{"id":90,"date":"2026-05-23T17:39:52","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T17:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usabusinesschronicle.com\/?p=90"},"modified":"2026-05-23T17:39:52","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T17:39:52","slug":"the-secret-plan-to-murder-a-pope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usabusinesschronicle.com\/?p=90","title":{"rendered":"The Secret Plan to Murder a Pope"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Who would want to kill a pope?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The question raced through my mind on May 13, 1981,\u00a0when I learned that a Turkish\u00a0gunman\u00a0named Mehmet Ali Agca had just shot Pope John Paul II in St. Peter\u2019s Square. This was electrifying news, certain to plunge the Catholic world into gloomy uncertainty and diplomatic chanceries around the globe into a frantic search for answers. One reason for the international tumult was that John Paul II was no ordinary pope.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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I was NBC\u2019s diplomatic correspondent at the time, based in Washington. Immediately, I threw myself into the story, calling\u00a0a number of\u00a0key sources in the US government, wondering what they knew. Not very much, as it turned out. At the time, everyone in Washington seemed preoccupied with another attempted assassination: Only six weeks earlier, the new American president, Ronald Reagan, had been shot by John Hinckley, Jr. near the Washington Hilton Hotel. Fortunately, Reagan survived but now faced troubling questions about the attempt on John Paul II\u2019s life.\u00a0Was\u00a0there a connection? Did this story\u00a0contain\u00a0hidden mysteries? Who would want to kill a pope?\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the Vatican, the seriously wounded pope was rushed to the nearby Gemelli Clinic. Five hours of emergency surgery followed,\u00a0and his doctors were still uncertain whether\u00a0he\u2019d\u00a0survive. The\u00a0gunman, who startled worshippers\u00a0had seized, was handed over to Vatican police. The many hundreds in St. Peter\u2019s Square suddenly felt lost, robbed of their spiritual leader.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Initial news reports, rocketing around the world, mirrored television\u2019s live coverage. The pontiff had been standing in his white Popemobile, riding through the crowded square, mingling with his adoring flock\u00a0on this Wednesday afternoon, considering each person a special gift from God. With a smile on his face, he would occasionally stop his cavalcade of faith to chat with an old woman, touch an ecstatic teenager, offer a simple prayer,\u00a0or\u00a0even joke with his Hallelujah people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Everyone in St. Peter\u2019s Square knew this pope was different. John Paul II was the first non-Italian pontiff in 455 years, the first Polish-born successor to St. Peter, conservative in his theology, daring in his defense of Poland, the communist country nestled uncomfortably alongside an insecure Soviet Union. His nationalism was indistinguishable from his Catholicism, a dangerous combination for anyone, certainly a Polish-born pope, at the height of the Cold War.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At 5:17 p.m., a hand with a gun rose above the crowd and fired three bullets at the passing pope, hitting him with two of them, one creasing his left hand and shoulder, the other entering his upper abdomen, close to his heart, causing massive lesions and loss of blood. The third bullet wounded two bystanders, American tourists unlikely ever to forget their May 13 visit to the Vatican.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Agca, the 23-year-old Turkish assassin, already wanted for murder in Turkey, seemed under the circumstances to be remarkably casual about the seriousness of his crime, telling reporters that he meant only to \u201churt\u201d the pope, not kill him, and that he was \u201cvery sorry for [shooting] the tourists.\u201d He\u00a0identified\u00a0himself as an \u201cinternational terrorist,\u201d who made \u201cno distinction between fascists or communists.\u201d\u00a0Almost from\u00a0the moment of his arrest, Agca tried to create the image of a professional killer\u00a0operating\u00a0on his own, linked to no specific national or ideological crusade.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But his effort defied belief, quickly losing credibility. Most observers wondered, more logically, whether he might have been part of a dark conspiracy involving Iranian or Palestinian extremists, neo-fascists in\u00a0Turkey,\u00a0or certain communist leaders in Eastern Europe,\u00a0thrown by the sudden emergence of a Polish pope.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The story of John Paul II\u00a0had\u00a0already fascinated me.\u00a0I\u2019d\u00a0been covering Eastern Europe for a long time. I was familiar with recent developments in Poland.\u00a0I\u2019d\u00a0heard about the remarkable career of Karol Josef\u00a0Wojty\u0142a, the talented archbishop of Krak\u00f3w who, although ambitious,\u00a0probably never\u00a0imagined that one day\u00a0he\u2019d\u00a0become a pope. When he was selected in October 1978, I was astounded.