THE PLOT TO KILL POPE JOHN PAUL II

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505120132-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 15, 2010
• Sequence Number: 132
• Publication Date: January 3, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/15: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505120132-4
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NEWSWEEK
3 JANUARY 198:
The Plot to Khl
Pope John Paul II
n the dimly lit lobby of the Hotel Vitosha
in Sofia, Bulgaria, groups of swarthy
men cluster on leather couches beneath an
eternal pall of cigarette smoke. They con-
verse in a thicket of waving arms and a
babble of languages-Bulgarian, Arabic,1
English, German, French. Inside the hotel's
garish bar, sleek, well-groomed prostitutes
ply their trade under a benevolent dispensa-
tion from the Bulgarian security police. The
Vitoshz was built by the Japanese in 1979,
and it quickly became a hotbed of Balkan
intrigue, a haven for spies, drug smugglers,
arms dealers and terrorists in transit be-
tween Europe and Asia Minor. The most
celebrated guest in the Vitosha's short and
shady history was a hard-eyed young Turk-
ish hit man named Mehmet Ali Agca. He
spent about two months there in 1980. And
it was in room 910 of the Hotel Vitosha that
Agca claims he met with another Turk on
the run, Bekir Celenk, who offered him S 1.7
million to kill Pope John Paul II.
That is the crux of the story emerging
from an Italian magistrate's painstaking in-
vestigation into the shooting ofiohn Paul on
May 13, 1981. Though the case remains
unproven and much of the evidence is cir-
cumstantial, there is reason to believe that
the Bulgarian secret police recruited Agca,
through Turkish intermediaries, into the
ranks of its hired guns, and that be was
armed and supported by the Bulgarians
when heshot the pope. "We have substantial
evidence," Italian Justice Minister Clelio
Darida told NEwswEEK. "This isn't some-
thing we're inventing. Agca operated in
close contact with the Bulgarians." That
much seems clear, but did Bulgaria order
Agca to shoot the pope? And was the Soviet
KGB pulling Bulgaria's strings? If so, the
trail may lead-ultimately and by all odds
unprovably-to Yuri Andropov, theformer
secret-police chieftain who recently ascend-
ed to the leadership of the Soviet Union.
Despite heated denials from Moscow
and Sofia, the Italians are convinced that
the shooting of the pope was a deliberate
plot, not a random act of madness. Agca,
who was sentenced to life in prison for
trying to kill the pope, began to sing i year
ago. His word is hardly his bond. But on
the basis of Agca's confession, Magistrate
Ilario Martella, a careful and respected
investigator, has begun to spread his net.
So far, the Italians have arrested a Bulgar-
ian airline official, accusing him of helping
to plan and carry out the attack. And they
have charged two minor Bulgarian diplo-
mats and four Turks as accomplices. Last
week the Italian government threw its
weight behind the theory that Moscow
wanted the outspoken John Paul killed to
prevent him .from interfering in Polish af-
fairs. "Ali Agca's attack on the pope is to
be considered as a real act of war in a time
of peace, a precautionary and alternative
solution to the invasion of Poland," De-
fense Minister Lelio Lagorio told Parlia-
ment. Though it wasn't saying so, the Vati-
can seemed to agree. "From the very
beginning. [we were) absolutely convinced
that the KGB was behind the plot," a
high-ranking Vatican source told NEWS-
WEEK. "Now it turns out to be right."
Arms and Drugs But why Bulgaria?
"Why not Bulgaria?" responds Alessandro
Pietromarchi, who has been in charge of the
Italian Embassy in Sofia since his ambassa-
.dor was recalled earlier this month. "Some-
body obviously was stupid enough to try to
kill the pope. Why shouldn't it have been
Bulgaria?" In fact, Bulgaria is the most
loyal of the Soviet satellites, and its secret
service is as closely controlled by the KGB
as any in Eastern Europe (page 27).
Through an alliance with Turkish gang-
sters, the Bulgarians preside over a brisk
international trade in arms and drugs, and
they have a well-developed spy network in
Italy. The Bulgarian secret service, the DS,
has a reputation for ruthlessness; it special-
izes in what one senior Western intelligence
agent calls "the rough end of the trade," and
it is totally loyal to Moscow. .
If Moscow is behind Agca and the Bul-
garians, most Western governments prob-
ably would rather not know about it; the
effects on arms control, trade and other
East-West relations could be devastating.
Perhaps for that reason, some in the West
-suggest that the link to Andropov could be
disinformation spread by his foes over-
seas-or even inside the Kremlin. And
some intelligence analysts note that the
botched assassination attempt lacked the
professionalism usually associated with
Moscow's surrogate hit squads. For their
part, the Russians are a picture of outraged
innocence. "Bourgeois propaganda and
right-wing newspapers are spreading slan-
derous fabrications aimed at casting a shad-
ow on socialist countries, particularly Bul-
garia and the Soviet Uttion," said Central
Committee spokesman Leonid Zamyatin in
one of a series of extraordinary Soviet com-
ments on the case.
And yet, who else would want the pope
dead? "You are working in a world of mir-
rors where anything is possible and where
anyone could be involved," says Lord Beth-
ell, a British specialist on the Soviet Union.
"You have to ask who would stand to gain
most from the assassination of thepope, and
the answer must be in the Soviet empire.
He's a rallying point for the people in Po-
land, in Lithuania, in Czechoslovakia who
want to throw off the Soviet yoke, and so be
does make an obvious target- Combine the
motive with the fact that the Bulgarians
have a proven record of assassination. and
you have to say there is at least a circum-
stantial case against them."
A Huge Cast There is another, simpler
explanation, of course: that Mehmet All
Agca was merely a solitary lunatic. Certain-
ly he tried to give that impression right after
he shot the pope. The 23-year-old Agca
identified himself asa Palestinian, an Islam-
ic fundamentalist and an opponent of both
American and Soviet imperialism. He said
he had gone to London to kill "the king,"
but changed his mind when be discovered
that the king was a woman. Islamic gallant- '
ry, he said, did not prevent him from shoot-
ing the pope. "I acted alone, and no one
helped me," he boasted to interrogators. In
fact, Agca had help from a huge cast of
Bulgarians, Turks and others in the terror-
ist underground. And all the evidence sug-
gests that he is neither stupid nor crazy.
Agca was born in 1958 to a poor family in
Yesiltepe, it shantytown near Malatya, a
provincial capital in eastern Turkey. He did
well in school, worked hard to support his
family and was not particularly religious;
his brother says he rarely.. went to _ibe
mosque. Agca suffered from a mild form of
epilepsy, and in high school his imperious
manner earned him the nickname Emperor.
"Terrorist organizations in Turkey normal-
1V recruit semirczarded illiterates as their hit
men." says a former Turkish official. "Agcy
did not belong to this category. He was a
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