ANDROPOV AS HENRY II

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505140034-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 3, 2011
• Sequence Number: 34
• Publication Date: December 22, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2011/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505140034-1
c I CLE APPEARED
011 PAGz
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
22 December 1982
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Andropov as Henry II
Italian Defense Minister Lelio La-
gorio, a Socialist, has likened Bulgar-
ian complicity in the shooting of Pope
John Paul II to an act of war. Those
are strong words, and while nobody
thinks it likely or even very desirable
that Italy or the rest of the West
should embark on an armed assault
against Bulgaria and the East bloc,
Mr. Lagorio has uttered an important
truth. For even though the West might
not consider itself engaged in what is
conventionally defined as a war, such
desperate acts as ordering a hit on the
religious leader of a large segment of
the human race would seem to indi-
cate that Bulgaria and its masters
consider themselves in a war.
Many in the West will try their
hardest to blink that fact. As author
Claire Sterling points out in the article
on today's op-ed page, the rush is on
to draw the veil over Bulgarian and
Soviet complicity in the attempted as-
sassination of the pope. It's all a fig-
ment of the excitable Italian imagina-
tion. It's a vendetta by the anti-Andro-
pov faction. It's actually a CIA plot,
some otherwise serious people would
suggest..
. And even those who admit there
may be some fire where there is so
much smoke seem to be mainly con-
cerned with explaining away the
abominable deed. After all, didn't an
American administration seek to rub
out Castro? And maybe we shouldn't
leap to conclusions about the Rus-
sians, even if the Bulgarians were do-
ing what they imagined to be Mos-
cow's bidding. Our colleagues at the
New York Times reached into their
historical tote bag the other day to
liken Yuri Andropov to Henry II, the
12th century English king whose
knights slew Archbishop Thomas
Beckett after Henry asked, "Who will
free me from this turbulent priest?"
Well, pardon us, but we have a
hard time imagining Yuri Andropov
crawling on his knees to the nearest
cathedral to ask forgiveness, as Henry
II was reputed to have done when an
outraged population learned of his
complicity in the murder; We also
doubt the Soviet or Bulgarian puppet
parliaments will treat us to endless
public inquiries into the subject, as
the U.S. Congress did into assassina-
tion plots that allegedly were coun-
tenanced by the White House, or that
Pravda will turn up a Deep Throat of
its own to enlighten us. One can play
endless intellectual games about how
the Communist system is really no
different from our own, but in the end
they are just that-games.
Precisely because Bulgaria and the
Soviet Union are closed societies, we
may never know the exact nature of
the plot to kill the pope. But as Mrs.
Sterling, who was the first to publicly
lay out the "Bulgarian connection,"
says nearby, the Italian judicial sys-
tem-not its politicians or its secret
service or its press-has built a per-
suasive case that the Bulgarians have
been working overtime at undermin-
ing the West through drug and arms
trafficking, support for terrorism and
even murder. And since Bulgaria so
clearly acts as a puppet of Moscow, it
seems fair to suspect that the plot was
hatched at the highest levels of the
Kremlin-by the self-same., Yuri An-
dropov, that lovable, "liberal" head of
the KGB.
Final judgment must await the ac
tual findings of the Italian courts. But
we suspect what is going on here is
the same temptation to. deny, reality
that we have seen on other occasions,
notably in the effort to avoid facing up
to the fact of "yellow rain." The im-
plications of Soviet use of biological
and chemical warfare, or a Commu-
nist plot to gun down a pope are sim-
ply too grave for many people to face.
They suggest that the system we face
really is different, really Is not like
ours, and is capable of real evil.
This challenges a lot of what has
become conventional wisdom in the
West, that if only we, are nice to the
other guys they will eventually re-
spond in kind. If those assumptions
are shattered, what hope is there for
detente or arms control or other cher-
ished hopes of a peaceable people?
So rather than face up to these
grim realities, ways are found to
avoid confronting them... Excuses are
invented for our, adversaries., We look
for scapegoats_ -among, ourselves. We
whistle past the graveyard.
It's a fair question: Well, what do
we do about it? When Italy gets right
down to it, we doubt it will do much.
And in truth there's not much Italy
can do beyond the symbolic. But the
West should not hesitate to draw the
logical conclusions about the kind of
system we are dealing with, and avoid
policies which leave us vulnerable to
an adversary that clearly has no scru-
ples: What this case shows; as' has So-
viet violation. of major arrri control
treaties in the use of yellow rain, is
that the burden of proof should be on
those who think good faith is enough
in dealing with the Kremlin, particu-
larly under its present leadership. ,
Approved For Release 2011/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505140034-1