The Assassination Attempt on Pope John Paul II

On May 13th, 1981, Turkish revolutionary Mehmet Ali Agca attempted the assassination of Pope John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City. After seriously injuring the Pope and wounding multiple bystanders with multiple bullits, Agca was apprehended and sentenced to life in prison, but in 2000, he was pardoned at the Pope’s request, but he remained imprisoned following an extradition to Turkey. Many theories have flown around about why Agca attempted to kill Pope John Paul, and many of them focus on the idea that the KGB killed the Pope due to the Vatican’s involvement in NATO’s Gladio and funding of Solidarity in Poland. However, as we are about to see, this is far from the truth.

The Susurluk Scandal

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The Susurluk Scandal was the fallout from a discovery made at a car crash on November 3rd, 1996. This accident claimed the lives of three people: former Deputy Chief of Istanbul Police Hüseyin Kocadağ, a man by the name of Abdullah Çatlı, and his girlfriend, Gonca Us. Catl was a convicted fugitive, hunted for his role in various murders and drug smuggling, while Gonca Us was a hit-woman for the Turkish Mafia. Catl, who was also the leader of the Turkish ultranationalist group known as the “Grey Wolves”, had in his possession in the car:

* diplomatic credentials, given by the Turkish authorities
* a government-approved weapons permit.
* a fake passport in the name of Mehmet Özbay; the same alias used by Mehmet Ali Ağca.[2]
* several handguns, and silencers.
* a cache of narcotics.
* thousands of US dollars.

The scandal revealed what is known as the Turkish “Deep State”, which is a complex network of terrorist groups, government officials, and Western intelligence agencies.

The Deep state (Turkish: derin devlet) is said to be a group of influential anti-democratic coalitions within the Turkish political system, composed of high-level elements within the intelligence services (domestic and foreign), Turkish military, security, judiciary, and mafia.[1][2] The notion of deep state is similar to that of a "state within the state". For those who believe in its existence, the political agenda of the deep state involves an allegiance to nationalism, corporatism, and state interests. Violence and other means of pressure have historically been employed in a largely covert manner to manipulate political and economic elites and ensure specific interests are met within the seemingly democratic framework of the political landscape.

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"The deep state is Turkish shorthand for a faceless clique inside the Turkish state that has, some claim, held the reins of real power throughout the republic's 84-year history. There are some who see it on a continuum with the shady networks that 'took care of business' (including, some believe, the Armenian business) in the last years of the Ottoman Empire. The deep state is held to be based in the army, but closely linked with the National Intelligence Service (MIT), the judiciary, and (since the 1960s) the mafia.".

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A key part of the “Deep State” was Counter-Guerrilla, which was the Turkish branch of the NATO/CIA Operation Gladio.

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The above is the command structure of Counter-Guerrilla (stinet.dtic.mil... ).

In the 1960s, Counter-Guerrilla developed the National Movement Party, which formed the core of the future groups of the various ultra-nationalist militant organizations. Throughout the 1970s, Counter-Guerrilla engaged in horrific acts:

After the 1971 Turkish military coup, the counter-guerrilla engaged in domestic terror, killing hundreds. Journalist Uğur Mumcu (assassinated in 1993) later wrote that he had been tortured after the coup by people who identified themselves as "counter-guerrillas"

In 1977, Counter-Guerrilla was involved in the Takism Square Massacre, which on May 1st of the that year, snipers opened fire on a trade union rally. 38 people were killed in the hail of bullets. One person present at this massacre was CIA “asset” and ex-Mossad agent Hiram Abas. The building from which the shots were fired belonged to the ITT Corporation, which was connected to the CIA and funded the 1973 coup against Salvador Allende in Chile.

Hiram Abas had been trained in the US in covert action operations and as an MIT agent first gained notoriety in Beirut, where he co-operated with the Mossad from 1968 to 1971 and carried out attacks, "targeting left-wing youths in the Palestinian camps and receiving bounty for the results he achieved in actions".[28] With MIT agent Mehmet Eymür, later promoted to direct the MIT's department for counter-espionage, Abas also participated in the Kizildere massacre of March 30, 1972, when they killed seven left-wing militants.

