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A STUNNING REVELATION buzzed
throughout Italy last week. According to two Italian newspapers,
German government officials had found proof that the Soviet Union
ordered the May 13, 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II.
The recently discovered documents--which are mainly correspondences
between East German Stasi spies and their Bulgarian
counterparts--reportedly discuss the Soviet assassination order as
well as efforts to cover-up any traces of involvement by Bulgaria's
spooks.
If the documents are as advertised,
then they put an end to one of the great whodunits of the 20th
century. The U.S. media has all but ignored this incredible story;
which isn't, actually, much of a surprise.
Indeed, the elite media in this
country never wanted to investigate the threads of evidence pointing
to Bulgarian, and thus Soviet, involvement. What is surprising,
however, is that in one of the greatest U.S. intelligence failures
of all-time, neither did the CIA.
In the days following the attempt, a
clean and simple narrative quickly emerged. The would-be assassin,
Mehmet Ali Agca, was a member of the ultra-right Turkish neofascist
group, the Grey Wolves. That part was true, but Italian
investigators were also turning up evidence that Agca was really a
false flag recruit for another group.
The New York Times quickly
tried to squash any notion of a broader conspiracy. "Police Lack
Clues to Foreign Links Of Suspect in Shooting of the Pope," read one
front-page headline on May 17, 1981. Another front-page headline the
next day blared, "Turks Say Suspect in Papal Attack Is Tied to
Rightist Web of Intrigue."
Just over a week later the
Times would produce an investigative piece spanning several
nations and drawing on the reporting of nine journalists. Titled,
"Trail of Mehmet Ali Agca: 6 Years of Neofascist Ties," the piece
began, "For at least six years, Mehmet Ali Agca . . . has been
associated with a xenophobic, fanatically nationalist, neofascist
network steeped in violence . . . " [emphasis added]
The article continued, "reports by a
team of New York Times correspondents in the Middle East, Europe,
and the United States show a clear pattern of connections between
the gaunt, taciturn Mr. Agca and an international alliance of
right-wing Turkish extremists." [emphasis added]
Nor, according to the Times,
was there any evidence of a conspiracy:
"Intensive investigations . . . have
so far failed to turn up the slightest evidence of any
'international conspiracy' to murder the Pope, despite
confident assertions of one by the Italian press a week ago. Mr.
Agca is not known to have spoken to a single non-Turkish terrorist
in the last year or so, let alone to have acted as the agent of any
established group in the attack on John Paul." [emphasis
added]
The Times admitted that
Agca's "precise motives [were] unclear," but was confident that
"much has been learned of the origins of this previously obscure
young man" and that "a fairly complete picture has emerged of his
remarkable Odyssey."
The Times message was clear:
there is no evidence of a conspiracy and there is no need to
investigate any further. The Times was not alone in its
reporting. Similar reports were published by the Washington
Post, the Los Angeles Times, and virtually every other
major newspaper investigating the story. All of the early reports
painted Agca as "neofascist," or an "Islamic extremist," or as a
lone wolf with ties to organized crime.
AND IF IT WERE UP TO the elite media
the story would have ended there. But, something was wrong with this
narrative. Too many threads of evidence pointed to a wider plot that
involved the Soviet-controlled Bulgarian intelligence service.
Daily Italian newspapers, citing
high level politicians and magistrate judges, regularly reported on
the Bulgarian connection. However, in many ways prefiguring the rise
of independent media investigators, it was not the elite U.S. media
that would break news of the Bulgarian connection; it was
Reader's Digest.
In August of 1982--fifteen months
after the assassination attempt--terrorism expert Claire Sterling
published the first comprehensive investigation of the Bulgarian
connection. Having lived in Italy since the 1940's, Sterling was
privy to the ongoing Italian investigations and not prone to
accepting the U.S. media's official neo-fascist storyline.
Synthesizing all of the known leads, Sterling produced a convincing
argument that Agca was really under the direction of the Soviet
bloc. Sterling's work was joined by another investigative piece in
Reader's Digest by Paul Henze and both pieces were used to
create an NBC documentary on the matter that aired in mid-September,
1982.
How did the elite media react to
these reports? Did The New York Times and its counterparts
try to play catch-up by activating their international networks of
investigative journalists and diplomatic connections?
No. Instead, a disturbing pattern of
obfuscation and denial--first noticed by Michael Ledeen in a
brilliant piece in Commentary ("The Bulgarian Connection and
the Media," June 1983)--ensued. For example, as Ledeen noted, the
Times carried a Reuters story about Sterling's work on page
A12 on August 17, 1982. Two days later, and five pages
earlier on page A7, the Times carried the Soviet Union's
official disavowal of the plot and disapproval of Sterling's
article. The article even quoted Moscow radio, "The absurdity and
unfoundedness [sic] of this claim are obvious."
