With the Pope on his (apparent) death bed, I thought you might be interested to read about Mehmet Ali Agca, the man who shot him in 1981.
Agca is about to publish a book. He sat down with La Repubblica, an Italian newspaper, last Thursday to give an interview.
My Italian is quite rusty so any and all errors are entirely mine:
The Latest Truth From Ali Agca: "I had accomplices in the Vatican"
ISTANBUL - "The Vatican shares some responsibility for the assassination attempt against the Pope. Without the help of some priests and cardinals I never could've done it. I tell you the Devil himself lives within those walls". The statement is frightening and once again does not beat around the bush. Just a few weeks after John Paul II's recovery and just a day after the Bulgarian government announced it was delivering the [East German] Stasi files, Ali Agca has is in the press again. He sat down for an interview with La Repubblica and spoke about a number of things he would reveal in his new book about the assassination attempt against the Pope.
The former Grey Wolf is today locked up in the maximum security jail Kaltal Maltepe in Istanbul. He shows us approximately 150 pages of a book that will be ready in about two months. Agca is wearing a track suit and athletic shoes. His hair is now entirely white but he looks as vivacious and lively as ever. He also speaks perfect Italian.
Q: Mehmet Ali Agca, you shot the Pope. Do you want to tell everyone for once and for all why you did it?
Agca: Why did I shoot the Pope? It was decided by Holy God. In 1983 when I met with his Holiness John Paul II it was revealed to me that the assassination attempt was a sign from God.
Q: Yes but today the same Pope refers to you as a "professional assassin" motivated by a "an overbearing ideology". How do you answer that?
Agca: I love and respect the Polish Pope. They who accuse me are those who are closed to him in the Vatican, it's all made up. I saw how recently Cardinal Tonini called me "a ghost". This is nonsense. What's true is that the Devil is inside the Vatican. Without help from priests and cardinals I never could've done it. But enough, I'll write all about it in my book.
Q: You set out that day to kill the Pope but you just injured him. Why?
Agca: That day, May 13, 1981, I wanted to kill the Pope and then myself. To complete the mission.
Q: Whose mission was it? For once and all do you want to say exactly what happened and why?
Agca: There is no once and for all. On May 13, 1981, nobody at all knew of my planned attack. But I remember perfectly how at the last minute I renounced [my mission]. I had decided to go to the Termini station to return to Zurich by train and live in peace. But just then a miracle occurred, I decided on the spur of the moment to return and shoot him.
Q: But 24 years after May 13, 1981, exactly what happened during the assassination attempt and the circumstances surrounding it remain a total mystery.
Agca: Public opinion and the common citizen cannot think straight when there is such systematic disinformation. However, in the centers of power there are no secrets but there are lots of taboos. Many calculating politicians are worried about what revealing the complete truth would do. Some of them fear that the Vatican will have a spiritual collapse like the Berlin Wall. Let me ask, why don't the CIA, the Sisme, the Sisde and other intelligence agencies reveal the truth about the Orlandi case?
Q: They say it's because there is still some uncertainty [literally "fog"] in the Emanuela Orlandi case.
Agca: In the 1980's, certain Vatican supporters believed that I was the new messiah and to free me they organized all the intrigue about Emanuela Orlandi and the other incidents that they won't reveal.
Q: They won't reveal... so tell me something that is fact.
Agca: To understand something about this you need to analyze the document dated November 14, 1983 from Sisde about the Orlando case, which was written by the then-police chief Vincenzo Parisi. Look at that document. And then I'll ask you, in May 2004 Mrs. Roberta Hidalgo photographed a woman in the Vatican who might be Emanuela. Why has that photo not been released to the public?
Q: Agca, you are aware that you've only increased confusion about this mystery with your various versions of what happened. Is there one version that is more definite and accurate?
Agca: Of course I've contributed to the increasing confusion with my various versions, the contradictions are for political reasons. And I beg your forgiveness. But it was very difficult to do things in a certain atmosphere and in certain circumstances, when the intelligence agencies of the free world were after me about the attack on the Pope, the Orlandi case and my meeting with the pontiff. But I state that on May 13, 1981, nobody in the world knew anything about my gesture. Now enough time has gone by in the political and legal world. The most important thing is that I have never lied about religious issues. Think about it, if I had accepted a false conversion, I was free in the Vatican at the end of 1983, thanked by Emanuela and the president of the Republic [of Italy]. I suffer every hour I've spent in my cell in the last 24 years.