The Grey Wolves

The CIA also used Counter-Guerrilla member Ruzi Nazar, who was a former Nazi, to train the “Grey Wolves”, which was the youth wing of the Nationalist Movement Party. According to Daniele Gaser, the founder of the Grey Wolves, Alparslan Türkeş, was a high ranking official in Counter-Guerrilla.

Numerous sources show that the MHP and the Grey Wolves had ties to the Turkish mafia, to the Turkish intelligence services as well as to the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Former military public attorney and member of the Turkish Supreme Court Emin Değer has established that the Grey Wolves collaborated with the counter-insurgency governmental forces, as well as the close ties between these state security forces and the CIA.[16][17][18] Indeed, Martin A. Lee also wrote that the para-military wing of the Grey Wolves were covertly supported by the CIA, which worked with the Gladio network,[4] while a December 5, 1990 article by the Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung stated that the Counter-Guerrilla had their headquarters in the building of the US DIA military secret service.[19] Le Monde diplomatique wrote that "the CIA used proponents of the Greater Turkey to stir up anti-sovietic passions at the heart of Turkish Muslim minorities in the Soviet Union".[16] Thus, in 1992, colonel Türkes went to newly-independent Azerbaijan, where he was acclaimed as a hero. He supported Grey Wolves sympathiser Abülfaz Elçibay's candidacy to the presidency. Once elected, Elçibay chose as ministry of Interior İsgandar Hamidov, a member of the Grey Wolves who plead for the creation of a Greater Turkey which would include northern Iran and extend itself to Siberia, India and China. Hamidov resigned in April 1993 after having threatened Armenia with a nuclear strike.[16]

By 1980, there were 1,700 Grey Wolves organizations, conducting assassinations of left-wing promoters across Turkey. One of the major members of the Grey Wolves was the above-mentioned Abdullah Çatlı, as well as Mehmet Ali Ağca. In January of 1979, Catl and Agca worked together in the murder of left wing journalist, Abdi İpekçi.



[edit on 21-11-2008 by Someone336]

"Çatlı then reportedly helped organize Ağca's escape from an Istanbul military prison, and some have suggested Catli was even involved in the Pope's assassination attempt.”

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The Vatican Connection

In 2006, Agca wrote Pope Benedict XVI the following letter:

Pope Ratzinger listen to someone who knows these things very well.
Your life is in danger. You absolutely must not come to Turkey. Pope Benedict you must know that between 1980 and 2000 I was in contact with various Western intelligence services and with the Vatican.
In those twenty years, I learnt many things and I came into possession of many classified secrets.
For your own welfare, you must make a grand gesture of honour and resign.
Then you must return to your native land (Germany) and in your place an Italian cardinal can be elected Pope, possibly Tettamanzi or Bertone.
Then the Vatican should become a centre of peace and fraternity. The world has a need of this, it does not need hatred and vendetta.

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Agca also stated:

"The Vatican bears responsibility for the attack on the Pope. Without the help of some priests and cardinals I could not have done it."

Given Agca’s connections to Operation Gladio through Counter-Guerrilla, these comments must refer to the P2 Masonic lodge, which acted as a “shadow government” in Italy, and infiltrated the high ranks of the Vatican. Like Counter-Guerrilla, P2 was a pawn of Gladio, and former members have even stated that the fascist organization was completely under the control of the CIA. Indeed, there may be additional evidence for this theory in the incident of the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, who was a 15 year old daughter of a Vatican employee who was kidnapped. Anonymous phone calls stated that she would be returned in exchange for the release of Agca. One of the suspected persons involved in the incidents was Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, who, according to The Messianic Legacy, was a member of the P2 lodge. This has yet to have been proven, but he was most certainly a friend of Robert Calvi and Michael Sindona, who were both prominent P2 men. Marcinkus was also an associate of Father Francis Spellman, who worked for the CIA in 1954. Agca has this to say about the Orlandi incident:

"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 Sismi, the Sisde and other intelligence agencies reveal the truth about the Orlandi case?

