THE BULGARIAN CONNECTION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000100490002-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 13, 2007
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: December 16, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO N REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 656-4068
ABC Nightline STATION WJLA-TV
ABC Network
December 16, 1982 11:30 P.M. CITY Washington, D.C.
The Bulgarian Connection
TED KOPPEL: Was Bulgaria involved in the attempt on the
life of Pope John Paul II, and did it act in behalf of the Soviet
KGB? We'll focus on that story and on charges that Bulgaria has
been involved in a whole range of terrorist activities in Italy.
We'll talk live with a Bulgarian diplomat and with two experts on
terrorism.
KOPPEL: The Pope is said to believe that the Kremlin
was behind the assassination attempt against him in May 1981.
But that is not the sort of thing that Popes say publicly. It is
not even the sort of thing that high Vatican officials will say
in public. To make such charges requires proof, and then,
perhaps even more difficult, a meaningful response.
What is happening now in Rome, however, is almost as
surprising. The Italian government is coming very close to a
direct accusation against the government of Bulgaria for
complicity in the attack on the Pope. And Italian
parliamentarians are now publicly drawing certain conclusions.
Bulgaria, they say would not have acted without explicit
instructions from the Soviet Union.
In just a few hours, in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia,
Bulgarian officials will deny and denounce those charges at a
public news conference. In a few moments, we will be joined live
by a Bulgarian official here in Washington.
But first, more details from Bill Blakemore, who's been
unraveling the threads of this remarkable story in Rome for more
than a year.
OFFICES IN: WASHINGTON D.C. ? NEW YORK ? LOS ANGELES ? CHICAGO ? DETROIT ? AND OTHER PRINCIPAL CITIES
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BILL BLAKEMORE: "The facts say the time for hypotheses
is now over," announced Italy's Prime Minister Fanfani here today
in Parliament. "The facts which now have hard-won verification
by our judiciary, beginning with the plot to kill the Pope." He
told the chamber his government had recalled its ambassador to
Bulgaria for an indefinite period and may take further measures
against Bulgaria. If the attempt to kill the Pope had succeeded,
he said, it would have been the gravest act of destabilization in
the world in the past 60 years.
Three Bulgarian officials have now been named by
magistrates, one of them arrested, in the conspiracy which sent
Ali Agca to fire his gun at John Paul. And on Monday the
government will debate openly in Parliament what it knows of
Italy's Bulgarian connections.
Some parliamentarians here want complete revision of
Italy's relations with the entire Soviet bloc. Some believe the
Soviets control Bulgarian and the Kremlin is behind it all.
GEORGIO NAPOLITANO: We want to know the truth. We want
an open discussion in Parliament.
BLAKEMORE: The Bulgarian Secret Service is now
implicated here not only in the plot to kill John Paul, but also
in Red Brigades terrorism and in huge drug- and gun-smuggling
operations.
The terrorism connection emerged shortly after the Red
Brigades kidnapping here a year ago of American General James
Dozier. Italian union official Luigi Scricciolo was arrested,
charged with being a go-between for Bulgarian spies with the
kidnappers. Scricciolo was also the first Western labor union
official to meet Lech Walesa in Poland. Scricciolo helped
arrange Walesa's visit to see the Pope in Rome two years ago.
And media reports in Italy now claim Scricciolo has confessed to
discussing with the Bulgarians a proposed plot to assassinate
Walesa during that trip. True or not, these reports have fanned
public concern about the Bulgarian connections.
The third case in which the Bulgarian Secret Service
stands implicated here is a massive heroin-for-arms smuggling
ring just broken. Investigators believe over 8000 pounds of
unprocessed heroin was moved from the Middle East through
Bulgaria to Palermo, Sicily for refining and shipment to the
United States. The money from the heroin sales then going to buy
arms, including tanks and helicopters, for the Middle East,
especially Iran. The two-way deals for these operations, they
say, were made in Bulgaria and included wealthy international
businessman Bekir Celenk, who is Turkish. And Bekir Celenk,
according to Italian investigators, is also deeply involved in
the plot to kill the Pope.
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Mehmet Ali Agca, in confessions which began early this
year and are still coming out, claims he met Bekir Celenk in
Bulgarian and that Celenk later offered him $1 1/2 million to
kill John Paul.
