Mugshots: A Vatican Cover Up - The KGB Plot to Kill the Pope | Forensic Files

Pope John Paul II at St Peter's one moment he hugs a child with a balloon an instant later an assassin fires Two
Shots into his chest the pope Will Survive the Assassin is arrested as a lone gunman not everyone agrees acha was
not a lone gunman he was not crazy he was not Psychopathic um that there was clearly a conspiracy behind him this was
a very well planned event and it was in a typical fashion of the way the Soviets
were working at that [Applause] time they used the not the KGB but the gru which was the Soviet Military
Intelligence equivalent of the KGB and the gru used the Bulgarian secret Services which they frequently
did um so that there would be no tracing back to them if something went wrong as
something did go wrong conspiracy is in the courtroom did the KGB send an assassin to kill the pope and if so why
did the Vatican in the White House remain silent was there a coverup while the world waited for news about
the Pope's condition a new face was given front page treatment his name was Ali AA his game was political
assassination the questions came furiously how had he gotten so close to the pope where did he get the gun did he
have assistance the Italian police searched their files Ali AA was silent after some tense days the pope
survived [Applause] miraculously AA was arrested tried and convicted the verdict was guilty for a
lone gunman CLA Sterling was an American reporter based in Italy she never accepted the official story she was not
alone David Willie covers the Vatican for the BBC he told us a former Russian KGB agent had evidence of a KGB plot to
kill the pope there was this Soviet KGB Defector uh called Victor uh Shoff he was a a former major in the cipher
section of the KGB he defected to the United States in 1980 and in 1990 he appeared in public in the United
States and said that while he was working in Warsaw the year after Pope John Paul's election ction he' he saw a
classified telegram signed by the KGB Chief Yuri andropov who of course later became leader and succeeded Leon BV uh
ordering the collection of information about just how close it was possible to get to the pope when he appeared in
public so the implication of this was that he was on a Hit List why would the KGB want to kill the pope they
considered him a truly deadly dangered to P the power of the Kremlin this Pope was so strong personally in the Eastern
block which was so important to the Soviet Union that uh yurian drop off the former head of the
KGB uh who became briefly the head of the Soviet Union uh decided that despite the risks um this was something that
could not be tolerated they could not tolerate this Pope who was so powerful particularly in his home country
of Poland the only non-italian Pope in Generations centuries uh they just couldn't deal
with it it was just too much of a [Music] threat if there was a plot to kill the
Pope then why not reveal it could there have been a secret deal between the American government and the Vatican a
secret anti-communist Alliance David Willie doesn't believe we know the truth about the
assassination he was a staunch anti-communist uh during the years when he was first a priest and then a bishop
and then Cardinal he regarded uh communism as nothing more than a short interlude in Poland's long history
[Music] the pope was born here in a tiny village of Southern Poland it was 1920 his name
was Carl VOA he lived in a second story flat a neighbor remembers we were childhood friends we
played together as children he was a very good athlete he liked soccer he loved the outdoors
to hike and to swim he was also an excellent student one of the best in the school he was an actor he performed
plays right on campus voa's last role was cordan by slatsky the Pope's house is a museum today and attracts visitors
from all over it has on display photographs of the young wtia family his father served in the austr Hungarian
Army after polish Independence he became a lieutenant in the Pol poish Army the Pope's mother was a school teacher he
was baptized at the Parish Church of our lady next door and received his first communion there he spent all of those
years growing up within full view of the church it must have made a powerful impression he was always called by his
nickname Loch uniforms were important to his family he wore his with great pride
his mother here in a large picture hat and formal handbag captures the style and atmosphere of the austr Hungarian
Empire that ceased to exist after the end of World War I the young Pope started at an all boys high school he
was a talented student one teacher says he was the nearest to a genius that I ever taught he was also a good athlete
and he liked acting what we had in common was performing together in the local drama
club we presented many plays over a very short period of time these were quite ambitious
Productions the plays were written by the best playwrights in Poland at the time and it so happened that in this
theater troop he and I would play the leading roles the Archbishop Prince Adam Sapa came to our area and VOA was among
