SOLVING THE PLOT TO KILL THE POPE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505110015-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 27, 2010
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: October 1, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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October 1984
Con ,-i11.!,04 a
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 wounded Pope John Paul II. Ar-
rested on the spot, the would-be
assassin was soon identified as a
convicted murderer who,had es-
capedfrom a Turkish prison and
was connected with a Turkish
right-wing terrorist band, the Gray
Wolves. With both gunman and
gun in police hands, the shooting
would apparently be an easy one to
solve.
Two days after the assassination
attempt, the New York Times re-
ported from Rome: "Police are con-
vinced, according to government
sources, that' Mr. Agca acted
alone." It was soon clear that the
Western press, Western govern-
ments and their intelligence agen-
cies all seemed eager to accept the
conclusion that Agca was a lone
gunman, a right-wing crackpot.
Claire Sterling, a well-respected,
Rome-based journalist and author
of The Terror Network, a thorough
examination of international ter
rorist activities, could not accept
that seemingly ready-made charac-
terization of Agca. After discussing
the case with her, neither could the
editors at Reader's Digest, who told
Sterling to "take as long as you like,
go wherever you please, spend as
much as you must to get as close to
the truth as you can."
In The Time of the Assassins,
Sterling tells the story of her in-
vestigation. Her findings-first pub-
lished in the September 1982
Reader's Digest ("The Plot to Mur-
der the Pope") and now expanded
and updated-offer strong evidence
that the trail ultimately. ends in-
side the headquarters of the Soviet
KGB.
Sterling was not altogether alone
in her search for evidence. A few
other Western reporters also kept
,digging at the story. So did a dis-
creet but stubborn Italian judge
named Ilario Martella. He was
charged with investigating Agca's
international connections in No-
vember 1981, 2'/z months after Ag
ca's trial and soon after the Rome ,
Court of Assizes issued a 51-page l
Statement of Motivation for Agca's
life sentence. The Statement was
virtually ignored by. the world
press. It affirmed that Agca had
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been dispatched by "hidden minds."
He was not a "delirious ideologue"
and felt "no hostility" toward the
Pope.
Filled with information on Ag-
ca's life and political contacts, the
Statement portrayed a figure quite
different from the one seen in the
world press. Among other things,
Agca confessed to having received
4o days of guerrilla training in a
Palestinian camp south of Beirut,
and to have established clandestine
relations with six radical under-
ground groups of both the extreme
right and extreme left in Turkey.
Agca also stated that he had spent
5o days in Bulgaria. There, in Sofia,
he had met a fellow Turk named
Omer Mersan who, Agca had
claimed' in an early deposition,
helped him obtain a fake Turkish
passport.
The Statement of Motivation
provided Claire Sterling with the
questions that would direct her
investigation:
Who was Mehmet Ali Agca? j
Who helped him escape from a
Turkish prison, and then supplied
cover, fake passports and funds to
keep him going?
Why, if he was not a "delirious
ideologue," did he shoot the Pope?
What "hidden minds" had sent
him?
Sudden Spotlight. Sterling be-
gan by visiting Agca's hometown of
Malatya, Turkey, where the princi-
pal of his high school described him
as a model student. He was a lonely
boy, but, noted his former language
teacher, "he always said he'd be
famous someday."
. Agca was ten years old when
'Turkey exploded with terrorist vi-
olence. But he seemed to be unin-
. terested in politics. "All he cared
about was reading," said his moth-
er, who believed the trouble began
after he left home in 1976 for the
University of Ankara.
He apparently spent two years'
there. And though the university
was a center of terrorism, Sterling
and others could find no evidences
that Agca was ever involved before
transferring to Istanbul University
in the autumn of 1978.