\u00a0Why choose a Pole when\u00a0all of\u00a0Eastern Europe was already aflame with danger and uncertainty?\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the first non-Italian pontiff in more than 400 years, he naturally attracted more than his share of attention. He was brilliant and controversial, balancing his fierce commitment to Catholicism with a powerful sense of Polish\u00a0nationalism. He also attracted critics who later came to believe that,\u00a0despite his important role in fighting Soviet communism, his traditionalist views\u2014including opposition to birth control and the ordination of women\u2014served as a brake on social progress and helped conceal child sexual abuse within the Church.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After only eight months as pope, John Paul II decided to visit his homeland. While in Poland, he electrified crowds, bringing hope of freedom and promises of better times, a modern-day Beckett challenging the archaic rules of Soviet communism. He prophesized \u201csome changes are\u00a0coming. You can feel it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In August 1980, workers in Gdansk, inspired by the pope\u2019s message, organized crippling strikes, demanding an independent trade union (later called Solidarity) and unfettered access to their Catholic church. In the communist world, those demands were unprecedented, and a crackdown seemed imminent, either by Polish security forces or the Soviet army, which had earlier crushed uprisings in East Germany, Hungary,\u00a0and Czechoslovakia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0not what happened. I learned that while tensions were dramatically rising in Poland, it was not the Russians who intervened; it was the pope himself. He secretly dispatched a personal envoy to the Kremlin with a handwritten letter in Russian to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, stressing that although he was the head of the Catholic Church, he was also a Polish patriot deeply concerned about the possibility of Soviet intervention. He hoped that intervention would not occur. But if it did, the pope warned, he would return to Poland and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with his people. Given the impact of his recent visit to Poland, it was a warning Brezhnev had to take seriously.\u00a0<\/p>\n

An American-born priest and Vatican insider, Hillary Franco, told me at the time that \u201ceven though the pope belongs to the world,\u00a0he\u2019s\u00a0human, right? A man who loves his own country, I am sure the pope will try, and would have tried, everything possible to stop an invasion of his homeland.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Throughout this dangerous period, the Soviets conducted military maneuvers on the Polish border, suggesting an invasion could be just around the corner. In late February 1981, while addressing a Communist Party congress in Moscow, Brezhnev thundered menacingly that \u201cthe pillars of the socialist state were crumbling in Poland\u201d and \u201cstrong action was required.\u201d Surely it would not have surprised any serious observer if he were seen late at night wandering alone through the Kremlin corridors mumbling the Russian equivalent of \u201cwill no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?\u201d Several months later, Agca attempted to assassinate John Paul II.\u00a0<\/p>\n

My interest in the papal plot only deepened with time. Agca had close ties to a violent ultranationalist organization in\u00a0Turkey\u00a0called the Grey Wolves, which played a key role in the illicit smuggling of drugs and arms between\u00a0Turkey\u00a0and Bulgaria. The more I learned, the more I believed that Agca was part of a conspiracy managed by Bulgaria, a Soviet puppet state at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Normally,\u00a0in the early 1980s, I would have been in a competitive war with other journalists, each struggling to uncover a new nugget of information about Agca\u2019s attempt to kill the pope. But after\u00a0an initial\u00a0outburst of coverage, most reporters\u00a0seemed to lose\u00a0interest, their focus shifting to other stories of note.\u00a0As a consequence, the assassination attempt fell off the front pages.\u00a0For a time, it seemed as if I were the only reporter, aside from Claire Sterling of\u202fReader\u2019s Digest<\/em>, who displayed any interest in the story. At NBC, I continued to broadcast radio and television reports about the papal plot, and NBC producer Anthony Potter invited me to help research and write a documentary about the event. Thrilled, I accepted, and off we went on an exciting adventure that lasted several months and opened my eyes to the hidden worlds of Vatican politics and global terrorism.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A few days before I left for Rome, I received an intriguing call from a friend who worked at the Central Intelligence Agency. \u201cCan we meet tonight?\u201d\u00a0he\u00a0asked. Strange, I thought, he rarely\u00a0volunteered\u00a0any information. Even\u00a0a weather\u00a0forecast seemed too sensitive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSure. Where? When?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the Watergate,\u201d he whispered. \u201cOutside, near the taxi stand. At 7:00 p.m.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