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Shifting the Blame

The first theory put forth on the assassination attempt came from Michael Ledeen, who claimed that the assassination was a KGB plot, due to the Pope’s support of Solidarity. Ledeen, who is a close friend of George Bush, was involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. Also:

Ledeen's right-wing Italian connections – including alleged ties to the P-2 Masonic Lodge that rocked Italy in the early 1980s - have long been a source of speculation and intrigue, but he returned to Washington in 1981 as "anti-terrorism" advisor to the new secretary of state, Al Haig.

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Columnist Eric Margolis also ageed with the KGB theory, stating that Agac was involved in KGB drug smuggling operations and that the KGB selected Agac to conduct the assassination, Margolis doesn’t acknowledge the CIA drug smuggling in this area of the world, particularly the Golden Triangle. Ferdinando Imposimato, an Italian prosecutor in charge of the assassination investigation, also supported the KGB theory.

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However, KGB director Yuri Andropov claimed that the plot was devised by Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had been involved in the funding and training of the Afghanistan terrorist networks, the blowback of which was 9/11. Given the connections between the CIA, Gladio, and the Turkish Deep State, this idea seems closer to reality than the KGB theory, which was originally spun by a P2 member!

Take a look at this:

In 1998 the magazine Monde diplomatique alleged that Abdullah Çatlı had organized the assassination attempt "in exchange for the sum of 3 million German mark" for the Gray Wolves.[4] In 1985 in Rome, Catli declared to a judge "that he had been contacted by the BND, the German intelligence agency, which would have promised him a nice sum of money if he implicated the Russian and Bulgarian services in the assassination attempt against the Pope"

The BND was formed by Reinhard Gehlen, the anti-Communist ex-Nazi spy turned CIA asset whose “ratlines” formed the basis of Gladio. Gehlen, who was a Knight of Malta, was a member of the elusive globalist think-tank Le Cercle, which also counts the aforementioned Brzezinski in its memberships.

One of the directors of Le Cercle was Brian Crozier, a former journalist, CIA/MI5/6 asset, globalist, and friend of the Rockefellers.

he greatest enemy of the Cercle has been the Soviet Union and members have been crusading against communist subversion for many decades. During this process, Cercle members unfortunately have accused almost every nationalist and socialist government, every labour union, every terrorist, and every serious investigator of western intelligence of being in bed with the KGB.

In his book Crozier claims that the people who exposed his Forum World Services, The 61, and his Cercle were mostly manipulated or working for the KGB. He also presents information in such a way that will lead you to conclude that people like Mohammed Mossadeq and Harold Wilson were KGB paws, and that Pope John Paul I & II were both targeted by the KGB for assassination (only John Paul I died of that, allegedly). The KGB is basically behind everything. Crozier even repeated a 1978 claim by Time Magazine that the most effective KGB propaganda was that of discrediting the CIA (45). He also likes to state that "neo-colonialism" was a term invented by the Soviets, etc. Many of his accusations are based on statements from anonymous intelligence officers. At times, although he normally focuses on his own connections, he has used or referred to such reliable sources as the CIA sponsored Encounter magazine, the CIA sponsored Reader's Digest, his own CIA sponsored ISC think tank, the CIA sponsored journalist Claire Sterling, or o the CIA connected Zionist extremist Michael Ledeen.

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The 61 mentioned above was a privatized intelligence organization founded by Crozier, and headed by CIA man Vernon Walters. From NATO’s Secret Armies:

Vernon Walters advised them, a notorious CIA Cold Warrior 'who has been involved directly or indirectly in the overthrow of more governments than any other official of the US government'.[42] Walters declared that if Kennedy allowed the PSI [Partito Socialisto Italiano] to win the elections the US should invade the country... Kennedy had allowed Italy to shift to the left. As the Socialists were given cabinet posts the Italian Communists, due to their performance at the polls, also demanded to be rewarded with posts in the cabinet and in May 1963 the large union of the construction workers demonstrated in Rome. The CIA was alarmed and members of the secret Gladio army disguised as police and civilians smashed the demonstration leaving more than 200 demonstrators injured. [46] But for Italy the worst was yet to come. In November 1963, US President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, under mysterious circumstances. And five months later the CIA with the SIFAR, the Gladio secret army and the paramilitary police carried out a right-wing coup d'etat which forced the Italian Socialists to leave their cabinet posts they had held only for such a short period. Code-named 'Piano Solo' the coup was directed by General Giovanni De Lorenzo whom Defence Minister Giulio Andreotti [Le Cercle] of the DCI [hard-right Democrazia Christiana Italiana] had transferred from chief of SIFAR to chief of the Italian paramilitary police, the Carabinieri. In close cooperation with CIA secret warfare expert Vernon Walters, William Harvey, chief of the CIA station in Rome, and Renzo Rocca, Director of the Gladio units within the military secret service SID, De Lorenzo escalated the secret war."

This KGB disinformation permeates to the P2 Lodge itself, even. www.hartford-hwp.com... mentions the belief that the P2 lodge was under the control of the KGB, which is a ludicrous idea to even begin to consider, since A)Licio Gelli was a member of the OSS Operation Paperclip, B)The CIA is said to run P2, and C)P2 had supported fascist dictatorships.

Conclusion

Based on what has been discussed above, it would seem that the assassination attempt on the Pope was simply another “false flag” event perpetuated by the CIA, executed by Counter-Guerrilla and the Grey Wolves. The blame was to fall on the KGB, which would serve to further crumble away the Soviet’s power base in eastern Europe.

a reply to: Someone336

What a pleasant surprise to find this thread . I find it strange that no one has commented but with a update in hand I shall add .

Testifying in September 1985 as a witness at the trial of three Bulgarians and four Turks charged with complicity in the papal shooting in Rome, Catli (who was not a defendant) disclosed that he gave Agca the pistol that wounded the pontiff. Catli had previously helped Agca escape from a Turkish jail, where Agca was serving time for killing a national newspaper editor.

In addition to harboring Agca, Catli supplied him with fake IDs and directed Agca’s movements in West Germany, Switzerland, and Austria for several months prior to the papal attack. Catli enjoyed close links to Turkish drug mafiosi, too. His Grey Wolves henchmen worked as couriers for the Turkish mob boss Abuzer Ugurlu.

At Ugurlu’s behest, Catli’s thugs criss-crossed the infamous smugglers’ route passing through Bulgaria. Those routes were the ones favored by smugglers who reportedly carried NATO military equipment to the Middle East and returned with loads of heroin. Judge Carlo Palermo, an Italian magistrate based in Trento, discovered these smuggling operations while investigating arms-and-drug trafficking from Eastern Europe to Sicily.

Palermo disclosed that large quantities of sophisticated NATO weaponry — including machine guns, Leopard tanks and U.S.-built Cobra assault helicopters — were smuggled from Western Europe to countries in the Middle East during the 1970s and early 1980s. According to Palermo’s investigation, the weapon delivers were often made in exchange for consignments of heroin that filtered back, courtesy of the Grey Wolves and other smugglers, through Bulgaria to northern Italy.

There, the drugs were received by Mafia middlemen and transported to North America. Turkish morphine base supplied much of the Sicilian-run “Pizza connection,” which flooded the U.S. and Europe with high-grade heroin for several years.

[While it is still not clear how the NATO supplies entered the pipeline, other investigations have provided some clues. Witnesses in the October Surprise inquiry into an alleged Republican-Iranian hostage deal in 1980 claimed that they were allowed to select weapons from NATO stockpiles in Europe for shipment to Iran.

[Iranian arms dealer Houshang Lavi claimed that he selected spare parts for Hawk anti-aircraft batteries from NATO bases along the Belgian-German border. Another witness, American arms broker William Herrmann, corroborated Lavi’s account of NATO supplies going to Iran.

[Even former NATO commander Alexander Haig confirmed that NATO supplies could have gone to Iran in the early 1980s while he was secretary of state. “It wouldn’t be preposterous if a nation, Germany, for example, decided to let some of their NATO stockpiles be diverted to Iran,” Haig said in an interview. For more details, see Robert Parry’s Trick or Treason. ] consortiumnews.com...