOS ANGELES TIMES
ON PAGE 1+, See. II 19 June 1981.
,'~.-The',White louse staff is agonizing over 'this, ..Ivanov. Antonov; a : Bulgarian airline executive
/question: What if Italian prosecutors prove Soviet whom. Agca is said to have identified as:one, of the
'complicity in the attempted assassination of Pope ' secret policemen. directly involved in the assassina- -f
John Paul II? How should President Reagan react? tion plot, were to testify that thb Bulgarians got
Journalist Claire Sterling,, who has followed the their orders from Moscow?
case closely, reported the other` day ` that State If persuasive evidence of this sort were offered, it.
Prosecutor Antonia Albano has filed a still-secret is hard to see how `Reagan could avoid :` a harsh .
report charging ;that?the'Bulgarian secret services' denunciation of the Soviet Union. It is~equally-hard
1recruited Mehmet Ali,Agca, thewould be Turkish to see how the .President could then meet at the
assassin, to'kill'the Pope and thereby weaken the summit with Soviet leader Konstantin U:-Chernen
Solidarity movement in Poland. ko in the near future:*, f Y
c c The prosecutor; `according' to : the report,. has The White House hopes .that the problem won't
recommended the: indictment and trial of three arise. The Administration is trying 'to: get arms-s
Bulgarians and six .Turks, including Agca, for.- control talks going again; .'and, is angling for : an a
conspiracy, to`killthe Pope: Judge Ilario Marcella, eventual summit About the last ahing that the
I wliose..investigation "under, Italian law 'has covered Reagan team needs is for..the time bomb ticking
the same grotund, will rule next month on'whether a away in Rome to go off
kcal should go forward. But if it does, should. the President denounce the
Government` officials say that they have' ' no Russians in vintage Reagan rhetoric and accept the
reason to doubt the accuracy of Sterling's report.inevitable damage'to U.S.-Soviet relations? Should
- Western :.:experts. on Soviet Bloc: affairs. have he blast the Bulgarians but try to let the Russians
oalways assumed that the Bulgarian secret police are off the hook? Or.should he dump the whole blame
under the direct control of'the Soviet KGB. The onto the late Yuri V. Andropov, who was boss of the
t11talian prosecutor's report does not mention the KGB when the attempted assassination took place,-
1KGB, but .1t' impliesprior Soviet knowledge and and ostentatiously pretend that the new leadership
approval of the assassination attempt. - .r...... had nothing to do with it?
'3-r, As long as Bulgarian involvement depends only If events in an Italian courtroom pose the question
on the testimony of Agca, and Soviet complicity. in stark and' unavoidable terms, there is no easy
remains, speculative,, the Reagan Administration' answer to this 'excruciating' moral and political
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/27: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505110047-0