Then, in July 1979, Agca abrupt-
ly jumped into the international
spotlight by confessing-when
there was practically no evidence
against him-to the murder of
Abdi Ipekci, editor of the moder-
ate-left newspaper Milliyet and the
most respected commentator in Tur-
key. Seeking to trace any financial
backers the killer-supposedly a pen-
niless student-might have had,
Ipekci's family lawyer discovered
several bank accounts opened in
Agca's name "by somebody forg-
ing his, signature." Between De-
cember 1977 and the end of 1978,
$12,ooo was deposited to these
accounts. ,
But that mystery couldn't com-
pare with what happened five
months after Agca was imprisoned.
On November 25, 1979, clad in an
army uniform, Agca escaped from
Istanbul's Kartal-Maltepe military
prison, walking calmly through
eight heavily guarded doors.
Agca's presence in Sofia, Bulgar-
ia, was established from around
July 10, 1980, to August V. He
stayed at deluxe hotels like the
Vitosha. For the next nine months,
Agca traveled to a score of Euro-
pean capitals on a bizarre $50,000
journey more befitting an Onassis I
than a poor man from Turkey's
Anatolian plains. He shopped at
Yves Saint Laurent boutiques,
drank champagne and ate smoked
salmon with Milan's opera buffs at
Biffi's, wintered at elegant resorts
in Tunisia's Hammamet and
Spain's Palma de Mallorca.
How could this be? Who could
arrange for Agca to stay in Bulgaria
for 5o days when visiting Turks are
officially restricted to . a 30-hour
stay? His mysterious bank accounts,
his ready admission in the lpekci
killing, his escape, his travels, all
indicated to Sterling an operation
with far more savvy than local ter-
rorists could manage.
The Bulgarian Connection.
Sterling shuttled between Rome
and Munich, Bonn, Hamburg, An-
kara and Istanbul, making side
f4 S, va
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 trips to Malatya, Vien-
na, Frankfurt, Zurich,
Tel Aviv, Tunis, Wash-
ington and Paris. She
battled unwilling or
hostile officials, con-
flicting stories and out-
right lies, collecting
notebooks full of infor-
mation and searching
for Agca's accomplices.
Finally, early in 1982,
a breakthrough came
from Milliyet's correspondent in
West Germany,,Orsan Oymen. An
old friend of the slain editor Ipekci,
Oymen had collected information
indicating that Omer Mersan-
who, according to Agca, had
helped procure a fake Turkish
passport for him in Bulgaria-was a
"contact man" for Abuzer Ugurlu,
who in turn was a top boss of the
Turkish Mafia, a smuggling ring
operating out of Sofia. Sterling was
discovering the link that would
become known as the Bulgarian
Connection.
As the name of Abuzer Ugurlu
kept cropping up, Sterling sensed
she was getting closer, According to
a letter from a jailed drug runner
for Ugurlu: "The Bulgarian secret
service has annexed the Turkish
Mafia in the tightest way. Because
smuggling operations from Varna.
In 1974 he was recruited as.an agent
of the Bulgarian secret service."
Sterling already knew of the
close ties between the Bulgarians
and the KGB. (Striking confirma-
tion came later from Col. Stefan
Svcrdlev, the highest-ranking Bul-
garian secret-service officer ever
to defect, who told her that an
estimated 40o KGB officers are
stationed in the Bulgarian secret-
service command and in all its
departments.) Agca was now
linked to Mersan, Mersan to Ugurlu,
Ugurlu to the Bulgarian secret
service, the Bulgarians to the KGB.
Coincidence? Not in Sterling's
opinion.
Her article in the September
1982 Reader's Digest presented her
documented revelations about the
Bulgarian Connection for the first
time. Agca worked for the Turkish
Mafia, which was controlled by the
Bulgarian secret service, which in
turn was intimately linked to the
KGB. At the time of the shooting in
May 1881 the KGB was directed by
Yuri Andropov, who in November
1982 went on to become the leader
of the Soviet Union.
Cold Shoulder. The Communist
bloc, and especially Bulgaria, was
enraged by The Digest's article.
