OF ANDROPOV AND THE POPE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505120127-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 27, 2010
• Sequence Number: 127
• Publication Date: January 6, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/27: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505120127-0
.1 D
WASHINGTON TI
6 JANUARY 1983
Comment
ALLAN BROWNFELD
Of AndrOpov.
and the no
Although the press is doing its
best to ignore the implications
of recent disclosures con-
cerning the attempted assassination
of Pope John Paul 11 - and the
Roman Catholic Church in the United
States, which has been so vocal in
advocating a nuclear freeze, has.:
been silent on the subject - one
most important question remains
largely unasked. That is: did Yuri
Andropov, in his capacity as head of
the KGB, order the assassination of
the pope?
This is a legitimate question for a
number of reasons. Mehmet Ali
Agca, e%rk who has been convict-
ed of the shooting, now testifies that
he was offered $1.S 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
would invade Poland, the letter said,
the pope would return to be by rho
This information, of course, pro- in Sofia, the capital - especially
vides sufficient motive for Moscow not somebody like Agca... aconvict-
to have sought to removePope John ed murderer whose picture had been
Paul II from the scene. Until Nov featured on Turkey's front pages for
2S, when Italian authorities arrested weeks on end."
Sergei Antonov on charges of "active '
complicity" in the assassination According to Agca's own account,
attempt, there was no concrete evi- he entered Bulgaria on ?a forged
dence that Soviet bloc agents were Indian passport as Yoginder Singh.
involved. The circumstantial evi- He stayed at several expensive tour
dence, however, even prior to that ists hotels before checking into the
date seemed overwhelming - and deluxe Hotel Vitosha. There, he
was largely downplayed by both the obtained the 9mm Browning he used
press and the church - as well as to shoot the pope and also was given
by Western governments. a perfectly counterfeited passport
One who immediately pointed her issued to "Farouk Ozgun" from
finger at Moscow was Claire Sterling, someone whose name he says he does
author of the book l dre Terror not remember. Miss Sterling declares,
author passport was given to Agca in
of
Network," of and boo and authorities o of the world's
terrorism. Sofia under circumstances directly
leading Discussing the fact that Agca had implicating the Bulgarian secret
service a good deal of time in Bulgaria, at t Edir Edr .n e on Aupas siport g. 30 The . 30 with h was a stamped
had forged dand enough Turkish
money to live a life documents luxury, exit visa. That visa was fake. But
she the Bulgarian entry stamp, dated
wrote: "7b have stayed in Bulgaria Aug. 31, was valid. Thus someone
for some 50 days, as Agca did, is . ? must have smuggled the passport
enough in. itself to raise suspicions from Thrkey to Bulgaria -- some-
about his future actions. Apart from one who did not match Agca's photo-
the Soviet Union, Bulgaria is Eur- graph on the passport but who was
ope's most inflexible communist able to have it stamped on the
police state; it is also one of Moscow's Bulgarian side. A courier must have I
principal surrogates for terrorism s rushed the passport toAgca in Sofia,
and subversion. Bulgaria has serv- since he used it to leave for Yugosla- ,
iced Western Europe's terrorist via that very day."
bands since the early 1970s, provid-. , U.S. intelligence officials note that
ing guerrilla-training facilities and, Bulgaria is one of the Soviets' most.
a sanctuary, and acting as a prime - obedient allies and that Moscow
staging area for trans-shipment off knows everything that is going on
Soviet-bloc weapons....One of Bul- in Bulgaria with regard to security
garia's more pressing assignments questions. Bulgarian intelligence, it
for the Soviet Union has been to help
destabilize neighboring 'Turkey. The
Bulgarian secret service knows ever-'
ything about Thrks crossing the' frontier, legally or otherwise. No
Thrk could loiter for long unobserved
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/27: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505120127-0