BRZEZINSKI BELIEVES KGB PLOTTED TO KILL THE POPE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505120131-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 27, 2010
• Sequence Number: 131
• Publication Date: January 4, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/27: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505120131-5
WASHINGTON PO
4 JANUARY 198
_Ewzez-,,,_r1hSid Believes KGB
I the eo
-to - Lxll
RO:NIE, Jan. 3 (UPI)-Former national
security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said he
believes the Soviet KGB, the secret security
police, was behind the assassination at-
tempt against Pope John Paul II.
Brzezinski, in an interview published
Sunday in the Turin newspaper La
Stampa, also was quoted as saying that
Yuri Andropov, the new Soviet leader, "rep-
resents the most sinister forces at work in
the Soviet system."
Andropov headed the KGB from 1967
until only months before his appointment
to replace the late Leonid Brezhnev in No-
vember.
"The secret police he directed for such a
long time is responsible for the suppression
of internal dissent and profoundly involved
in the control of Eastern Europe," Brzezin-
ski was quoted as telling the Italian news-
paper..There is mounting evidence, he con-
tinued, "that it was implicated in the most
monumental assassination attempt carried
out in this century-that against the pope."
"There is no doubt that the investigation
made by Italian authorities has established
the complicity of Bulgaria in the attack
against the pope," the former Carter admin-
istration official was quoted as saying.
"Those who know the reality of Eastern
Europe automatically deduce that the So-
viet Union was in command of the opera-
tion."
"Only the KGB could have been its in-
strument and Andropov dominated it for
15 years. The logic of this affair ... is ir-
refutable," Brzezinski was quoted as saying.
[U.S. intelligence officials have expressed
skepticism about the allegations of a KGB
connection to the plot against the pope.
But former secretary of state Henry Kiss-
inger, in an interview last week with Cable
News Network, said ex-CIA director Rich-
ard Helms had told him "it had all the ear-
marks ... of a KGB operation."
[Kissinger said he agreed: "If you try to
square the known facts, it really leads al-
most to no other conclusion."
["It had to be the Soviets," Kissinger
said. "The Bulgarians 'nave no interest in
coming after the pope.']
[In Moscow, a Soviet television commen-
tary said the charges of Bulgarian and So-
viet involvement were an attempt "to turn
Italy into a launching pad for retaliation"
and to set Catheiics against Communists.]
One Bulgarian-Rome-based airline of-
ficial Sergei Ivanov Antonov-was arrested
in Rome Nov. 25 on suspicion of complicity
in the May 13, 1981, attempt on the pope's
life. Lawyers for Antonov today formally
filed a request for his release on the
grounds of lack of evidence.
[According to Reuter, the lawyers' formal
application was a detailed alibi, quoting
witnesses in an exhaustive account of An-
tonov's activities on the dates he is alleged
to have helped Turkish gunman Mehmet
Ali Agca plan and execute the attack.
[Ilario Marelia, the Italian magistrate
investigating the case, is expected to rule on
the lawyers' application when he returns
from West Germany, where he is interview-
ing Musa Cedar Celebi, a right-wing Turk
who has been arrested by police in Frank-
furt on charges of complicity in the plot.]
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/27: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505120131-5