Q: Your meeting in Rebibbia with the Pope has always remained a mystery. John Paul II has mentioned it in his latest book. What are you going to write about it?
Agca: The Vatican proclaimed that 1983 was an extraordinary Holy Year. They wanted me to convert to Christianity that year and that's one of the reasons why John Paul II came to see me. The Orlandi case was organized only for this religious motive. Therefore, I spoke to the Pope about religion. I told the Pope about the divine vision I was granted directly from God. And the pontiff said he believed me. That's why he told the world-wide press that "I have met a brother who has won my trust".
Q: You are here inside Kartal Maltepe [prison], where you once escaped from in 1979. Have you ever thought about escaping again?
Agca: I have no idea when I'll legally get out of here. My legal status is not very clear. Therefore I truly do not know when I will be freed. I believe that my life is my biological death, that my prison is my freedom, and that it is all within the hands of God. I shall wait.
Obviously this guy is a little odd. It's worth mentioning here that he's not in prison for anything relating to the Pope (he was pardoned in 2000 by Italian president Ciampi), he's actually serving time for murdering a Turkish man named Abdi Ipekci in 1979.
The "Grey Wolves" were a terrorist group in Turkey that was financed by Bulgaria. Bulgaria and Turkey are bitter enemies and there's a lot of ethnic hatred and bad feelings in general between these two.
Agca was in jail in 1979 for killing Ipekci (a newspaper editor) on the orders of the Grey Wolves, which I remind you was before the attempted assassination of the Pope.
Since Agca is such a loose cannon and made various claims, including to be Jesus himself (the Messiah), that when he said that the Bulgarian Secret Service organized the attempt against the Pope, nobody really gave it much credence.
I mention all of this because it looks like unearthed Stasi (East German secret service) files look to actually corroborate some of Agca's claims. From the Chicago Sun-Times:
A newspaper reported Wednesday that East German spy papers show the Soviet Union ordered the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II two decades ago, according to Agence France-Presse news service.
The documents reveal that the Soviet KGB gave the job to Bulgarian agents, and had the infamous East German Stasi spy service coordinate the murder attempt, the report from Italy's Corriere della Serra said.
Bulgaria reportedly passed off the assignment to Turkish extremists who included Mehmet Ali Agca. He shot the pope in 1981.
Agca had fingered the Bulgarians, but they had denied it and said his story was part of an anti-communist plot.
The new report is based on documents given to Bulgaria that are being made available to Italian investigators.
The convention wisdom is that the Soviet Union was upset because the Pope was giving moral support and media attention to Poland's Solidarity, which was eventually became the first group to successfully resist an East Bloc Communist government.
Ironically these documents came to light because an Italian parliamentary commission was investigating KGB recruitment in Italy. The latest reports from the Italian papers say the Bulgarian government is now shipping everything it has related to Agca.
Frankly this is turning into an Oliver Stone-esque JFK conspiracy story, but I thought you deserved to know what's going on. I'm sure there will be new developments, especially when Agca's book gets published.
So who is Emanuela Orlandi?
Well her case is fairly well-known in Italy. She was the daughter of Ercole Orlandi, a Vatican employee (and citizen), when she disappeared at age 15 on June 22, 1983.
There's a whole lot of heeby-jeeby stuff connecting Orlandi to Agca's attempt on the Pope. First, a skull supposedly Orlandi's was deposited in a church off St. Peter's Square on May 13, 2001. The Pope was shot on May 13, 1981. And May 13, 1917 is when the Virgin Mary allegedly appeared to three girls in Fatima, Portugal and revealed three secrets for them to pass onto the Pope, the second of which was that an attempt would be made on his life.
I should mention that there are fewer than 1,000 official citizens or residents of the Vatican, so a case like Orlandi's got a lot of attention. There are about a million conspiracy websites out there dealing with her disappearance and possibly tinfoil hat stuff related to the Pope, so I'm not going to even try and relate any of it to you here.
This is cross-posted from my blog, where you are humbly invited to visit
Pax