those greeting him the Archbishop asked the school director about voa's future plans he was told the youth plan to
study polish philosophy the Archbishop thought for a moment and replied what a Pity we could use a man
like him in the church as it turns out he ended up leading the church in the summer of 1938 the pope and his father
moved to krackow he went to the university the Nazis were on the move move in Europe but this ancient city
survived so did the Pope and his father it was nearly 50 years ago that I met VOA Autumn I believe
1938 I was the chairman of the student Club he was well-liked everyone liked him it was just before the war the
atmosphere at the University was very positive almost like a family very humanistic we were all direct and very
open with each other but at the same time very serious about our work as if to Shield himself from the horror of war
the pope plunged into a life as an actor at the University often while we were performing outside the theater a huge
German loudspeaker interrupted our performances we really hated them through these speakers every hour or so
German communic from the front lines were announced one evening right in the middle of a performance the speaker
began blasting out the usual propaganda about the situation at the front [Music]
lines it developed into a duel between the hated enemy the Germans and the Beloved polish student vwa
we felt the performance of vwa was definitely the winner that night it was in this theater that the
pope set into motion an underground resistance movement the performances were given in homes and Halls hidden
away from the Germans during those War years the pope read and reread the Dark Night of the Soul by St John of the
Cross he had watched his country suffer he watched the loss of Hope the suffering of the children and he
determined that he would best serve if he became a priest of God in August 1944 the people of Warsaw
revolted against the Germans the Nazis moved ruthlessly to move in and break the back of the Polish spirit all
able-bodied men were to be arrested in krackow and taken to custody the Pope's house was searched but somehow he was
not found he was however on the Nazi Blacklist the Archbishop had now decided the city was no longer safe for his
secret seminarians so he made a bold move he brought them to the archbishop's Palace one by one where they lived and
studied until the war was over we'd load the rail cars after breaking the rock into small
pieces we'd fill the cars with our shovels then we would push them out of the area
if we had to deal with bigger Stones we'd use Dynamite or other explosives boa was also responsible for
the compressor but if he'd finish his job early he'd come and help the other workers load the cars in order to get
additional Merit points some of us used our Merit points to buy vodka and when the workers were in the
bunker used for air raid protection drinking or sleeping VOA would pass the time reading studying or praying
according to correspondent Stan Chambers the pope lived with a continuing threat
of death and raids people were picked up off the streets Jews were singled out nothing depicts the horror and Terror of
the War years under the Nazis more than the concentration camps of the third right this is oshit in southern Poland
it operated for 5 years 4 million people were killed here during those years these Starks silent buildings are a time
capsule of the terror today it is less than 30 mil from where the pope was born the chilling horror is still all around
you it's the place of the Holocaust where millions of Jews and others were put to death by the Nazis the cold damp
cells the long Halls the iron bars the bare Furnishings Left Behind Echo the despair of those who were brought here
to die [Music] the pope survived the Nazis he was ordained a priest in 1944 because of his obvious intellect
and talent he was sent to Rome for further study I'll never forget one night he was on his way to visit a sick
parishioner it was bitterly cold and he came across an old woman she was wearing thin
clothing and he saw she was shaking and shivering from the cold he took off his vestment and
carefully covered her with it to keep her warm that was his nature he was a very sensitive
man he wanted to alleviate other people's pain and suffering the pope openly defied the Russians from
the pulpit preaching a gospel of resistance the Vatican saw him as a willing Warrior and sent him to America
in 1969 then again in 1976 when President Carter moved into the White House he appointed a Polish
American Catholic zigu binski as National Security adviser and later he went to Poland with a private agenda
in 1978 there was a death at the Vatican and to the surprise of the world a relatively unknown pole VOA is named
John Paul II he is the first non-italian pope in 455 years the election of Pope John Paul was a highly political act by
the Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church in 1978 they knew very well what they were doing this was a direct threat
to the Communist system former US Congressman Edward D winsky was the leading polish adviser in the Reagan
