Thickening Plot

Agca's story gets support

In some secret place, where every secret is wrapped in another secret, some political figure of great power took note of this most grave situation [the imposing rise of Solidarity in the summer of 1980]and, mindful of the vital needs of the Eastern bloc, decided it was necessary to kill Pope Wojtyta.

--Official report of the Italian state prosecutor

After Pope John Paul II was shot in St. Peter's Square more than three years ago, Turkish Gunman Mehmet Ali Agca spun for Italian investigators a web of contradictions, phony confessions and outright lies. But one of his revelations has continued to gain ground as an explanation of the assassination attempt: Agca was hired to kill the Pope by the Bulgarian secret service and, implicitly, the KGB, the Soviet secret police.

Last week that theory received support in an official document that recommended indictments and revealed the intricacies of Agca's account. The 78-page confidential report, made public by freelance Investigative Reporter Claire Sterling* in the New York Times, was compiled by State Prosecutor Antonio Albano and drawn from some 25,000 pages of material assembled by Investigating Magistrate Ilario Martella. The report details Agca's longstanding association with the Turkish Mafia and the Gray Wolves, an ultrarightist band of Turkish terrorists. It goes on to discuss his recruitment by the Bulgarian secret service and his bungled shooting and failed escape. While taking scrupulous pains not to mention the Soviet Union by name, the report recommends the indictment of three Bulgarians, including Sergei Ivanov Antonov, 36, who is already in Italian custody, and six Turks, Agca among them.

Albano's summary is, in essence, the case for the prosecution. Completed in April, it is exhaustive in its detail, including personal descriptions and seemingly trivial events. Although it establishes that Agca often told the truth about his meetings with the others accused in the case, it furnishes only the beginnings of proof that there was indeed a plot to kill the Pope. Albano rests much of his case that there was a Bulgarian connection on Agca's memory and on his precise descriptions of the habits and physical features of several Bulgarian agents. The Pope's would-be killer reeled off the unlisted phone number of one Bulgarian; he recalled correctly that a second Bulgarian called his wife Rosy and tended to get breathless while walking; he knew of a wart on the left cheek of a third Bulgarian that is so small no photograph could catch it.

More important, the prosecutor's report sheds light on some of the affair's most obstinate mysteries. What did Agca stand to gain from the assault? According to Albano: more than $400,000 in deutsche marks plus expenses. Why did the hit man remain in St. Peter's Square after the shooting? In Albano's account, after Agca took aim, his partner, Oral Celik, was supposed to let off two "panic bombs" to distract attention. The two collaborators would jump into a waiting car, then transfer to a sealed Transport International Routier (T.I.R.) truck hired by the Bulgarian embassy, which could legally cross the border unchecked. But for some reason Celik never detonated the bombs, says the report, and was forced to make his escape alone. Albano also included evidence that strongly suggests a Bulgarian coverup: the Bulgarian embassy requested with unprecedented and unexplained urgency that the truck be exempt from inspection; the Bulgarians had strenuously denied the existence of the unlisted phone number that Agca cited; the alibi of one Bulgarian suspect was thoroughly shattered.

For the past two months Antonov's defense lawyer, Giuseppe Console, has been working on a point-by-point rebuttal of the prosecutor's opinion. Not surprisingly, Console confidently claims that his client will be acquitted when the case comes to trial. Before that can happen, however, Martella must release his own findings. Assuming that he arrives at conclusions similar to Albano's, he is expected to deliver an indictment this September that would lead to a trial that might begin in December.

* Late last year, Sterling brought out a book, The Time of the Assassins, that meticulously expounded the theory of a Bulgarian connection. It was greeted with some skepticism in many quarters, including the pages of the New York Times.