OF ADNROPOV AND THE POPE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505140012-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 3, 2011
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: January 6, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2011/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505140012-5
WASHINGTON TIMES
6 JANUARY 1983
Commentary
ALLAN BROWNFELD
Of Andro
and the po
best to ignore the implications
of recent disclosures con-
cerning the attempted assassination
of Pope John Paul II - and the
Roman Catholic Church in the United
States, which has been so vocal in
advocating a nuclear freeze, has
been silent on the subject one
most important question remains'
largely unasked. That is: did Yuri
Andropov, in his capacity as head of
the KGB, order the assassination of
the pope?
This is a legitimate question for a
number of reasons. Mehmet Ali
Agca, the Thrk who has been convict-
ed of the shooting, now testifies that
he was offered $1.5 million to kill'
the pope and has implicated three
Bulgarians in the assassination
attempt. He indentified the Bulgar-
ians as Sergei Ivanov Antonov, for-,
mer cashier at the embassy.
Agca, who earlier insisted that he
acted alone, has told Italian investigators he was introduced to the three
Bulgarians in Sofia. In an interview
with the Italian weekly magazine,
Panorama, Sen. Alphonse D'Amato
said he has given the CIA informa-
tion from a Vatican source that the
Sovietswerebehindtheplot D'Amato
said that the pope had written per-
sonally to the late Soviet leader,
Leonid Brezhnev, saying that he
would return to Poland if the Sovi-
ets invaded the country. "That the
pope wrote to Brezhnev in very firm
terms is a sure fact. It was confirmed
to me personally by the monsignor
who brought the letter to Moscow
and then returned to get the response
from the Kremlin," the magazine
quoted D'Amato as saying. "It was
a hand-written letter, in Russian, by
the pope himself. If the Russians
would invade Poland, the letter said,
the pope would return to be by the
side of his people"
lthough the press is doing its uiformation, of course, pi
vides sufficient motive for Moscow
to have sought to remove Pope John
Paul II from the scene. Until Nov
-25 , when Italian authorities arrested
Sergei Antonov bn.charges of "active
complicity" In the assassination
attempt, there was no concrete evi-'
dence that Soviet bloc agents were
involved. The circumstantial evi-
dence, however, even prior to that
date seemed overwhelming - and
was largely downplayed by both the
press and the church - as well as
by Western governments:
One who immediately pointed her
fingeratMoscowwasClaireSterling,
author of the `book "The Terror
Network," and one of the world's
leading authorities on terrorism.
.Discussing the fact that Agca had
spent a good deal of time in Bulgaria,
had forged documents and enough
money to live a life of luxury, she
wrote: "Tb have stayed in Bulgaria !
for some 50 days, as Agca did, is
enough in itself to raise suspicions
about his future actions. Apart from
the Soviet Union, Bulgaria is Eur-
ope's most inflexible communist
police state; it is also one of Moscow's
principal surrogates for terrorism
and subversion. Bulgaria has serv-
iced Western. Europe's terrorist
bands since the early 1970s, provid-
ing guerrilla=training facilities and
a sanctuary, and acting as a prime
staging area for trans-shipment of {
Soviet-bloc weapons.... One of Bul-
garia's more pressing assignments
for the Soviet Union has been to help
destabilize neighboring 11irkey. The,
Bulgarian secret service knows ever-
ything about Thrks crossing the
frontier, legally or otherwise. No
Turk could loiter for long unobserved
,in Sofia, the capital - especially
,not somebody like Agca :: a convict-
ed murderer whose picture had been
featured on Turkeys front pages for'
weeks on end. ; ::11.
According to Agca's own account, .
he entered Bulgaria on -a forged
Indian passport as Yoginder Singh.
He stayed atseveral expensive tour-
ists hotels before checking into the.
deluxe Hotel Vitosha. There, he
obtained the 9mm Browning he used
to shoot thepope and also was given
a perfectly counterfeited passport
issued to "Farouk Ozgun" from
someone whose name he says he does
not remember. Miss Sterling declares,
"The passport was given to Agca in
Sofia under circumstances directly
implicating the Bulgarian secret
service. The passport *as`stamped-'
at Edirne on Aug. 30 with a Turkish
exit visa. That visa was fake. But
the Bulgarian entry stamp, dated
Aug. 31, was valid. Thus someone
must have smuggled the passport j
from Turkey to Bulgaria - some-
one who did not match Agca's photo-
graph on the passport but who was
able to have it stamped on the
Bulgarian side. A courier must have
rushed the passport toAgca in Sofia,
since he used it to leave for Yugosla-
t via that very day."
U.S. intelligence officials note that
Bulgaria is one of the Soviets' most .
obedient allies and that Moscow
knows everything that is going on
in Bulgaria with regard to security
questions. Bulgarian intelligence, it
Approved For Release 2011/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505140012-5
 Approved For Release 2011/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505140012-5
is said, would be unlikely to act with-
out Soviet approval. Privately, tntelli-
gence officials concede that if
Bulgaria is officially involved in the
assassination attempt - which it
now clearly is - then the orders
must have come from KGB head-
quarters in Moscow. As head of the
KGB at that. time, Yuri Andropov
must have.given those orders.
Bulgaria's involvement in terror-
ism in Italy is not new. Last spring
one of the kidnappers of U.S. Gen.,
James L Dozier said the Bulgarians
had offered help to Italy's Red
Brigades. A left-wing Italian trade
unionist is now in jail on terrorism
and spying charges that involve
alleged contacts with the Bulgarians.
In the city of'frento, examining mag-
istrate Carlo Palermo recently
acknowledged that Bulgarians were
implicated in a vast smuggling net-
work trading arms from heroin that
he is investigating.
It is not only in Italy that Bulgaria
is working as Moscow's surrogate
in fomenting terrorism: On June 3,
1977, Turkish security forces stopped
the Greek cargo vessel Vasoula in
the Bosporus, coming from Varna,
Bulgaria.- She was carrying 67 tons
2
of armament. "Some was going to
the Greek leftist underground in
f, Cyprus, where Greeks and lurks
live in a constant state of war. But a
good part was earmarked for the
left-wing underground in Turkey.
Then, the murder of a Bulgarian
defector, Georgi Markov, in London
on Sept. 11, 1978, and the apparent
attempted murder of another Bul-
garian, Vladimir Kostov, in Paris on
Aug. 26, 1978, appear clearly to be
the work of Sofia. Both men, critics
of the Bulgarian regime, were
attacked by weapons capable of
injecting a. poisoned pellet that led
to avirus infection. On Oct. 3,1978,
another Bulgarian refugee, Vladimir
Simeonov, was found dead in his
London apartment.
One would think that with over-
whelming evidenceof Bulgarian and,
thus, Soviet involvement in the asses-
sination attempt against the. pope,
the question of whether or not Yuri
Andropov ordered the shooting
would be widely asked. Sadly, the
press, the Catholic Church and
Western governments seem more,
interested in avoiding any embarras-
ment o indropov than in discover-
Approved For Release 2011/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505140012-5