While the Times would give
roughly equal weight to Sterling's research and the Soviet Union's
formal disavowal, it would be much less neutral in its assessment of
the NBC documentary that aired a month later. On the same day that
the documentary would air (September 21) the Times carried a
scathing review.
The Times patronizingly
approved of NBC's association with "intelligent, seasoned
correspondent[s]" such as Marvin Kalb and Bill McLaughlin, but did
not think much of the show's conclusions. The Times's
reviewer noted, "To be sure, what to do with disappointingly
scanty evidence is a perennial problem for news executives who
administer investigative undertakings." Citing Moscow radio's
official denial, the Times's review ended with the
caveat, "Soviet comment is not included in the NBC show."
This pattern continued until early
1983 when political heavyweights such as former national security
adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and former Secretary of State, Henry
Kissinger, went on the record endorsing the theory of
Bulgarian-Soviet involvement. Only then did the Times and the
elite media begin to honestly investigate. But even then the
evidence was often downplayed or, remarkably, put in the context of
arguments drawing moral equivalence between the CIA and the
KGB.
THE CIA ALSO DID NOT want to
investigate the possibility of Soviet complicity, or--even
worse--the possibility that the Soviets had actually ordered the
false flag operation. The idea of a state-sponsored terrorist
attack, especially ordered by the Soviet Union, went against the
agency's prevailing paradigm for understanding terrorist actions.
Proof of Bulgarian-Soviet involvement may also have jeopardized the
dove's desire for détente.
The CIA reported to the Senate
Intelligence Committee on at least several occasions that there was
no strong evidence of Bulgarian-Soviet involvement. But, the CIA's
investigation (or lack thereof) infuriated many politicians. Senator
Alfonse D'Amato was especially outraged at the CIA's handling of the
matter. According to a Times article from February 1983,
D'Amato thought the CIA's efforts were "shockingly inept" and that a
senior agency official had told him that "not one person has been
assigned to follow developments in the case."
Ironically enough, the most vocal
critic of the CIA's investigation of the papal assassination plot
(and the elite media's coverage) was Times op-ed columnist,
William Safire. In a series of columns, spanning most of the decade,
Safire laid out a devastating critique of the CIA's investigation.
His columns offer a unique window into the mind(s) of a
dysfunctional CIA refusing to investigate what Safire would later
call, "The Crime of the Century."
Safire's account of a November 9,
1982 meeting between Italian Interior Minister Virginio Rognoni and
the CIA's vice-chief of station in Rome, as witnessed by a staffer
for the Senate Intelligence Committee, was the most startling of his
reports. The CIA man asked, "What proof do you have?" Safire
summarized Rognoni's response as follows:
The man in charge of
Italy's internal security laid out the facts: that the gunman was
a cold-blooded killer for hire, and not a fanatic or ideologue;
that he was able to pass into Bulgaria easily on an Indian
passport and take up residence in a first-class hotel, which
requires secret service knowledge; that he entered penniless and
came out with $50,000 from what is hardly a land of opportunity;
that he was able to describe accurately the living quarters of the
Bulgarian officials who were his controls and contacts; and that a
flurry of electronic communication came out of the Bulgarian
Embassy just before the attack on the Pope, similar to the
activity that took place before an American general was
abducted.
The CIA man's reaction: "You have no
proof," he said to the bewilderment of the committee staffer.
Rognoni fired back, "What proof do you want?" This evidence, plus
numerous pieces of additional evidence, had led many in Western
Europe to the proper conclusion. But the CIA had raised the standard
of proof to unachievable levels. Levels that, as Safire noted, the
"Soviet bloc will make impossible to meet."
The CIA's skepticism was not limited
to close door meetings with Italian officials, however. Safire
explained,
Meanwhile, in other
capitals--and in Washington--middle-level CIA men with
journalistic contacts have been pooh-poohing the story. In Rome,
U.S. foreign service officers have been telling Italian diplomats
that the investigation is an international
embarrassment.
And there it was. Relying on CIA and
State Department sources that had no interest in investigating
Bulgarian-Soviet involvement in the assassination attempt, the elite
media first refused to investigate the numerous threads of evidence
and then downplayed evidence turned up by investigators outside of
their clique.
The lessons to be drawn from this
affair are numerous. Mistakes in the intelligence game are very easy
to make. But, at the very least, every thread of evidence should be
pulled and the evidence weighed.
Unfortunately, once again the elite
media ignores a fantastic story.
Thomas Joscelyn is an economist
who works on antitrust and security issues.
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