What proof there is for all this remains for the most
part closely guarded by the Italian public prosecutors. Because
of the potential international crisis their evidence could
provoke, they are much in the spotlight now, particularly
Magistrate Elario Martella, on the papal assassination case for
over a year.
PAOLO GARIMBERTI: Magistrates are [unintelligible].
But we are not sure a hundred percent. I think we are in a very
difficult point now. It's a kind of the position of an airplane
going up, you know? There is a moment where -- when the plane is
in a very difficult and dangerous position. We are in that
position now.
BLAKEMORE: The rising drama of the Bulgarian affair
will probably only be increased tomorrow when, the Bulgarians
say, there will be a press conference in their capital attended
in person by Bekir Celenk, alleged to have paid Ali Agca; the two
Bulgarians named in the assassination case; and the wife of the
Bulgarian under arrest here. Bulgaria claims it's being framed
by the West.
The leader of one of Italy's three biggest labor unions,
Giorgio Benvenutto, told ABC News today, "We cannot tolerate this
situation. We have to take action. If Bulgaria is involved in
Red Brigades terrorism, it is not a domestic issue. We have to
get to the bottom of this Bulgarian thing."
Benvenutto believes that when Luigi Scricciolo was
working for him he passed on sensitive information to Bulgarians
about American labor union support for solidarity.
Leader of Italy's Social Democrat Party, Pieto Longo,
said today, "Italy must freeze relations with Bulgaria if the
proof is conclusive. The government must defend our country's
dignity."
One Italian editor told me today, "If the alleged
Bulgarian connections are proven in the end to be untrue, it
would be a terrible blow for Italy, whose officials have now
stuck their necks out, and a propaganda victory for the Soviet
bloc. If they are true, it could mean a terrible crisis for
Eastern Europe. Some has to win and someone has to lose," he
said. "We need a third way out."
KOPPEL: Joining us now in our Washington Bureau is
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Peter Dragnev, cultural attache at the Bulgarian Embassy here in
Washington.
Mr. Dragnev, let's begin with the obvious question. I
assume you're going to deny the charges. Why do you think the
Italian government is preparing to make them? Why do you think
so many Italian parliamentarians are making what is clearly such
a provocative charge?
PETER DRAGNEV: Well, Ted, let me begin with expressing
my gratitude toards ABC for letting us be here and having the
chance to see our understanding of the truth.
Of course, many Bulgarians, including myself and my
colleagues in the Bulgarian Embassy, are very much indignantly
offended by the groundless accusations and by the groundless
suspicions towards the Bulgarian people, accused and allegedly
accused, some of them, for being involved in assassination
attempt on the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope John Paul
II, a Slav and a Pole.
And we all understand that certain circles in Italy are
very much interested in distracting the attention from the
original source of terrorism in the world, and especially in some
of the Western countries. So my point is that these circles in
various powers are doing their best to distract the attention of
the world public opinion and allegedly to -- and to accuse
innocent Bulgarian citizens.
KOPPEL: All right. Let me just ask you, when you talk
about the original source of terrorism, you're referring to whom?
DRAGNEV: Well, I'm referring to the original sources of
terrorism who swept some -- which swept some of the Western
World, some of the Western countries.
KOPPEL: Yes, but who are you talking about?
DRAGNEV: Well, all these things and acts of violence
which we reject, about terrorism against individuals and cities,
and so on and so forth, which our theory and our practice and
our state rejects.
KOPPEL: Are you talking about specific people? Are
yout talking about a particular group?
DRAGNEV: I'm principally -- I'm talking about the
accusations, which we reject as a state and which our theory and
party system rejects as a whole.
KOPPEL: We will have an opportunity to talk a little
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bit later after we've heard some of the other charges that are
being leveled against your government and against some Bulgarians
in particular. But let me raise one question that I must say is
of particular interest.
Mehmet All Agca was in Sofia. He did get a weapon in
Sofia. And he seemed to travel rather freely in your country.
And from what I know of Bulgaria, that is not an easy thing for a
foreigner to do. How do you explain that?
DRAGNEV: Well, I'm not here to educate the American
public. But I should mention a couple of things. Bulgaria is
visited every year by four millions of tourists. Two millions of
them are Turks. And you can imagine for a nine-million nation it
would be very difficult and near impossible to monitor all of the
foreigners being in Bulgaria and who is going to meet whom.