We met,\u00a0and he steered me toward a walk along the Potomac. \u201cYou\u2019re going to Rome, I hear.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u201d How did he know?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the agency,\u00a0we got word today, not sure how reliable it is, but I wanted you to know there\u2019s a hit job out on you, coming from somewhere in Eastern Europe.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d I was puzzled.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA hit job,\u201d he repeated. \u201cI\u2019m not certain the report\u2019s accurate,\u00a0but it does seem somebody wants to kill you.\u201d Why would anyone want to kill me? My mind raced over details of the papal story.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re doing stories about shooting the pope, right?\u201d my friend said, as if reading my mind. \u201cThe Bulgarians\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0like those stories,\u00a0and neither do the Russians. They\u2019ve both denied\u00a0time and again\u00a0that they had anything to do with the shooting, but you keep linking them to the story.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYes?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo\u00a0they may want to frighten you. They may want to stop you from tying them to this story.\u201d It all seemed too far-fetched,\u00a0I told\u00a0him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, you never know. Most of these threats do end up only as warnings, but\u2026\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to Rome anyway.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cGood luck,\u201d he said, patting me on the back. \u201cI just wanted you to know, that\u2019s all.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

We returned to\u00a0the Watergate. \u201cGood luck,\u201d he repeated.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On my way home, I decided not to tell my wife about my friend\u2019s warning. I\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0really believe it; nor did I believe the Russians, who knew me well, would decide one day to kill me for something I had broadcast.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rome proved to be a delightful destination as always, sunny, beautiful,\u00a0and\u00a0splendidly historic. I arrived just as stories broke in the Italian press that John Paul II had recuperated from the attempted assassination and was back at work in the Vatican.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The NBC office was\u00a0located\u00a0downtown, a few busy blocks from the Coliseum and only a short taxi ride from the Vatican. On most days, I was busy talking to knowledgeable sources. I tried arranging meetings at historic sites, which, of\u00a0course, included restaurants in a country where lunch or dinner was special, not just a meal but a culinary work of art. Which restaurant?\u00a0There\u2019d\u00a0be a debate. What kind of food? From northern Italy or the boot? Would we sit inside or out?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Italian friends, diplomats,\u00a0businessmen,\u00a0and priests soon helped open a few Vatican doors for me. I met cardinals willing to discuss the attempted assassination, and to do so on camera. In time, I also met a handful of attorneys with superb contacts in the slow-moving universe of Italian jurisprudence. Under pressure, key prosecutors had\u00a0actually begun\u00a0to crank into action, investigating Agca\u2019s background in\u00a0Turkey\u00a0and, more meaningfully, Bulgaria, where he had spent two months.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The prosecutors organized Agca\u2019s trials, the first starting in July 1981, the second five years later. Although one headline writer described the first as \u201cthe trial of the century,\u201d it was unusually brief, lasting only three days. Agca\u00a0opened\u00a0his defense,\u00a0proclaiming he did not need a lawyer,\u00a0but the state provided one anyway. Instead,\u00a0he read a written statement, pockmarked with hyperbole, misdirection,\u00a0and blatant lies. Against heavy headwinds suggesting conspiracy, he kept emphasizing that he had acted alone, which few lawyers and fewer journalists believed. He was, he kept repeating, an \u201cinternational killer.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

