A FEARFUL SYMMETRY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100050028-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 22, 2011
• Sequence Number: 28
• Publication Date: March 29, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/23: CIA-RDP90-01208R000100050028-8
THE BOSTON GLOBE
29 March 1983
A fearful symmetry
Nothing is vet proved beyond the shadow of.
a doubt, and there may be demons of disinfor-
mation lurking in the shadows, yet evidence.
filtering into the public domain suggests that
the Bulgarian secret service, acting at the be-
hest of the Russian KGB, may indeed have
planned the attempted assassination of Pope
John Paul II..
. The very notion that the Polish Pope was
shot for political reasons is so Intrinsically dis-
turbing that it is rejected out of hand by many
people. Those who wince at the baroque, and
often paranoid, conspiracy theories spun
around the assassinations of JFK and Martin
Luther King Jr. are understandably reluctant
to consider a whole new bibliography of con-
spiracy literature. Skeptical spirits pick up the
scent of the irrational in all conspiracy scenar-
ios. whether the filaments of guilt lead back to
the New Orleans Mafia and the CIA, or to Turk-
ish drug smugglers, the Bulgarian secret ser-
vice and the Russian KGB.
Nevertheless, in the matter of power and the
struggles to get it and hold it, there is ample
historical evidence indicating that reality fa-
vors the irrational, and that paranoid modes of
understanding may be the most accurate.
Americans who were able to accept the rev-
elations of CIA schemes to murder Fidel Castro
or to overthrow the democratically elected gov- hiring of Turkish gangsters. Stripped of diplo-
ernment of Chile's President Salvador Allende matic euphemisms and high-tech firepower.
ought to consider with an open mind the possi- - the superpower conflict, seen in this way. be-
bility that Russian intelligence operatives are gins to look like a gang war between the two
as capable of, criminal behavior as Yankee most powerful families in organized crime.
operatives who took their degrees at Princeton
or Yale. The political will to avoid losing Chile
is just as irresistible as the political will not to
lose Poland.
What emerges from the mounting evidence
that Mehmet All Agca was a hired assassin
controlled by Bulgarian agents is a sad. and
fearful symmetry. A Bulgarian diplomat who
defected in France has told French Intelligence
that. he heard about the plan to kill the. Pope
from a close friend who is a. high-ranking offi-
cial in the counterintelligence division of Bul-
garia's state security service. The plot was mo-
tivated by the Soviet belief that the Polish-born
Pope. acting as an instrument of Washington,
had instigated the thwarted Polish revolt car-
ried out by the 10 million members of the Soli-
darity union movement.
Agca himself has told Italian authorities
about a corollary plan to assassinate Lech Wa-
lesa while the union leader was visiting the
Pope in Rome.
Thus far, the Reagan Administration has
been observing a wise silence about the appar-
ent Soviet role in the shooting of the Pope. al-
lowing dispassionate observers to draw their
own conclusions. One of those conclusions may
be ^that there is a symmetrical pattern linking
11 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/23: CIA-RDP90-01208R000100050028-8