DID AGCA ACT ALONE?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505110068-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 27, 2010
• Sequence Number: 68
• Publication Date: January 15, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/27: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505110068-7
1 ' YORK TIKES Br&OK RE11=v,
15 January 193,
Agca Act Alone? By Edward Jay Epstein
Did
THE PLOT TO KILL THE POPE to investigate Mr. Agea's background in Turkey and his
By Paul B. Henze. connections to Bulgaria. After Mr. Henze had com-
216pp. New York: pleted his-original investigation, Mrs. Sterling was re-
Charles Scribne rs Sons. $14.95. tanned by the Reader's Digest to prepare a magazine ar-
ticle about Mr. Agea. She then conducted her own in-
THE TIME OF THE ASSASSINS 7 Quit, drawing on high-level sources
m ta.nan By Claire Sterling.. A William Abrahams Book / gence she had used-for her last book, "The Terror Net-
264 New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. $14.95.' work." Her article, published in September 1982, re-
opened a debate in the media about whether Mr. Agca I
N May 13, 1981, Mehmet All Agca, an escaped really did act alone.
murderer from Turkey, raised a pistol above Mr. Henze continued to fuel the controversy by selling
his head in the piazza in front of St
Peter's his research on the Bul
arian
i
.
g
connect
on to other news
tf Basilica in Vatican City and shot and wounded organizations, including NBC (which broadcast its own
Pope John P,ul II. Captured at the scene by Italian po- White Paper on the plot-in September 1982) and News-
lice, be freely admitted firing the shots and was tried week. He made it available later to The New York
and sentenced to Life imprisonment. Mr. Agca had Times for -a fee., He also wrote articles under his own
previously confessed to the political assassination of a name in The Christian Science Monitor and Encounter.
well-}mown newspaper editor in Istanbul and in Febru- Both Mr. Henze and Mrs. Sterling then expanded their
ary 1979 he had threatened in a letter to kill Pope John investigations into these two books. In her autobio-
Paul II. whom he accused of being "the Commander of graphical account, Mrs. Sterling focuses on press and
the Crusades" against Islam. So, investigating agencies government reactions to her disclosures about the as-
and toe media quickly concluded that be acted as a lone sassination attempt. Mr. Henze writes about the wider
fanatic when he shot the Pope. geopolitical context and motivation of the assassination
,Now two weli-documented books strongly dispute this attempt.
.conclusion. Paul Henze's "Plot to Kill the Pope" and Although evidence, unlike acts of faith, is contingent
Claire Sterling's "Time of the Assassins" are both - on external circumstances, Mrs. Sterling and Mr.
based on extraordinary investigations into Balkan in- Henze both. hold their evidence to be incontrovertible.
trigues. They both relentlessly trace the assassin's trail Mrs. Sterling insists that the "logic [is] inescapable,"
to Rome, beginning. with his dramatic escape from that Mr. Agca had "come to Rome as a professional hit
prison in Turkey in November 1979, and following his man, hired by a Bulgarian spy ring," and Mr. Henze
passage through Iran, Bulgaria and Germany. They places the existence of the plot "beyond debate." Al-
give similar descriptions of the final arrangements for though they both rely on the Turkish journalist Ugus
the assassination, saying that Mr. Agca was picked up Mumcu's investigation into the Bulgarian connection
at 3 P.M. that day by a Bulgarian intelligence officer and repeatedly cite him as a source, they do not even
and airline official named Sergei Antonov who was ac- contend with the very different answer he arrives at
companied by two Bulgarian diplomats. They handed based or. very much the same evidence. Mr. Mumcu
him a gun and drove him to St. Peter's Square to shoot concludes in his book, *'Agca .Dosyasi," that Mr. Agca
the Pope. Both authors reach the same conclusion - the attempted the assassination not on behalf of the Bulgar-
papal assassination had been organized and controlled ians or the K.G.B. but for a neofascist Turkish terrorist
by the Bulgarian secret service on behalf of the Soviet organization called "The Grey Wolves" (whose mem-
Union's security agency, the K.G.B., and Mr. Agca bets literally howl like a wolf pack). Mrs. Sterling does
merely served as a paid gunman. not even mention his conclusion, or his book about Mr.
These books also proceed from a common origin, the Agca, while Mr. Henze pre-emptively dismisses the
Reader's Digest. Mr. Henze, who was the Central Intel- book on the grounds that Mr. Mumcu is a "leftist."
ligence Agency station chief in Turkey from 1974 to 1977, Mrs. Sterling and Mr. Henze base their theory that
was hired in the summer of 1981 by the Reader's Digest the Bulgarians arranged the assassination attempt on
three main findings. First, they show that Mr. Agca re-
ceived considerable assistance from Turkish fugitives
for many months after he escaped from - the Turkish
prison where he had been confined in 1979 - including
money, a faked passport, hideouts, contacts and the
weapon to use against the Pope. Then they establish
that the immediate source of this support was a group of
Turkish arms smugglers based in Bulgaria. Finally,
they demonstrate that these Turkish smugglers bad
close liaisons with the Bulgarian secret service.
To be sure, they support these findings with convinc-
ing arguments and evidence. Even if these three layers
of conspiratorial connections are fully accepted, how-
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/27: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505110068-7