BUT THIS COULD BE AN OBSTACLE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807500019-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 10, 2012
• Sequence Number: 19
• Publication Date: July 1, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/10: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807500019-5
ARTICLE APPEARED
OK PAGE_
But " This
Could Be
an Obstacle
1
David WW
T he news that an Italian state
prosecutor has accused the
Bulgarian secret service of re-
cruiting Mehmet All Agca to kill
the Pope could not come at a worse
moment for the Reagan Ad-
ministration.
Although the report of the state
prosecutor, based on a three-year
investigation by Italian magistrate
Illario Martella, does not directly
accuse the Soviet KGB of running
the operation, it contains hints
pointing in that direction. The
prosecutor says that the Bulgari-
ans tried to murder Pope John Paul
II in 1981 because they believed
the Polish pontiff was encouraging
the Solidarity movement in Poland
And unrest in Eastern Europe.
The charge of Bulgarian, and by
implication, KGB complicity in the
plot to kill the Pope, is not proved,
of course. But the timing is ex-
tremely ewkward for President
Reagan. Casting aside his Cold
War rhetoric and talk of the
Soviets as an "evil empire," Rea-
gan is pushing as hard as he can for
an election-year summit meeting
with Konstantin U. Chernenko, the
leader of the Soviet Union.
The economy, after all, despite
rising interest rates, is in fairly .
good shape. The chief area of
vulnerability for Reagan when he
faces his Democratic opponent this
fall is the the perception of some
voters that Reagan is "trigger
happy," " and could lead the country
into war. It is a charge that Walter
F. Mondale is sure to exploit.
But the issue can be defused and
turned to the President's advan-
tage, if only he can get the Rus-
sians to the negotiating table. Yet,
It is awkward for Reagan, an old
LOS ANGELES TIMES
1 July 1984
Cold Warrior, o'ezten8 an olive branch to
the Russians if it can be shown that they
,gave the order to shoot the Pope. True,
Z Andropov, the chief of the KGB in
1981, at the time of the attack on the
stiff, is dead. But it would be scarcely
Teas easy for Reagan to sit down with his
Ccre r if it is demonstrated to the world
Soviets use political assassination
as an instrument of national policy.
The plot against the Pope, as outlined in
the prosecutor's report and the magis-
trate's investigation, is a complex tale of
conspiracy involving the Gray Wolves, a
,right-wing Turkish nationalist group,
members of the Turkish Mafia and Bul-
garian intelligence agents. The cast of
,charactessAncludes three major actors
`with tonfusingly similar names. But the
charges appear to boil down to these:
The Bulgarian Secret Service, believing
the Communist Bloc in Eastern Europe to
be in "mortal danger," contracted with
Bekir Celenk and a second Turkish Mafia
leader to pay $1.25 million to Agca and two
.Turkish confederates. Agca was to shoot,
the Pope, which he did, but the Pontiff
survived. The Italian prosecutor has asked
for the indictment of the three Bulgarians
and six Turks.
Do the world's intelligence services
i"age in political assassination? In the
of the Bulgarians, the answer would
jr to be yes. The Durzhavna Sigur-
or DS, the Bulgarian service, operates
out of a yellow building at 30 General
Gurko St. in downtown Sofia. Six years ago
in London, a prominent Bulgarian writer
and exile, Georgi Markov, was Jabbed with
an umbrella by a man with a foreign
accent, who mumbled "I'm sorry," jumped
into a cab and disappeared.
? Later in the day, Markov fell ill with a
high fever and four days after that, he
died. Scotland Yard detectives found a
tiny, perfectly round pellet made out of
platinum and iridium, one-fifteenth of an
inch in diameter, embedded in Markov's
thigh. Four microscopic holes had been
drilled into the pellet, and each hole
contained a highly toxic poison, which
British intelligence believes to have been
ricin, a derivative of the castor bean plant.
One ounce could kill 90,000 people.
Ten days before the attack on Markov,
another prominent Bulgarian exile; Vladi-
mir Kostov, was riding the escalator out of
the Paris metro when he felt a sharp pain
In his back. He, too, developed a high
fever, but survived. After reading about
Markov, Kostov was examined. French
surgeons removed a pellet from his back
.identical to the one that killed Markov.
In the past, at least, the KGB has also
carried out asinations. SMERSH, the
,Soviet murder apparatus popularized by
Ian Fleming in the James Bond novels, was
in fact the name of units established by the
Cheka, the KGB's predecessor, to spy on
the military. It also had the power to
execute spies, and did.
' The Soviet secret police apparently
.killed a defector, Walter Krivitsky, in
Washington in 1941, a few months after
Leon Trotsky, Stalin's rival, was murdered
,with an ice ax in Mexico. In the 1950s, the
KGB twice sent a killer to Munich who
murdered two Ukranian exile leaders with
a prussic-add vapor gun.
f Until Stalin's death, the Soviet assassi-
nation arm was known as the Spetsburo.
Later it became the 13th Department, then
Department V. to charge of "wet affairs."
But murdering ties is one thing, heads of state is
another. The author Edward Jay Kpstain
has suggested that Lee Harvey Oswald,
the presumed assassin of President John F.
Kennedy. had been recruited by the KGB
when he lived in the Soviet Union, a
they that is not proved. The case against
I -z aside, most Western intelligence
is believe that the KGB is not now in
sassination business, at least not in
.. ,.asiness of murdering heads of state.
The CIA, however, did engage in assas-
sination attempts against foreign leaders.
According to the 1976 final report of the
Church Committee, the ?enate panel cre-
ated to investigate abuses by the intelli-
gence agencies, the CIA plotted against
eight foreign leaders, five of whom died
violently, although the CIA's role varied
from case to case.
In 1961, the CIA set up a special
"Executive Action" unit to develop, In the
words of the committee report, "a capabili-
ty to assassinate foreign leaders." The CIA
unit recruited two Mafia hoodlums to try to
poison Cuban leader Fidel Castro. The CIA
also tried to kill Congolese leader Patrice
Lumumba by coating his tooth brush with
deadly disease-bearing bacteria. But Pres-
ident Reagan's executive order on intelli-
gence forbids the CIA to engage in
aasaasinations:
The ' parallel can be drawn to nuclear
arsenals on both sides. As long as they
exist, so the argument goes, they will not
be used. The same sort of standoff may
exist in the murky realm of assassinations.
Perhaps. But if the charges against the
Bulgarians are true, and if a link can be
shown to the KGB-which would be very
difficult to prove in court-the case of the
papal plot could obviously have serious
foreign-policy implications for the United
States and the Reagan Administration.
Inim election year, it is a possibility that
t? to House would rather not have to
&,,.d Wise writes frequently on intelli-
gence. His most recent book is a notxl of
espionage, "The Children's Game."
4S RECF. L Vr.D.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/10: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807500019-5