State Department the election of the Pope an Eastern European was a uh you know a
amazing change in the pattern of papal elections I think there was a general realization among the church leaders
that uh it would be a good idea to have uh um somebody as muscular political with a political muscle of Carl VOA as
the pope and this is why he was [Music] elected I don't think there's an active collaboration between the pope or the
Vatican and Washington and Reagan uh remember Reagan hadn't been in office that long and it was
binski who was Carter's guy binski born in Warsaw a pole who was basically on the same mindset as the
pope and wanted to do everything he could to destabilize Eastern Europe particularly Poland which in fact
happened the pope was indeed a muscular anti-communist as was his secret partner
the cold warrior Ronald Reagan for that reason some claim the Russians set into motion an assassination plot with the
Young Turk Ali AA sent to Rome on a mission to silence the new pon it's one of those moments like the day
in Dallas when JFK was struck or the time Dr King was killed they all seemed to have an unreal slow motion drama to
them horrible to watch but impossible to turn away from and the men responsible for these acts always seemed so small so
Twisted in this case Ali AA fit his role perfectly at first silent then loudly proclaiming others were involved
[Music] ala The Lone Gunman the phrase we hear so often in these kinds of stories did
he act alone the Turkish government said so he is a well-known fugitive from Turkish Justice a
terrorist who has been tried and convicted for the murder of a prominent Turkish journalist AA was not a lone
gunman he was not crazy he was not Psychopathic um that there was clearly a conspiracy behind him Italian Justice
came swiftly it was the Italian trial of the century yes there are some analogies
between the AKA case and the Kennedy plot in that case like in this one it seems to be the work of a lone crazy man
someone who acted by himself it's only later that the inquiries arrived at the conclusion that it was a conspiracy
planned by certain organization and even supported by some countries this is the
major analogy I found between the two cases at first a single mad gunman was held responsible and now we have proves
that both attacks were the result of a plot Washington held its breath hoping the conspiracy story would go away but
doing everything in its power to knock down the theory for years after the pope was shot
they tried very hard to block my own efforts they consistently denied any press story that would indicate a
possible Bulgarian connection AA later changed his testimony and said the assassination attempt was an
international plot backed by the Russians he implicated three bulgarians and a Turkish mobster as his
co-conspirators I say Serge anono was with me attempt I bought the pistol four years ago that
I used to shoot the pope from an Austrian arms dealer who traveled often to the Soviet Union in
[Music] Bulgaria they bought four guns for me what would you do with the guns we
wanted to resume our terrorist activity I'm an organizer how come you're so famous I was an ideological terrorist I
looked for people to use as pawns I was never used but used others naturally I should say something about
the Bulgarian connection are you plan in Bulgaria to attack the pop I can't say can you please give me a clear
answer I can't say the KGB is threatening me it's very complex I say bring in the United Nations in the
Vatican question them bastard bastard AA claims he was trained in the Middle East by Palestinian terrorists
one of his first murder victims a newspaper editor he was jailed in Istanbul and then Broken Out by Turkish
Mobsters who took him to Bulgaria where he says the plot against the pope was hatched AA was the
Hitman this is one of these cases typical in Italy in which the full truth will never come out there are two great
interests for the total truth to be revealed however I think from what we do know that uh a there was a Bulgarian
connection uh B it was very strongly in the interests of the Soviet Union uh to try and get rid of the Polish Pope I
think that the American secret Services New at the time it was a Bulgarian operation I don't think anybody anywhere
you know with the exception of maybe well who knows nobody believed that this guy was just some Nut Job running around
St Peter square with a gun who wanted to kill a PO but he was a professional assassin this was not his first
assassination attempt and he had successfully murdered a journalist at least one in Turkey before this for
which he's still doing time according to the theory the KGB had turned to old friends since the 1970s the Turkish
Mafia had been one of the most powerful heroin organizations in Western Europe they sell arms to the east in exchange
for the dope the Turkish Mafia is in bed with everyone including the KGB they have plenty of experience in
fighting covert Wars he's a mercenary uh I believe he got paid over a million dollars I think he has it socked away