One lawyer at the first trial was the experienced Severino Santiapichi, an expert on global terrorism who marveled at Agca\u2019s rhetorical jujitsu. He had \u201can exceptional ability,\u201d he said, \u201cto mislead the investigations.\u201d Later,\u00a0Santiapichi\u00a0told me, \u201cI believe there was a plot behind Agca\u2019s crime, a plot hatched in other places, hatched by other brains.\u201d Agca struck him as one of the central figures in the international conspiracy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I also met Francesco Mazzola, at the time,\u00a0the skilled attorney charged with Italian state security. He took\u00a0Santiapichi\u2019s\u00a0judgment two steps further. \u201cOther places,\u201d he believed, were Poland and the Soviet Union; \u201cother brains,\u201d he thought, were anxious communist leaders in Russia. After reviewing the evidence, Mazzola was convinced that Brezhnev, who had recently dispatched Soviet troops to Afghanistan, was considering the same\u00a0option\u00a0for Poland. Did\u00a0he have proof of\u00a0the Kremlin\u2019s\u00a0plans? No, he did not, he acknowledged, but believed the circumstantial evidence was becoming increasingly persuasive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Covering the Vatican was an absorbing challenge, especially when the subject was a papal plot. In my experience, knowledgeable bishops and cardinals were gracious but reluctant to share information, partly because they did not want to damage their delicate dialogue with the Soviets, a strategy the Germans called Ostpolitik. According to Polish Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, there had been, thanks to the example of John Paul II, \u201can awakening\u2026a spiritual mobilization\u201d of millions of Catholics in\u00a0different parts\u00a0of the Soviet empire, but their political and religious position there was vulnerable. I thought the Vatican was\u00a0actually trapped\u00a0between a growing desire to incriminate the Russians in the papal plot\u00a0publicly\u00a0and a more compelling need to protect its flock living under communist domination.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During a long interview with Cardinal Silvio Oddi\u2014a well-informed Vatican official with considerable diplomatic experience\u2014marked on his part by caution and evasion, I asked bluntly, \u201cThen what secret service did this job?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Oddi squirmed. \u201cWhat do\u202fyou<\/em>\u202fsuspect?\u202fI\u2019ve<\/em>\u202fgone too far.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAlright,\u201d I continued, \u201cwhat possible motive could there be behind the attempt to kill a pope?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt could be\u00a0almost anything. It could be fanaticism. Material self-interest.\u00a0And perhaps,\u201d\u00a0Oddi paused, struggling for the words to camouflage what he really wanted to say, \u201cand probably more to the point,\u202finternational political strategy<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSpell that out for me,\u201d I pressed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u00a0the words mean,\u202fpolitical international strategy<\/em>. You understand well what I mean\u2026 This man was not a fool. There\u2019s proof\u202fhe is an intelligent man. He is a killer, a real professional. He was certainly acting in the name of others.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Oddi tried to be helpful. He came as close as any Vatican official to publicly incriminating\u00a0Moscow\u00a0but\u00a0left it to me to point the finger.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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That night, proud of our Oddi interview, Potter invited the NBC News team to dinner in a restaurant not too far from the Vatican. The weather cooperated,\u00a0and we gathered around a large table, one among many on the crowded sidewalk fronting the restaurant. Looking inside, I\u00a0couldn\u2019t\u00a0help but notice there was only one man sitting by himself at a small table in the rear. Everyone else was outside. Throughout the meal, more delicious with each course, the man,\u00a0with a\u00a0dark complexion, glasses,\u00a0and\u00a0neatly dressed, kept staring at me. After a while,\u00a0he approached, apologized,\u00a0and asked in heavily accented English, \u201cAre you Marvin Kalb?\u201d Instantly, my CIA friend\u2019s hit-job warning flashed through my mind. Did he have a gun? Was this to be my last supper?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d I replied, not knowing what else to say, \u201cand who are you?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The man handed me a card. \u201cI\u2019m a travel agent,\u201d he said. \u201cI have been for years, but this visit to Rome is purely personal.\u00a0I\u2019ve\u00a0always wanted to visit the Vatican.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

I cast a quick glance at his card. His name was there, likewise his travel\u00a0agency\u2019s, both\u00a0located\u00a0in San Jose, Costa Rica. \u201cSo\u00a0what did you think of the Vatican?\u201d I asked, playing for time. Our conversation widened into polite generalities about travel in Europe. Soon I rose, shook his hand, wished him a pleasant journey,\u00a0and promised to call him when next I was in Costa Rica.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is so much to see there,\u201d he smiled, backing away and slowly returning to his table.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Potter, aware of the CIA warning, asked, \u201cWhat do you make of that?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In truth, I\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0know. I told him that when I got back to my hotel room,\u00a0I\u2019d\u00a0call NBC in New York and ask someone on the foreign desk to check the travel agent\u2019s story.