By Brian Carnell

Friday, January 26, 2001

In 1981, Turkish terrorist Mehmet Ali Agca almost succeeded in assassinating Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square. After first claiming the he acted alone and then later that he was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Ali Agca finally claimed that he had carried out the assassination with the cooperation of the KGB and Bulgarian authorities. The Soviet Union, Ali Agca claimed, wanted the Pope dead because they believed he was fomenting unrest in Poland where the first early cracks in the Soviet Union appeared in the early 1980s.

Numerous Leftist authors, most notably Edward Herman and Michael Parenti, have vehemently argued that there was no KGB/Bulgarian connection with the assassination attempt, and some writers have gone as far as to suggest that the assassination was staged by Western intelligence agencies who coerced Ali Agca into blaming the Soviet Union. Why float the KGB-Bulgaria story then? To serve as anti communist propaganda. In some versions of this story, the Bulgaria-KGB claim is concocted to bolster anti communist military intervention in Latin America.

Steve Mizrach summarizes the view that the whole idea that the KGB might have it in for the Pope was complete disinforamtion, "And they [the media] run establishment disinformation - like the so-called "Bulgarian Plot to Kill the Pope" in 1982 - as if it was given from on high."

Unfortunately for the Left, newly found documents indicate that the Communist Party had indeed ordered the KGB to find ways to neutralize the Pope's effectiveness. A November 1979 document from the Central Committee ordered the KGB to begin a disinformation campaign against the Pope and included a directive vaguely authorizing, "ultimate actions."

One of those who signed the document, Mikhail Gorbachev, elaborated on the documents in an interview with Italian magazine Il Tempo.

Don't forget that in 1979 the Cold War had reached its culmination; and, on both sides, the logic of thought and action was guided by this fact. In that context, the Pope's activity, geared to the struggle against totalitarian regimes, could only seem dangerous and hostile to the Soviet leaders.

The document to which you refer reflects precisely the climate of the time. There is talk of political actions (for example, the consultation of Communist parties that were governing in socialist countries), and of propaganda.

With reference to "ultimate actions," remember that in the same document there were no orders of any kind. In principle, there was talk of similar initiatives, namely, policies and propaganda. There was no talk of any activity against the Pope's person and it couldn't be otherwise. At that time, actions of this kind had already been eliminated from the KGB's arsenal and prohibited.

The last part is interesting, because even if true the Bulgarians apparently hadn't gotten the message. Bulgaria's secret police apparatus was only behind the East German |Stasi| in its level of repression, and moreover it had a confirmed history of overseas assassination. The Bulgarian secret police were responsible, for example, for the 1978 murder of a dissident writer in London.

It is unlikely, however, that the full story of any Bulgarian connection in the attempted assassination plot will ever come out -- shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union the Bulgarian secret police destroyed most of its records.

Source:

Soviets Weighed Plot Against Pope, Gorbachev Says. NewsMax.Com, January 24, 2001.

Discuss (3 Replies) | Printer Friendly