somewhere the judges have never been able a series of judges to find it Kremlin leaders had a strong motive to
kill the pope they believed that a holy Alliance was in place forged during the Pope earlier visits to
America President Reagan leesa and Pope John Paul II had joined they believe in a crusade to bring down communism they
hoped Poland would be the first in a series of crumbling Soviet blocks when the Kremlin saw that set of of
circumstances it decided that the pope was too dangerous they would never be another Pope like that one there would
never be another polish Pope another Pope who came right out of Eastern Europe who had that kind of hold on the
people inside the Soviet block they considered him a truly deadly danger to the power of the Kremlin I think they
understood it and that was clearly the motive but before the world could hear the evidence Aja destroyed the case when
he screamed in the courtroom that he was the Son of God the bulgarians and the Turks were
put on trial and were acquitted AA tried in been convicted authorities ruled no conspiracy it is possible to this day to
understand to follow the evidence and put it together and see if it makes any sense unless you cross National lines
turkey Austria Switzerland Bulgaria Germany Italy France um and to my personal knowledge because I was told
this afterwards by the director of the CIA Mr Casey the CIA did not have a coordinated Center to CCT information
about the attack on the pope it said when questioned that it was not the cia's business it was an Italian Affair
but not everyone in the CIA bought the official line there is no doubt that the Soviet Union's leaders and particularly
Yuri androp off the then head of the KGB would have known about it if the Bulgarian intelligence service was
involved as I think it was as always in the history of the of the Soviet Empire on uh in serious undertakings of this
sort Soviet Personnel would not be used Bulgarian Personnel it is known in the world of intelligence in the whole in
the intelligence Community internationally the Bulgarian secret police consistently did the Dirty Work
of the KGB and the KGB had its own officers in the same building in the in the next door offices to every important
official of the Bulgarian secret police as they did with every secret police Security Police Service in Eastern
Europe therefore I think they delegated the bulgarians the bulgarians therefore deliberately
chose the most right-wing possible foreign Source who would be several degrees removed from a
communist government in Eastern Europe to do the actual act and if he looked like a nutcase the all the better that's
a standard standard way of going about an attempted assassination pick someone who looks like a nut who has no apparent
connection with anything you're doing or your own motivation and send him in there the way I believe Lee hary Oswald
was not by the Russians let it be understood but I believe that Oswald was set in by the
mafia uh and chosen on the Same by the same standards official Washington maintained there was no conspiracy
meantime the Reagan Administration filled the White House with Catholics high ranking members of the Knights of
Malta powerful men with direct connections to the Vatican and Bill Casey of the CIA Bill Casey was sharp enough to
understand that of all the U Warsaw pack States Poland was the most important and
that at the Grassroots level the people of Poland were the most anti-communist of the captive Nations
and I think that uh Casey understood that that this was a special problem for Soviet authorities and for
the uh puppet government that the U that they maintained in [Music] Warsaw my first reaction was that it
would not be at all surprising that the Communist directed from the Kremlin itself would try to assassinate
the pope not because he was working with the United States in any way but because
he represented a tremendous tremendous new source of strength to the Catholics in the USSR and in the uh
captive Nations and um however in the absence even today as I speak to you in the absence of of Hard
Evidence uh I really um I still don't have an answer for that my own mind I'm not convinced that I
know what happened and why it happened Claire Sterling has no doubts she watched Ali AA when Italian authorities
had him retrace his steps just before his second trial Sterling says there is evidence AA was working for Bulgarian
and Turkish criminals hired to stop the pope his first discussions took place in
sopia with the two bulgarians named todor avazov and V major vasilev who then who were in Sophia um on a visit
but were actually stationed in the Bulgarian Embassy in Rome and he was told at that time to um he was given the
phone numbers of the two of them in Rome and told to call them when he arrived in
Rome which he did uh he arrived he came some months before and then he returned a few days before the actual attack um
it was in Rome dealing with those two and with a third um Bulgarian called Antonov who was the deputy director of
the Bulgarian Airlines and who was presumably the sort of housekeeper of this operation a minor character with no
