By SEAN GRIFFIN

Despite opinion in Europe
which, according to Time
magazine, ranges from ‘“‘total
disbelief to qualified credulity,’’
most of the North American media
continue to perpetuate the sensa-
tional story of the ‘‘Bulgarian con-
nection’’ in the attempted
assassination of Pope John Paul II
in May, 1981.

According to that story, con-
victed would-be assassin, Turkish
terorist Mehmet Ali Agca was pur-
ported to be working with
Bulgarian agents who in turn were
taking orders from the Soviet
KGB.

But it has all the earmarks of a
CIA-inspired propaganda effort,
even to the extent that the story was
originally floated by Readers’
Digest, and only later picked up by
other media.

Manipulation by the KGB is a
favorite theme of Readers’ Digest
senior editor John Barron who
wrote a major piece in the
magazine in October of last year
claiming that the U.S. peace move-
ment had been ‘‘penetrated,

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manipulated and distorted to an
amazing degree’ by the KGB. The
purpose, he said, was to ‘‘promote
Communist tyranny.”’

Ironically, Barron himself is the
one being manipulated—but by the
CIA. in 1977, he admitted to the
New York Times that his book
KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet
Secret Agents had been written for
a covert CIA ‘“‘operational pur-
pose.”

The Peoples Republic of
Bulgaria has emphatically denied

any involvement in the attempt on
the pontiff’s life. In a statemen
issued December 22, the Bulgarian
government declared: ‘‘We state
clearly and flatly that the
slanderous accusations do not and
cannot contain any grain of truth.

“Not one Bulgarian institution
was involved, directly or indirectly
in such a criminal act.’’

The Bulgarian Press Agency,
which issued the statements, also
charged that Agca’s network of
connections led not to the East, but
back to the West.

New York Times writer William
Safire, who chided the U.S. press
for being so slow to pick up the
“Bulgarian connection,’’ stated in
an article December 28 that the
story began back on November 9,
1982 when the CIA vice-chief of
Station for Rome and a staff
representative for the U.S. senate
intelligence committee visited
Italian interior- minister Virginio
Rognoni, supposedly to review the
evidence.

Safire did not say why the U.S.
Senate intelligence committee or
the CIA should have been involved
in the first place in a Italian internal
security matter. But that question
might provide some intriguing
answers.

Rognoni said that Agca, who
had been in protective solitary con-
finement since his conviction, had
“‘volunteered’’ the information
about the Bulgarian link when he
was told that he would have to be
moved from the safety of solitary
to an ordinary prison where his life
would be in danger.

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From there the story has
grown—undoubtedly with CIA
assistance.

At one point, several
newspapers, including at least one
in this province, featured a
photograph of a man witnessing
the attempted assassination of the
Pope in St. Peters’ Square on May
13, 1981. With it was an inset
photograph of Bulgarian travel
agent Sergei Antonov and a cap-
tion calling on readers to note the

ANALYSIS

striking similarity between the two
figures.

A photographer studying the
photograph might notice a disturb-
ing difference in focus between the
figure alleged to be Antonov and
the other figures in the crowd
around him.

In fact, Italian lawyer professor
Guiseppe Consolo, who is leading
the defence team for Antonov,
stated that the photograph was a
forgery — which had later been ad-
mitted by the Italian newspapers
which carried it.

But no such admission has been
made here where the photograph
also appeared.

Consolo took the rare step of go-
ing on Italian radio to emphasize
Antonov’s innocence, adding that
he had proof that Antonov was not
in St. Peters Square on the three
days, including May 13, that Agca
claimed he was present.

A petition has since been made
to the Italian court, enclosing that
proof and calling on the judge to
dismiss the case.

Consolo also charged that the
press had far more information of
the case than had been made
available to the defence lawyers,
adding substance to suspicions that
the story was contrived from the

beginning. ;

Unlike the contrived ‘“Bulgarian
connection’, however, Agca’s
connections to Western groups,
particularly neo-fascist groups, are
substantive and well-established.

The Bulgarian Press Agency
noted that record in its statement,
pointing out that:

eIn Turkey, Agca was a
member of the neo-fascist Na-
tionalist Movement Party and one
of its terrorist groups, the ‘“‘Grey

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ave

Wolves.’’ He was convicted of the
murder of the editor of a liberal
Turkish newspaper which the Grey
Wolves had targeted as “‘leftist.””

© Police, while searching the
headquarters of the Grey Wolves,
found documents detailing 13
transmissions of funds from the
USS.

© In London, former CIA agent
Frank Terpil told a London televi-
sion interviewer that he had sold
arms to the Grey Wolves.

© While still in prison in Turkey,
Agca formulated a plan to
assassinate the Pope—and detailed
the plan in a letter to a Turkish
newspaper in which he also stated
that he had escaped from prison
with the intention of carrying out
his attempt against the Pope who
was then visiting Turkey.

To buttress its claims about the
Bulgarian connection, some press
reports have pointed to Agca’s visit
to Bulgaria, arguing that he was
not arrested there even though he
was a fugitive. But the Bulgarian
government has countered that
Agca also travelled through seven
NATO member countries, all con-
nected to Interpol, and was able to
move freely even though there was
an international warrant out for his
arrest issued by Turkey and reciev-
ed by all seven countries. Bulgaria,
on the other hand, never received
the arrest warrant.

Significantly, Agca obtained a
forged passport in West Germany
which had been signed by the chief
of immigration police in Aahen
who had been paid $7,500 by West
German neo-fascists.

“This malicious anti-Bulgarian
campaign is a new attempt to
undermine the authority of the
socialist state, to sabotage this op-
portunity for a new impulse
towards detente and to deteriorate
the international climate,” the
BPA charged, emphasizing that
the objectives of the campaign were
also ‘‘to influence the feelings of
Catholics all over the world...and
to turn many Polish (Catholics)
against Bulgaria.”’

The attempt to implicate
Bulgaria and the Soviet Union in
the attempted assassination is also
closely linked to the historic deci-
sion last November by the 300 U.S.
Catholic bishops to criticize U.S.
nuclear arms policy and to call for
an immediate freeze on the deploy-
Ment on new nuclear weapons.

The bishops’ decision created a
crisis for the Reagan administra-
tion since it effectively brought 51
million U.S. Catholics behind the
already formidable campaign for a
nuclear freeze.

With Reagan facing political op-
position of that magnitude, it was
perhaps inevitable that U.S. in-
telligence would work overtime to
find some means, not only to divide
Catholic opinion on the nuclear
freeze issue, but also to impede the
powerful impetus towards disar-
mament. The _ fabricated
“‘Bulgarian connection” provided
just such a means.

) fi Inger points back to U.S. and CIA {Classified
in contrived ‘Bulgarian connection’

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JANUARY 7, 1983—Page 7