So I think these things to be spoken about, anybody
meeting anybody as foreigners in Bulgaria is absolutely
ridiculous.
KOPPEL: One of the sad confessions that one has to make
about this country, Mr. Dragnev, is that it is easy to get a
weapon here. It was my understanding that it is not so easy in
your country to get a weapon. How did Mehmet Ali Agca get his
weapon there?
DRAGNEV: Well, all these allegations have not been
proed. Even there has not been an indictment against people of
Bulgaria. These are all suspicions and, quote, revelations,
unquote, by some of the publications.
KOPPEL: All right. We'll be hearing a few more of
those revelations. And if you'll be good enough to stand by,
we'll come back and chat with you a little later.
When we return, we'll talk with two leading experts on
international terrorism. One of them, Claire Sterling, was one
of the first journalists to investigate the possibility of Soviet
involvement in the attack on the Pope.
KOPPEL: Joining us now are two experts on international
terrorism. Via satellite from London, American writer Claire
Sterling, who has been writing about and investigating the
possible communist connection to the attack on the Pope for more
than a year. And here in our Washington Bureau, Dr. Yonah
Alexander, Director of the Institute for Studies in International
Terrorism at the State University of New York and editor-in-chief
of an international journal on terrorism.
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Claire Sterling, what -- about a year ago you and I
talked about this subject, and at the time it sounded like rather
wild speculation. You were pointing the finger at the Soviets
then. What has happened in the last few weeks, do you think,
that makes those what seemed to be unsubstantiated charges a year
ago more realistic now?
CLAIRE STERLING: Well, the dramatic thing, of course,
is that Judge Martella, who has been conducting this
investigation in Italy since last fall, has arrested one
Bulgarian, who was a flight director for the Balkan Airways, the
Bulgarian airline, and has sought the arrest of two other
Bulgarians. This is no longer in the realm of newspaper
speculation. This is a judge of most meticulous reputation who
would surely not have made such a move, with all its implications
for Italian diplomacy and Western diplomacy, relations with
Eastern Europe, if he did not have solid evidence.
Now, Mehmet All Agca, himself, is known to have begun to
speak in a second and third interrogation which began last May.
But again, Judge Martella is not the man who would ever go on the
strength of a confession alone. Unless he had gotten
confirmation, hard-fact confirmation of what Agca told him, he
would never have moved to make these arrests.
I think that's what is making this case, that is
creating this state of tension and drama in Italy at the moment.
KOPPEL: All right. Two quick questions. It's one
thing to level charges against three individual Bulgarians. How
does that implicate the Bulgarian government?
STERLING: Well, I think that nobody in the world of
real politics assumes that members of the Bulgarian Embassy in
Rome or the flight manager of the Bulgarian airlines would be
capable of acting as an individual citizen.
Apart from that, we do have independent evidence, all of
us who have been working on this case, about the connection of
Bulgarian, even be -- we have had this long before the judge
ordered these arrests.
When Mr. Dragnev speaks about any number of millions of
people passing through Bulgaria, this is quite true. But Mehmed
Ali Agca was there for 50 days under very special circumstances,
staying in very special and expensive hotels. He happened to
have had his face on the front pages of the Turkish press, next
door to Bulgaria, for some weeks as a sensational confessed
murderer of the most important journalist in Turkey, Abdia
Pecci (?), and again for his sensational escape from an
invulnerable military prison, the Kajamartepi (?) prison in
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Turkey. He was therefore a fugitive from justice of great
celebrity and notoriety in Turkey, and surely in Bulgaria.
Therefore, it is just not logical to assume that the
Bulgarian Secret Service was unaware of who he was and what he
was for the 50 days he was harbored in Sofia. We begin with
that...
KOPPEL: Let me go to Yonah Alexander here in
Washington.
You don't necessarily believe that the Soviets,
therefore, are implicated. Do you believe that the Bulgarian
government is implicated?
YONAH ALEXANDER: Well, first, Ted, obviously we have to
look at the role of terrorism in strategic terms. There is no
question in my mind that even the powerful would resort to
terrorism, not only the weak. So, by definition, the Soviets
look at terrorism, if I may paraphrase Clausewitz, continuation
of policy by other means. And therefore they would resortto
terrorism or national liberation. So there is no denial about
hat.