brain to speak of um but the three of them uh according to AA had met with him several times and had worked out the
arrangements had given him his final instructions some of which he wrote down a paper was found uh in his in the room
at the pension that he' stayed in in which he had last minute instructions for um taking a train out uh being seen
to be someplace else um eating lightly in the morning don't have too much for breakfast and so on very strange perhaps
they were memoranda to himself as well uh in any case the fact that he did meet with these bulgarians and that he did
know them um has been established Beyond Reasonable Doubt by the court in the trial in
Rome which involved the three Bulgarian several Turkish greywolves and AAR the the bulgarians were acquitted for lack
of sufficient evidence but they were not declared innocent and in the motivation
of this sentence written by judge Santi aaki the presiding judge uh the judge stated clearly that the evidence uh was
absolutely um established that AA knew those three bulgarians that he could not have learned what he knew about them
from anything he saw in the press or on television that there was absolutely no evidence that he had ever been
approached in prison by any Secret Service and coached about what to say um that there there could be no question
that he had a working direct personal knowledge of these three people the motivation also said that these three
that U he he worked for the Turkish arms drugs Mafia which worked closely with the Bulgarian Secret Service there was a
chain of circumstantial evidence like that which the court accepted as valid evidence not sufficient to convict these
three and sentence them to life imprisonment which would have been the automatic sentence in that case not
sufficient Beyond A Reasonable Doubt for a courtroom nevertheless morally very convincing evidence historically very
convincing evidence on June 7th 1982 Reagan and the pope meet face to face they posed for pictures that day and
some believe there was more than smiles and handshakes they had both escaped bullets and were determined to join in a
secret Alliance to bring down communism both sides were willing to cross whatever barriers had traditionally
existed in terms of separation of church and state in order to accomplish this overarching goal Fran kissling is the
director of Catholics for a free choice and a well-known critic of Vatican policy the Vatican was a tool of
American foreign policy and American foreign policy was a tool of Vatican policy I think this was in essence a a
marriage you know a marriage made in heaven and the White House we we talked in general about
obviously the impact of the Pope and the value of the Pope and the tremendous psychological uh impetus whenever the
pope was allowed to visit one of the Eastern European countries I urge you to beware the
temptation of Pride the temptation of blly uh declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at
fault to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire to simply call the arms race a
giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right
and wrong and good and evil I don't think that us Catholic conservatives had to influence the Vatican um one iota the
Vatican was raring to go in terms of any kind of political agenda that would weaken or destroy communism in Eastern
Europe and I think that the the extent to which the Reagan Administration independently had this agenda and the
Vatican independently had this agenda was so strong and so passionate I don't think that the Catholics in the Reagan
administration had to convince the Vatican of anything where anti-communism was concerned and I don't think the
Vatican had to convince the Reagan Administration of anything while Ronald Reagan warned of
evil Empires the pope rode into the heart of Poland defying the Empire's leaders holding his homeland
captive the wesa and millions of polls watched him on television so did the leaders of the Kremlin these images
haunted them back at the White House the Knights of Malta gathered William Casey chief of
the CIA Alexander hay Secretary of State Richard Allen National Security advisor
judge William Clark NSA William Wilson US ambassador to the Vatican the ultimate conspiracy CL
Club in May Less Than 3 weeks before Reagan had met with the Pope in Rome he signed a secret document National
Security decision directive 32 Which authorized the economic diplomatic and covert measures to neutralize the
USSR this was a highly manipulative calculated relationship on the part of both Partners both had something to gain
um and and both were there who are willing to work together in a very intimate way Casey ran the covert
operation in Poland making full use of the close relationship between the pope and the president priest labor and
intelligence operators moved in and out with detailed information on the government while funneling Aid to the
solidarity underground I think that uh casy understood that that this was a special
problem for Soviet authorities and for the uh puppet government that the U that they maintained in Warsaw you're dealing
