AGCA POINTS THE FINGER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505120014-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 15, 2010
• Sequence Number: 14
• Publication Date: July 18, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/15: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505120014-5
ARTICLE APPEARED NEWSWEEK
ON PAGE 5_7 18' July 1983
Agca Points the Finger
M ehmet Ali Agca seemed surprisingly
relaxed as he was led down the steps
of police headquarters in Rome. Dressed in
jeans and a warm-up jacket and flanked by
two guards, the man convicted of shooting
Pope John Paul II fielded questions from a
cluster of reporters. As Agca climbed into
the back of a blue-and-white van, the
impromptu press conference took an unex-
pected turn. Asked who else was involved in
the attempt on the pope, he suddenly shout-
ed: "The Bulgarian secret service." The
reporters pressed him for details. "And the
KGB?" they yelled. "Yes, and the KGB,"
he shot back. "[I have been] trained special-
ly by the KGB [in] international terrorism.
I have been trained also in Bulgaria."
Agca's outburst marked the first time he
has stated publicly what he has been tell-
ing Italian investigators in private for
months-that the Soviets and Bulgarians
masterminded his attack on the pope. Ital-
ian authorities insisted that
Agca had been brought to po-
lice headquarters only for
questioning in connection with
the recent kidnapping of a
Vatican employee's daughter.
The kidnappers had demanded
Agca's release. But in taking
the wraps off Agca and tipping
reporters to his appearance in
advance, Italian authorities al-
lowed him to openly finger the
KGB in the assassination at-
tempt on the pope.
Police at the scene made no
attempt to gag Agca. He told
the reporters that Syrian agents
had instructed him in terrorist techniques
and that he had spent time in the Soviet
Union, though he maintained that the
Kremlin had taken no direct hand in the
shooting. In his litany of accusations, he
named three other suspects in the plot-
Sergei Antonov, a Bulgarian airline official
now facing complicity charges in Rome,
and former Bulgarian Embassy officials To-
dor Ayvazov and Zhelyu Kolev-as his
accomplices.
Solitary: In making the charges, Agca
scarcely resembled the surly Turkish ter.
rorist who two years ago drew a life sen-
tehee for the shooting in St. Peter's Square.
In contrast to his sometimes incoherent
testimony and withdrawn manner during
the trial, he appeared calm and rational.
His close-cropped hair is now1ecked with
gray, but he looked remarkably fit after
two years in solitary confinement..;'He had
regained most of the weight he lost while
staging a brief hunger strike, and he dis-
played considerable energy-if not fluen-
cy-in his exchange with the gathered
newsmen.
"Were you ever in the Soviet Union?" one
reporter yelled.
"No, I have been in the Soviet Union but it
doesn't matter," Agca responded. "The So-
viet Union doesn't have any direct connec-
tion by the terrorist. It uses in the Middle
East, Syria. In Europe, Bulgaria. I have
enough proofs for pope assassination for
everyaction."
"Was Antonov involved?" another news-
man asked.
"I said Sergei Antonov was with me dur-
ing attempts," Agca answered.
In an apparent effort to give the prisoner
more time to respond to questions, a plain-
clothes officer whispered to the guards to
proceed "slowly, slowly." Then the driver
of the van let the engine idle for several
minutes. Italian officials angrily rejected
any suggestion that they had stage-man-
aged the exchange. "Absolutely not," said
one investigator. "It was something that
just happened." But Antonov's attorney,
Giuseppe Consolo, argued otherwise. "The
police did nothing to move him away from
the journalists. It was incredible, absolutely
incredible, to watch him repeat everything
he probably told the judge," Consolo said.
"I cannot believe the police didn't have
precise orders to let Agca talk."
`Inoxent': Ostensibly, Agca had gone to
police headquarters only to answer ques-
tions about the kidnapping of 15-year-old
Emanuela Orlandi. The girl, whose father is
a messenger in the Vatican, disappeared on
June 22. A few days later, an anonymous
caller to an Italian news agency demanded
that Agca be freed in return for Emanuela.
Investigators had been unsure whether the
kidnappers had any connection with Agca.
The interrogation last week apparently sat-
isfied them that he knew nothing about the
case. Outside'the police station Agca called
on the kidnappers to "free the poor inno-
cent girl."
Both the Soviet and Bulgarian govern.
ments sharply denied Agca's charges.
"There are absolutely no facts to bear out,
directly or indirectly, the socialist countries'
complicity in this heinous crime," -Moscow
said in an official statement.
But the Soviet Union's protes-
tations of innocence looked
thinner than ever. Italian Mag-
istrate Ilario MarteIla is expect-
ed to complete his 20-month
investigation into the papal
plot sometime in late August.
And if Agca's outburst last
week offered any clue, Mar-
tella is certain to find that the
trail of the pope's would-be as-
sassins extended far beyond
St. Peter's Square.
ELAINE SBILL HEW= with
ANDREW NAGORSKI and
in Rome
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/15: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505120014-5