Beginning with a communique on
September 8, 1982, and culminat-
ing in a 177-page broadside entitled
"Dossier on the Anatomy of a
Calumny," the Bulgarians system-
in Bulgaria, everything-from ciga-
rettes to heavy weapons-is sold to
smugglers by the state company
Kintex . . . essentially a branch of
the Bulgarian secret service."
Then came another break-
through. During .a trip to Wash-
ington, Sterling was
"given the gist" of a
confidential dossier on
Kintex by a member of
a U.S. intelligence
agency: Kintex's per-
sonnel, he told her,
were "clearly members
of the Bulgarian secret
service. By mid-1982
numerous Soviet ad-
visers held positions in
Kintex at all levels, in-
cluding senior posts."
Further information in the' dos-
sier tied the knot tight: "Starting
around 1969, Ugurlu worked with
Bulgaria. In exchange for services
rendered, he was allowed to run
atically attempted to strip Sterling
of all credibility. The whole affair,
said a Bulgarian official at an
international press conference on
December 17, was part of an "anti-
Bulgarian campaign" that began
"three months ago with an article
in Reader's Digest."
In the meantime, Agca-who
dropped only hints of the truth
after his arrest-had begun confess-
ing in full, implicating his Bulgari-
an contacts. As a result, in late
November and early December
1982, Judge Marcella signed war-
rants for the arrest of three Bulgari-
ans: Sergei Antonov, deputy director
of the Bulgarian state airline in
Rome, Todor Aivasov, former
treasurer of the Bulgarian embassy
in Rome, and Zelio Vasilev, former
aide to the embassy's military atta-
che. Antonov was taken into custo-
dy in Rome; the other two had
already skipped to Bulgaria.
But for the most part, the Ster-;
ling revelations and other accumu-
lating evidence pointing to Bulgaria
were downplayed or ignored by the
Western media. The New York
Times ran a story in December
citing Israeli and West German
intelligence sources who were
"skeptical of charges of a Bulgarian
connection" and claimed the Italian
secret service was not "of the high-
est standard." And reporters
weren't the only ones who cold-
shouldered the disclosures. Denial
after denial came from official
Western sources of any Eastern-
bloc complicity in the shooting. "1"t
is an Italian matter," a senior U.S.
intelligence officer told the New
York Times, "and it would be inap-
propriate for the United States to
interfere."
Yet the CIA later did interfere-
to take the Bulgarian line. On
March 23,1983, Iordan Mantarov, a
defector from the Bulgarian secret
service, was reported by the New
York Times as saying that Agca was
picked by the Bulgarians as the hit
man after discussions with the KGB
"because he was known as a rightist
and had no links with any commu-
nist country." But the May 28, 1983,
Los Angeles Times reported that
CIA director William Casey had
ruled out Mantarov's admissions
and reverted to the earlier view of
CIA professionals that "the Bulgar-
ians very probably did not direct
Agca to shoot the Pope."
Skeptics in the press and else-
where even disregarded a public
confession by Agca. "Yes, I said the
attempt on the Pope was (lone by
the Bulgarian secret- service," he
told reporters on July 8, 1983, as he'
was being led to a police van. "Yes,
I said I have been trained. specially
.by the KGB."
But Sterling's position gradually
gained converts. Former CIA direc-
tor Richard Helms asserted the pa-
pal shooting "had all the earmarks
Gun"inuod
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.of a KGB operation." Zbigniew
Brzezinski, President Carter's na-
tional-security adviser, was more
direct: "It takes an act of faith
not to believe the Bulgarians were
involved."
Behind the Curtain. On Janu-
ary 16, 1984, Istanbul's martial-law
court issued a 56-page indictment
for a new trial in the Ipekci case.
The indictment indicated that
Ipekci was killed at the instigation
of Abuzer Ugurlu to prevent the
editor from exposing Ugurlu's ties
to the Turkish Mafia and to the
Bulgarians.
Then on May 8, Italian state
prosecutor Antonio Albano filed a
78-page report, based on some
25,000 pages of documentation
gathered by Judge Martella, which
confirmed everything Sterling had
uncovered, and, more.