\u00a0Was\u00a0there a name and agency in San Jose,\u00a0such as those on his card? An NBC stringer in the capital checked and double-checked. An hour\u00a0later, he called back. There was no such travel agency in San Jose, he reported; nor was there any such name.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do we do now?\u201d Potter wanted to know.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u00a0finish\u00a0our story and\u00a0go\u00a0home,\u201d I told him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For me, that meant spending a lot more time in the Vatican learning about a\u00a0possible conspiracy. For my NBC colleague Bill McLaughlin, who had joined our team, it meant a reporting trip to Turkey, where he lifted the lid on Agca\u2019s life\u2014where he was born, his family, education,\u00a0and, most importantly\u00a0to us, his critically important ties to the radical right-wing Gray Wolves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although we tried, neither of us could get into Bulgaria, an inaccessible place for us NBC reporters at the\u00a0time, but we spent another month exploring the story further in Rome and Ankara. I then returned to Washington,\u00a0and Potter, McLaughlin,\u00a0and the camera crew flew back to New York, where the job of pulling all the pieces together began, including\u00a0writing\u00a0the documentary, which had always been my responsibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We\u00a0had discovered\u00a0a lot. By the time Agca reached St. Peter\u2019s Square on May 13, 1981, he had already proven his value to the Grey Wolves. He was a trusted\u00a0gunman, had robbed two banks, for which he was handsomely paid, and\u00a0he\u2019d\u00a0murdered Abdi Ipekci, a well-known, liberal newspaper editor critical of the Grey Wolves, for which Agca earned thousands of dollars and front-page coverage. He seemed ready for a major assignment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first two stops on his memorable journey to Rome, secretly organized by the Grey Wolves, were Tehran, then in the grip of the Islamic revolution, and Sofia, the capital of communist Bulgaria, where Agca stayed for seven weeks of intensive preparation. Was he told that he was on a mission to kill John Paul II? Possible but unlikely. He was then only in the opening round of an international conspiracy that was to mushroom over the next nine months into an historic crime.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was curious that Agca made no effort to hide during his time in the Bulgarian capital, even though he was a known killer\u00a0who\u2019d\u00a0only recently escaped from a Turkish prison. While in Sofia, he lived the life of a footloose tourist, for whom money, liquor,\u00a0and women were never in short supply. Helping him was Omer Mersan, a key Turkish intermediary between Bulgaria and the Grey Wolves who booked room 911 for him at the fashionable Hotel\u00a0Vitosha\u00a0and secured him a Turkish passport in the name of Farouk Ozgun, the same passport Agca had in his pocket when he was arrested in St. Peter\u2019s Square.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Collaborating with Bulgarian intelligence, the Grey Wolves had arranged for him to slip into tightly controlled Bulgaria without a passport. Such cross-border collaboration was common in the illicit drug-smuggling and gun-running operations both sides had been conducting for years. Could this lucrative\u00a0backdoor arrangement have taken place without the Soviet KGB knowing about it and, possibly, demanding\u00a0a slice of the action? Only if you believe in fairy tales. Vladimir Sakharov, a former KGB official who had defected to the West, told me the KGB \u201cknew everything\u201d that Bulgarian intelligence knew, and then some. \u201cEverything,\u201d he stressed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In September 1980, with Sofia now behind him, Agca began an extraordinary nine-month odyssey through 12 different European countries without once being arrested, proof of his care and craftiness and police ineffectiveness. From Sofia, carrying $50,000 given to him by Mersan, he journeyed to West Berlin, where he tried\u00a0to melt\u00a0into the crowds of Turkish \u201cguest workers,\u201d cheap immigrant laborers\u00a0allowed into West Germany to fuel its expanding economy. There were 1.6 million such workers. Several times, Agca was recognized. His photo as a killer on the loose had appeared in the German-language edition of the popular Turkish newspaper\u202fMilliyet<\/em>\u202fon October 3, November 6, December 11,\u00a0and December 29. Four times, the German police were informed of Agca\u2019s presence. Four times, the Germans tried to catch him; four times,\u00a0they failed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Assisted\u00a0by \u201cbranch offices\u201d of the Grey Wolves,\u00a0located\u00a0all over Western Europe, Agca slipped into Switzerland. While he was in Oldham, a Zurich suburb favored by Turks, the Grey Wolves\u00a0purchased\u00a0a Browning\u00a09 mm\u00a0revolver with serial number 76C23953 from Horst\u00a0Grillmeier, a trusted Austrian collaborator.