But certainly the Soviets are very phlegmatic. They are
very cautious. It's a question of cost-benefit relationship.
And assuming that they were involved in this activity, certainly
this would mean a psychological defeat for them and a political
blunder, because not only this would implicate them in European
terms, but also a negative reaction in the Third World.
So, therefore, I think we are discussing now a situation
for which we don't have complete evidence and we cannot,
obviously, draw any final conclusions.
KOPPEL: All right. But you're drawing rather empirical
conclusions there: that therefore the Soviets wouldn't be
involved because it wouldn't make any sense for them. It can be
argued just as easily that they...
ALEXANDER: Well, at least, Ted, this is one school of
thought: that for the Soviets, certainly in terms of their
capabilities -- and there is no end to the imagination, let's
say, of the KGB. There are some people who doubt whether the
Soviets were indirectly involved in this connection.
KOPPEL: What about the Bulgarians?
ALEXANDER: Well, obviously we do have information in
terms of the Bulgarian connection in this case, as well as many
other cases, in terms of attempts to destabilize other countries,
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such as Turkey.
KOPPEL: What about these specific charges? Do you
believe that the Bulgarian government was involved?
ALEXANDER: Well, we don't have all the evidence, but we
have to wait. But at any rate, in terms of the Soviet
connection, one could raise these questions.
KOPPEL: Yeah, but I'm asking you first of all about the
Bulgarian connection, because then the obvious next question if,
does the Bulgarian Secret Service ever operate without the
knowledge and acquiescence of the KGB?
ALEXANDER: Well, the question really is in whose
benefit it is. And if we assume for a moment that the Bulgarians
are acting for the KGB -- and I believe this is true -- then
certainly if the Soviets are aiming at destabilizing Western
societies, this would mobilize, I think, support against the
Soviet Union at the same time they're trying to consolidate their
hold and control over Eastern Europe. And certainly the
assassination of Pope would not promote this aim.
KOPPEL: Claire Sterling, briefly if you would, mobilize
your arguments against that.
STERLING: Yes. For one thing, I don't considerthis a
terrorist act or an attempt to destabilize in the sense that
we've come to understand the use of terrorism. This was a crime
of state, an attempt to eliminate physically a man who had become
a mortal danger to the survival of the whole Soviet structure in
Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union itself because his presence
as the head of the Roman Catholic Church was indispensable to the
emergence and growth of the Solidarity free labor movement in
Poland.
Therefore, the fact that he was in Italy may have been a
factor of destabilization, but it was certainly not the major
consideration for those who planned this attack.
As for the responsibility of the Soviet KGB, Soviet
services, for whatever might have been done by the Bulgarian
secret services, I would like to call to your attention an
interview in last week's French left-wing daily Liberation by the
former head of the Bulgarian Secet Service, Colonel Stefan
Sverdlov (?), who says the Bulgarians are the favorites of the
Soviet Union, in the secret services, because of a long tradition
of terrorist activity and because they are the most secure and
the most servile. He adds that they act autonomously only on
their own national territory or within the Balkans. Whereas in
operations of a truly international character, they always follow
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the directies of the KGB, which has its own officials in every
sector of Bulgarian espionage.
KOPPEL: Forgive me for cutting you off. I want to give
Peter Dragnev, the cultural attache from the Bulgarian Embassy
here in Washington, one opportunity to respond.
We have about a minute and a half left, Mr. Dragnev.
DRAGNEV: Well, I should say that we have -- we,
Bulgaria, Bulgarians, have nothing in common with the terrorist
acts in the world, on the Balkans or in any place of terror it
might be.
KOPPEL: Please, if you would, let's not waste the time.
Respond to some of the specific charges that have been made. How
is it possible that the Bulgarian government could not have known
who Mehmet Ali Agca was?
DRAGNEV: Well, it's quite possible because so many
foreigners are in Bulgaria. And we have not been informed by
Interpol or anybody, when the Italian police, for example, had
been informed and some other Western police, police departments
in the Western countries have been informed by Interpol. And
when Agca had been there for more than 50 days, they did nothing
too. I think that this could not be an argument at all, because
our police did our best and it arrested, for example, Celenk.
And he's going to comment on his position tomorrow on the press
conference.
KOPPEL: And we will watch and listen with interest.
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