with a very well organized resistance church that um in essence priests this this is um an underground Network par
excellance throughout the region you have individual priests you have parishes you have monasteries you have
hospitals you have convents um you have um in essence Cadre in terms of priests and nuns you have people who because of
their religious identity um get to travel and to move more freely throughout Society the degree to which
the White House was involved in efforts to destabilize the Polish government remained hidden from the American public
but derwinski was in a position to be aware of the extent of us Vatican cooperation I think uh then that uh the
Vatican was fortified by a determined American Administration the American Administration was
respectful and and appreciative of the Pope's personal prestige in Eastern Europe there's been a steady Push by
Pope John Paul um nominally to better the freedom of religion for his flock in Eastern Europe but also politically for
easing the whole communist system and he was successful there's no doubt about it
he was very very successful this Pope had so many different iterations of his life I
traveled with him extensively and one of the trips was to virtually every country
in Central America and there you saw that he was two things he was an extremely engaging man who was
irresistible kind of like Lyndon Johnson on a one-on-one basis and on the other hand he was an
incredibly tough man you didn't want to cross this Pope it was clear one of the leaders of one of the Central American
countries we visited on that trip had uh neglected to fulfill a request that the pope had made not to execute some
political prisoner at time and he went ahead and did it about 3 weeks before the Pope got there and as this leader
was walking up the steps with his wife up the steps of this Cathedral and the pope and I was standing next to the pope
was ready to greet him the pope reached out to the leader's wife and she was very touched and when
the leader looked at him the pope shot him a look it was daggers and you could literally see this President of this
Central American country like fall back almost as if he had been hit with a poleax I mean
the pope was in in a in person was in tremendously engaging wonderfully entertaining man but if you
crossed him you felt the absolute polar reverse of that it was chilling not long after this Bulgarian
and Russian secret documents were released to an American Allan Weinstein head of the Washington base group the
center for democracy since this was an international incident not did not occur in Bulgaria though certain bulgarians
were later placed on on trial in Italy for uh their alleged role not convicted in this regard but uh because of these
allegations the bulgarians felt that it might from their perspective they would have been be much happier with an
international group of Scholars public figures and others journalists looking at uh the available
evidence and they did something rather unique at that time they when I proposed they accepted the I propose to them that
they uh make available to a serious body of of researchers uh the entire file that
existed within the Bulgarian uh secret archives of the ministry of the Interior on this investigation on their
investigation of the of the uh assassination attempt at the time um this file had been made available in
part at least only to the previously only to the Italian judicial authorities dealing with the case at the time but it
had never been made available otherwise they agreed some bulgarians want the truth they are impatient to hear the
truth because their image has been uh uh very uh damaged all over the world Nicholas penf he's a Bulgarian and a
former journalist who wonders if we will ever really know what happened it was a
horrible shock that uh not only me but the whole world uh experienced at that time and
the Mystery was in the air at the same time there was in my mind a feeling that uh that this was cre ated by questions
like uh who would want the pope to be killed to be assassinated in whose in whose uh favor would that be how would
it help anybody and my thoughts of course were uh directed towards the possibility that uh the Soviet Union and
the Soviet block and Bulgaria is one of these countries uh has had a uh finger in that especially Bulgaria
when the names of uh the arrested uh uh Bulgarian diplomats were brought out sources within the intelligence
Community have told us that they believe what is damaging in key KGB files were probably purged before investigators
ever saw them no one is looking at these files naively and they're being examined with a full
uh with full awareness of the fact that uh they were the uh the records uh of an
intelligence Service uh compiled in a period of uh very uh severe dictatorship I believe that the present rulers in
Bulgaria who have been elected democratically are trying to establish the truth I believe that they have uh
passed on uh the real documents that they possessed now what were the real documents they possessed is a different