\u00a0They\u00a0hid it in a railroad luggage department in Milan. It was the gun Agca used\u00a0during the attack on St. Peter\u2019s Square on May 13.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In April 1981, after crisscrossing the continent, he finally reached Italy. He went directly to Perugia, a university town, where he enrolled in the University for Foreigners and, as a student,\u00a0acquired\u00a0a three-month visa, which he needed for his travel in Italy. He attended only one class, but he had his visa.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On April 13, Agca went to Rome and checked into the Hotel Torino, where he called a Grey Wolf contact in Hanover,\u00a0West Germany,\u00a0presumably for\u00a0final instructions. While there, he met and conferred with members of the Bulgarian embassy and other Turkish\u00a0gunmen. Together, they cased St. Peter\u2019s Square,\u00a0deciding where Agca would stand when he tried to kill the pope. Then, after brief stops in Germany and Switzerland, Agca traveled to Milan, where he checked on the revolver hidden in the railroad luggage department. He then\u00a0purchased\u00a0a two-week trip to Mallorca, eager, as much as possible, to avoid detection by the Italian police. He stayed at the Spanish island\u2019s luxurious Hotel Flamboyant but kept to himself. Every morning, he jogged for two hours on the beach. One day, according to Italian prosecutors, he met with a Grey Wolf emissary who confirmed he would be paid 3 million German marks,\u00a0roughly $1.75 million, to kill a very prominent European.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On May 9, Agca returned to Milan, where he went to the railroad luggage department to pick up his revolver. He stuffed it into his suitcase and spent the next two days touring the city, meeting no one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Early on May 12, he boarded a train to Rome and checked into the Pension Isa, a 15-minute walk from St. Peter\u2019s Square. The room clerk remembered Agca. \u201cHe came and went, \u2018Good morning, good evening,\u2019 he\u2019d say, and that\u2019s all.\u201d In fact, Agca again met with Bulgarian and Turkish collaborators. They again walked through St. Peter\u2019s Square, took photos,\u00a0and\u00a0checked the angle of the sun at a certain hour so Agca could get a better shot. As usual, the Bulgarians gave the final orders. The Turks agreed. Everything seemed set.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On May 13, Agca got up at 7 a.m. and, after breakfast, took a long walk through Rome. In his pocket was a handwritten note of \u201cthings to do\u201d\u2014\u201cCareful with food\u201d was one cautionary reminder; \u201cWear a cross\u201d was another. At 4 p.m., he approached St. Peter\u2019s Square, already jammed with hundreds of people excitedly waiting for the pope\u2019s Wednesday afternoon appearance. Again, Agca was joined by his Bulgarian and Turkish collaborators. They gathered with hundreds of others, waiting patiently for the pope to pass in his white Popemobile. At 5:17 p.m., as planned, Agca shot John Paul II.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The documentary I wrote told an exciting and important story. Called \u201cThe Man Who Shot the Pope,\u201d it was broadcast on NBC in primetime on September 25, 1982. It received\u00a0generally excellent\u00a0reviews, and I was delighted, especially\u00a0after learning that NBC, gratified by the popular reaction, intended to run an updated version of the program in January 1983, a rare tribute at a network.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although the documentary pointed to the Bulgarians and therefore the Soviets as prime movers in the plot to kill the pope, one reviewer stressed that though my \u201cevidence was powerful and convincing,\u201d it was also \u201ccircumstantial,\u201d lacking the \u201chard documentation\u201d needed to prove Brezhnev ordered the papal assassination, or if not Brezhnev himself then one of his deputies, Yuri Andropov, the KGB chief, whose antipathy toward John Paul II was well-known in the communist world. According to this line of reasoning, shared by many US officials, one or the other would have had to order the killing.\u00a0A\u00a0written record of this order would have to be somewhere in the Soviet archives and clearly referenced in the documentary. I did not have, nor did I reference, a written record of the order to kill the pope, and I did not believe such a written order ever existed. I still\u00a0don\u2019t.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Soviet defectors who had served in the KGB and veteran Western diplomats who had been stationed in Moscow during Soviet rule\u00a0advised\u00a0me that it was \u201chighly unlikely\u201d such an order would ever have been written. Or if one had been\u00a0written\u00a0that it would have been put in a folder and saved for the historical record. No one would want to have his name officially associated with the order to kill a foreign leader, particularly a spiritual authority such as a pope, even though assassination had been widely practiced by both democratic and authoritarian governments for a long time. Without a written order, an experienced subordinate could still notice a nod, a phrase, a gesture, and then, without fuss, set the train of assassination in motion. In this\u00a0particular case, it would have been from Moscow to Sofia and from the Grey Wolves to Agca, a\u00a0secret journey shrouded in lies, cutouts,\u00a0and confusion, laced with heavy doses of duplicity and denials.