Stasi Files Implicate KGB in Pope Shooting

Did Mehmet Ali Agca use the gun (left) under KGB orders?

Recently unearthed documents from the ex-East German secret police, the Stasi, appear to pin the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II on the KGB. Italy and Bulgaria have pledged to investigate the claim. New documents found in the files of the former East German intelligence services confirm the 1981 assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II was ordered by the Soviet KGB and assigned to Bulgarian and East German agents. According to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, the documents found by the German government indicated that the KGB ordered Bulgarian colleagues to carry out the killing, leaving the East German service known as the Stasi to coordinate the operation and cover up the traces afterwards. Bulgaria then handed the execution of the plot to Turkish extremists, including Mehmet Ali Agca, who pulled the trigger. Ali Agca, who is now in jail in Turkey, claimed after his arrest that the operation was under the control of the Bulgarian embassy in Rome. The Bulgarians have always insisted they were innocent and argued that Agca's story was part of an anti-communist plot by the Italian secret service and the CIA. Bulgaria and Italy to cooperate

Secrets to be unravelled

The documents consist mostly of letters from Stasi operatives to their Bulgarian counterparts seeking help in covering up traces after the attack and denying Bulgarian involvement. So far, Bulgaria has declared its readiness to give Italy all the information it possesses about the alleged involvement of its then Communist secret services in the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, an Italian deputy told Bulgarian bTV television Thursday. Paolo Gozzanti, head of the parliamentary commission inquiring into the activities of the Soviet KGB in Italy during the Cold War, said the Bulgarian Ambassador in Rome had promised to help him obtain relevant documents that the former Stasi sent to Bulgaria in 2002. "We agreed to launch an immediate procedure for getting the documents as soon as possible," he said. Bulgarian government spokesperson Dimitar Tsonev confirmed his country's readiness to cooperate in the investigation "as soon as we have an official demand" from Italy." However, the Berlin office supervising the Stasi archives said it had no evidence linking the Stasi, or Soviet and Bulgarian secret services to the assassination attempt. And the former head of the Stasi, Marcus Wolf, said on Bulgarian national television that the documents concerned demands on the part of Bulgaria for the Stasi's help to end a "campaign against Bulgaria by the American CIA." Wolf added that the files also had been sent to Italy in 1995. Pope believed assassin was a 'patsy'

Answers before Pope's death?

Three Bulgarians were accused of masterminding the assassination attempt on May 13, 1981. One of the three, Sergey Antonov, was arrested in 1982 and put on trial but acquitted for lack of evidence. Metodi Andreev, former head of a Bulgarian parliamentary commission entitled to open the files of the Communist-era secret services, confirmed that Sofia had received some Stasi documents in the spring of 2002.

"I do not know if they is any proof of a Bulgarian involvement in the attack but we need to clear up that problem in order not to throw a shadow on contemporary Bulgaria," he said. Gozzanti said it was necessary to find out the truth before the death of the pope, who has said in his own memoir, "Memory and Identity: Conversations Between Millenniums," that Ali Agca was a tool of outside forces. And in a visit to Bulgaria in May 2002, the pope said he "never believed in the so-called Bulgarian connection." Germany | 24.03.2005 Kohl's Stasi Files Released

Stasi secrets about Kohl: Coming to a newsstand near you

After a long legal battle, parts of a vast archive on former German chancellor Helmut Kohl compiled by the notorious East German Stasi secret police were released Thursday for the first time but under heavy restrictions. Two files of around 1,000 pages each were made available in Berlin to a select group of researchers and journalists, under orders not to publish them, while parts of the documents referring to Kohl's personal life were blacked out. The move follows years of legal efforts by Kohl, who led West Germany when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and supervised the unification process with the former communist east, to have the archives suppressed. Many observers have speculated that the files on wiretaps the Stasi carried out between 1982 and 1989 could include information linked to a party funding scandal over which his career faltered in 2000.

Marianne Birthler

But Marianne Birthler (photo), the head of the Stasi archives office, has that the documents are unlikely to contain any great revelations and that the years of legal wrangling surrounding them

was probably all for nothing. "The fact that the documents have now been published makes this clear," she told German radio station RBB. 9,000 pages on Kohl

The Stasi Museum, once the headquarters of the feared East German secret police, in Berlin

The Stasi, widely reviled for its repressive methods and close monitoring of its citizens and officials within and outside East Germany, compiled nearly 9,000 pages on Kohl as it tapped his telephones for most of the 1980s. The German news agency DPA reported that in many parts of the documents, which include newspaper clippings, names and personal purchases have been deleted, it said, without providing any details. The disclosure comes following a court ruling in June that the files could be made available to researchers and journalists if they did not relate to the personal life of the 74-year-old conservative former leader. It means members of the media must get consent when they try to obtain information about Kohl, who led the united Germany until his defeat by the current chancellor, Gerhard Schrder, in 1998. Under the ruling, researchers may have access to the files but must guarantee that the information does not fall into "unauthorised hands" or be released into the public domain.

Former German chancellor Helmut Kohl

Many people have argued that Kohl should not be spared the treatment given to hundreds of prominent east Germans, many of whom have been embarrassed by revelations long buried in the archives or unmasked as Stasi spies. Lengthy legal battle

The release of the files follows a lengthy legal process to keep the information under wraps. Over a year ago, the former chancellor thought that his story would remain untold when the Federal Administrative Court ruled to impose major restrictions on the release and publication of the Stasi files. Though the court upheld portions of an earlier ruling ordering that Kohl's files be made available to journalists, the conditions at the time made it impossible for vast amounts of the data to be obtained. One of the major sticking points in the case for opening the files was the fact that much of the information contained in them was obtained illegally.

Stasi files

The court ruled in 2004 that the Stasi information garnered through wiretaps in private or working rooms was fundamentally banned from public release. The judgement applied not only to the alleged recordings and transcripts, but also to all reports, analysis papers and position papers that had been drawn from these sources. Birthler, a former East German dissident whose archive is a huge database of citizens of East Germany and some west Germans, has called for much broader background checks on officials from both east and west using the Stasi files. In July 2001, Kohl won a case, upheld a year later, arguing he was entitled to privacy as he was a "victim" rather than a collaborator. The decision halted a 10-year practice of allowing publication of files on public figures. However Birthler took the case back to court arguing that a new law passed by parliament allowed the publication of records on public figures whether or not they were victims.

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