question the documents that were released first of all were released um when the Communist the old regime was
still in control of the ministry of Justice uh which had these documents when provided these documents which
therefore were they were still the same people were still in control of the security police um many of the same
people were still running the the uh Judiciary and certainly the important officials in control of the archives
were still the old communist guard therefore um it's difficult to imagine that if they did have any incriminating
material they would have let it out of their hands what I was uh told uh earlier in in this period about the um
about the center for democracy's attempts to get the information I was told that what they were given the
30,000 pages of documentation they were given consisted of the proceedings of a phony parallel trial that was held in
Sophia while the trial of the bulgarians was going on in Italy the importance of
that trial I think is really a key to understanding aa's um evidence in the in the Bulgarian trial because on the
second day of the trial he read out to the court a letter he' received from the ministry of justice of sopia of Bulgaria
in which they announced that they were they were opening a trial putting him on trial for high treason I don't know how
a foreign National could have been tried for high treason but that was what they
said they were doing and they pointed out in the letter that if he were found guilty the death sentence was automatic
this was clearly a death threat to AA which he said in the courtroom and it was that very day the day on which he
read that letter that he announced to the court that he was Jesus Christ and began to behave like a cloud
[Music] he certainly doesn't think he's Jesus Christ and in fact we reporters watching
him do this could see him as he would leave the hall crack up laughing after he put on a performance which had all
the cameramen rushing to his feet to get photographs of him I think that the the explanation is
clearly that he was threatened with death and he therefore deliberately destroyed his own credibility in the
courtroom so that he would never be in danger nobody would ever believe him again and therefore the bulgarians would
have no incentive to kill him no one among the people in Bulgaria would want to see assassination attempt at uh at the
pope and the fact that uh many people abroad suspected Bulgarian participation those fact
depressed many bulgarians and until now they would like the facts to come out 1989 just days before he left off off
the Knights of Malta awarded President Reagan the Grand Cross of Merit for his efforts on behalf of church policy the
Vatican and former members of the Reagan Administration either refused to comment
or deny there was any conspiracy if the governments of the West would concede that the Soviet Union could be
responsible for attempting to murder to assassinate the head of the largest religious organization on Earth this
would require them to make some adjustment in their foreign policy you cannot deal directly on normal terms
with a country responsible for such an an incredibly enormous crime and I think that the first instinct on all sides in
the West Was to retreat at once from such a possibility even though privately great many a great many political people
thought this was the case was there a plot to kill the pope did the Vatican and the White House cover up so that the
pope could fight on against communism Ali AA served 19 years of a life sentence before being pardoned in 200000
at the pontiff's beest in April of 2005 Pope John Paul II was buried at St Peter's heads of state from 80 countries
attended Millions stood at Cathedrals around the world questions about the plot to kill this cold warrior were left
to history as the world said goodbye to John Paul II second [Music]

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Brief Summary

The episode examines the conspiracy behind the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II and its political ramifications.

Key points

Assassination Attempt on Pope John Paul II. In 1981, Pope John Paul II survived an assassination attempt, raising questions about a conspiracy.
The Pope's Early Life. Exploring the childhood and early influences of Pope John Paul II in Poland.
The Pope's Assassination Attempt. The assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II raised questions about international conspiracies.
Court Findings on AA's Connections. The court established that AA had direct knowledge of the Bulgarian conspirators.
The Death Threat to AA. AA received a letter indicating a death threat during his trial, impacting his behavior.
Western Retreat from Soviet Involvement. The West's instinct was to retreat from acknowledging Soviet involvement in the assassination plot.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He was a very sensitive man.

Describing the Pope's nature and compassion.

13:19WatchAug 26, 2014

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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