It asserted that the legal recogni-
tion of the Solidarity movement in
Poland in August 1980 and "conse-
quent social convulsions" were per-
ceived as "a mortal danger" to
Eastern Europe, and. "the Polish
rebellion might be greatly weak-
ened and fragmented" by the
"elimination" of the Polish Pope
who was the movement's spiritual
father. Although mentioning no
names, the report stated that. . some
political figure of great powet took
note of this most grave situation
and, mindful of the vital needs of
the Eastern bloc, decided it was
necessary to kill [the] Pope."
"Every declaration of Agca's, ev-
ery circumstance and detail, was
checked and investigated," the
prosecutor's report said. "Agca is
.convincing in his reconstruction of
the crime." The report noted as
well that "Agca participated in the
murder of the Turkish editor Abdi
?Ipekci on orders from Ugurlu." His
escape from prison was thanks to
"the power of money and the effi-
ciency of the Turkish Mafia."
In Sofia during the summer of
1980, the report said, Agca was
given money on the orders of
Ugurlu and furnished documents
allowing him the unusually long
stay in Bulgaria. Also in Sofia at
this time were Oral Celik, a Turk I
who was a leader of the Gray
Wolves, and one "Sotir Kolev,"
a Bulgarian secret-service agent
who would turn out to be Todor
Aivasov.
The plot, says the report, was set
up like this: The Bulgarian secret
service contracted with Agca and
Oral Celik "for the organization
and execution of the plan." In
return, the Bulgarians would
pay Agca, Celik and Musa Serdar
Celibi* three million deutsche
marks, roughly $1.7 million. Their
escape from Italy would be carried
out by diplomatic vehicle or TIR
(Transport International Routier)
truck, which could pass through
custom checkpoints with little or no
inspection. ..
Why didn't the plot come off?
Celik, who accompanied Agca to
St. Peter's Square on the day of the
shooting, was supposed to set off
two "panic bombs,b perhaps to cov-
er Ag'ca's escape. But Celik also
carried a gun to St. Peter's, leading
investigators to speculate he was
supposed to use the bombs as cover
while he shot Agca. Whatever the
case, just after he shot the Pope,
Agca was grabbed by a tenacious
nun who held him until help ar-
rived. Celik was probably taken out
of Italy in the TIR truck that left the
Bulgarian embassy grounds in
Rome just after the shooting. He
has not been seen since.
Albano's report shattered the alibi
of Bulgarian agent Sergei Antonov,
repudiating his claimed activities
on the day of the shooting as well as
his supposed inability to speak
English with Agca. The alibis of
the other two Bulgarians came off
no better. "Aivasov's alibi has not?
only proved unverifiable but has
been denied by witnesses and in-
contestable documents," the report'
states. The same held true for Vasi-
lev. In fact, the report states that
evidence points to the Bulgarian
embassy's active involvement in the
plot to kill the Pope.
In conclusion Albano asked for
the formal indictment and trial of
Antonov, Aivasov and Vasilev, and
the Turks who had been implicat-
ed, including Omer Mersan, Musa
Serdar Celibi, Oral Celik and Agca
himself (on new charges). .
THE MOST DISTURBING QUESTION
about the assassination plot is: why
such silence from so many for so
long? Former CIA official Harry
Gelman stated in the Washington
Post that "to many in the West, the'
consequences of concluding that
the Soviets took part in the plot to;
kill the Pope are so appalling that
the matter will simply not bear
thinking about."
Like the Italian judicial authori-
ties, Sterling chose a different track.!
Realizing that she "was making
grave charges against a superpower
with which the United States and
its Western allies had to maintain
civilized relations," she nonetheless
decided that uncovering the truth'
was the best policy.
"To my mind," she wrote, "the
best way to dissuade Soviet leaders
from still more dangerous secret
ventures was to see to it that they
knew that we knew."
*Cclibi was the Gray Wolves' leader in West
Germany. According to plans, his organization
would provide Agca with safe houses and cash
for any eventualities in Europe.
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