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Recently, the pattern of putting carefully calculated distance between, say,\u00a0a Brezhnev\u00a0and an Agca has changed. Now it no longer seems startling to hear a president announce on television or social media that he had ordered the assassination of a foreign leader as a first step toward war. Now,\u00a0assassination\u00a0has become an open act of war. Forty-plus years ago, it was still an embarrassment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By January 1983, when NBC ran my documentary a second time, the story of the attempted assassination rarely made news, and there seemed to be two reasons. First, the pope had survived the attempt and thrived, his clerical tenure filled with important, eye-catching contributions to Catholicism and Eastern\u00a0European history until his death in April 2005. While in office, he privately met with Agca and then publicly pardoned him, suggesting to many,\u00a0\u201ccase closed.\u201d Second, the Soviet Union and Bulgaria both vigorously denied any role in Agca\u2019s plot, and no other nation appeared\u00a0willing\u00a0to challenge their chorus of denials. Why rock the boat\u00a0amid\u00a0a dangerous period of the Cold War? An Italian judge noted, \u201cWe all remember that World War I began with shots fired in Sarajevo. No one wanted the third world war to begin with shots fired in St. Peter\u2019s Square.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Over the ensuing decades, stories about the papal plot did occasionally appear in major media.\u00a0There\u2019d\u00a0be a spark of interest,\u00a0but nothing more. In Washington, several senators and congressmen demanded the Reagan White House produce a better explanation of the Soviet role in the papal plot than its series of awkward handoffs: \u201cIt\u2019s an Italian investigation,\u201d Reagan told a reporter, \u201cand I have great confidence in their abilities.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Italian magistrates did indeed preside over a series of trials and investigations, focusing on Agca, whose self-justifications varied like the weather, and a handful of Bulgarian diplomats who hid behind the legal equivalent of \u201cWho, me?\u201d Exasperated, the judges echoed the CIA\u2019s pathetically weak conclusion to its lengthy, still top-secret study of the papal plot. \u201cThe event that has been touted as \u2018the trial of the century,\u2019\u201d pronounced the CIA\u2019s senior Soviet experts in September 2000, \u201cproduced more questions than it did\u00a0answers.\u00a0In so doing, it\u00a0affirmed the view of many that the truth surrounding the attack against the pope may never be known.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Only in 2006, a year after the pope died, was there some progress when three Polish scholars launched what became an exhaustive eight-year study of the papal plot, inspired by their own curiosity, an Italian newspaper article,\u00a0and the judgment of a prominent Italian magistrate. The article appeared in the March 30,\u00a02005,\u00a0edition of the respected newspaper\u202fCorriere della Sera<\/em>,\u00a0disclosing\u00a0that East German Stasi intelligence documents proved there was a \u201cplot orchestrated by the Bulgarians and the KGB, and the East German role (was) to cover their tracks.\u201d The magistrate was the experienced Ferdinando\u00a0Imposimato, who, after examining the records of the 1986 trial of Agca and a key Bulgarian diplomat, declared he had \u201cno doubts the assassination attempt was ordered by the KGB, who tasked the Bulgarians with it, and they in turn hired the gunman.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The three historians were Ewa\u00a0Koj\u00a0and Michal Skwara of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance and Andrzej Grajewski, also an editor of\u202fGosc\u00a0Niedzielny<\/em>, a Catholic magazine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Their research included the examination of\u00a0literally thousands\u00a0of Soviet, Bulgarian, East German,\u00a0and Polish intelligence files, the interviewing of major participants in the plot,\u00a0and cooperation\u00a0from\u00a0many European judiciaries. But, amazingly, even their study, which advanced popular understanding of the assassination attempt, raised few eyebrows.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The report\u2019s highlights were later recounted in two books, Skwara\u2019s\u202fAgca Was Not Alone<\/em>\u00a0and Grajewski\u2019s\u202fThe\u00a0Pope Had to Die<\/em>. Both\u00a0contain\u00a0fascinating and persuasive insights into the papal plot but, as the critic of my documentary had put it, no \u201chard documentation\u201d definitively linking either Brezhnev or Andropov to the assassination order.