OF ANDROPOV AND THE POPE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000201420024-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 6, 2010
• Sequence Number: 24
• Publication Date: January 6, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/06: CIA-RDP90-00552R000201420024-8
WASHINGTON TIMES
6 JANUARY 1983
ALLAN BROVVNfl JJ)
Of AndrO
e
y wa Lb cuing a[s This information, of course, pro=
best to ignore the implications vides sufficient motive for Moscow
of recent disclosures con- to have sought to remove.Pope John
cerning the attempted assassination Paul II from the scene. Until Nov
of Pope John Paul II --- and the 25, when Italian authorities arrested
Roman Catholic Church in the United Sergei Antonov on charges of "active
States, which has been so vocal in, complicity" in the assassination
advocating a nuclear freeze, has. attempt, there was no concrete e vi-
been silent on the subject - one dente that Soviet bloc agents were
most important question remains involved. The circumstantial evi-
largely unasked. That is: did Yuri dence, however, even prior to that
Andropov
in his capacit
as h
d
f
,
y
ea
o
the KGB. order the assassination of
the pope?
This is a legitimate question for a
number of reasons. Mehmet Ali
Agca, the Turk 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 investi-
gators 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
Soviets were behind the plot. 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
l
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
finger at Moscow was Claire Sterling,
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: "Th 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 garia's more pressing assignments
for the Soviet Union has been to help
destabilize neighboring Turkey. The
Bulgarian secret service knows ever-'
ything about Turks crossing the
frontier, legally or otherwise. No
Turk could loiter for long unobserved
in Sofia, the capital - especially
not somebody like Agca ... aconvict-
ed murderer whose picture had been
featured on Turkey's front pages for
weeks on end."
According to Agda's own account,
he entered Bulgaria on -a forged
Indian passport as Yoginder Singh.
He stayed at several expensive tour-
ists hotels before checking into the
deluxe Hotel Vitosha. There, he
obtained the 9mm Browning he used
to shoot the pope 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 was 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
from Turkey to Bulgaria - some-
one who did not match Agda'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 to Agca in Sofia,
since he used it to leave for Yugosla-
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
wou
dr1Lvade Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/06: CIA-RDP90-00552R000201420024-8