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The authors had undoubtedly dug diligently into the data year after\u00a0year,\u00a0but\u00a0could not find the order that put the papal plot in motion. Why? Because, in their judgment, too, it never existed in written form. However, their impressive research and rich reservoir of information led to one unmistakable conclusion: It was the Kremlin\u2019s idea to kill the pope. Try as the Russians might to point the\u00a0finger of guilt at the Grey Wolves, placing the ultimate responsibility for Agca\u2019s crime on the right-wing Turkish Mafia, their effort failed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The reasoning also appeared clear. The Russians saw the Polish pope as an unmanageable irritant, a direct threat to communist interests and Soviet security, and he had to be eliminated. Too much was at stake, starting with Brezhnev\u2019s Eastern\u00a0European empire. Challenging the Soviet Bloc in\u00a0many different ways, John Paul II had boldly revived the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine; he\u2019d also stimulated religious fervor throughout Eastern Europe, terrifying the USSR\u2019s leaders with his electrifying visit to Poland, which had ignited Solidarity opposition to communist rule in his home country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u00a0wasn\u2019t\u00a0the first time Russia\u2019s rulers believed a Pole was an existential threat. Anti-Catholic and Polish prejudice has been a recurring curse among Russians at least since the Time of Troubles in the early 17th<\/sup>\u202fcentury, a period of political crisis and chaos that saw the rise of foreign pretenders to the throne and Moscow\u2019s occupation by King Sigismund III Vasa of Poland.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Toward the end of his life,\u00a0in 2005, John Paul II hoped to reconcile the\u00a0theological\u00a0differences between the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church. It had become a priority for the failing pontiff. But, even at this time, the Kremlin\u2019s Vladimir Putin stood in his way, claiming all the Vatican really wanted was the chance to proselytize ordinary Russians. Thus, Putin poured\u00a0cold water\u00a0on the pontiff\u2019s hope to become the first pope ever to visit Russia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In November 1979, a year after John Paul II had helped light the fuse of dramatic change in his homeland, the Kremlin distributed a warning through the communist establishment that the new pope represented \u201can enemy of peace\u201d and had to be fought, undermined,\u00a0and removed. At the same time, Andropov was reported to have sent an urgent cable to KGB operatives in Eastern Europe \u201cto obtain all the information possible on how to get physically close to the pope.\u201d It was then left to the former KGB defector Viktor Sheymov to translate the odd Andropov cable into a meaningful, relevant order. \u201cEveryone knew\u00a0what it meant,\u201d he explained matter-of-factly; \u201cit meant they wanted to assassinate the pope.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not for the first time, the Kremlin had planned the killing of a political opponent. Such directives have surfaced all too\u00a0frequently\u00a0in Russian history like embarrassing bloodstains. Putin\u2019s shameful ordering of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny\u2019s poisoning in 2024\u2014as top experts believe\u2014was only the latest example.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During the Tehran Conference of World War II Allies in 1943, the usually cynical Soviet leader Joseph Stalin\u00a0supposedly turned\u00a0to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at one point and asked a strange question: \u201cHow many divisions has the pope?\u201d Whether true or not, the question might more appropriately have been asked by Brezhnev, who could have imagined in a passing nightmare that John Paul II commanded so many divisions he would be able to\u00a0topple\u00a0his vast communist empire. More than anything, it seemed, Brezhnev feared the power of freedom and faith,\u00a0of\u00a0a determined religious leader supported militarily only by a small contingent of Swiss Guards.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Trump and Blanche\u2019s Orwellian Language and How Much of Washington Echoes It<\/a><\/p>\n

Note: This essay appeared originally on the <\/em>Compass Substack.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forty-five years after the attempt on Pope John Paul II\u2019s life, the Kremlin has yet to be officially blamed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":89,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,31,6,5,2,3],"tags":[40],"class_list":["post-90","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-featured","category-foreign-policy","category-podcast","category-politics","category-the-monopolized-economy","tag-tagged-brezhnev-john-paul-ii-kremlin-marvin-kalb-pope-ronald-reagan-russia-soviet-union"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Secret Plan to Murder a Pope - USA Business Chronicle<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/usabusinesschronicle.com\/?p=90\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Secret Plan to Murder a Pope - 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