Bulgarian investigation reveals radio personalities worked for secret services

A Bulgarian commission examining files from the nation’s communist period has revealed the names of 66 employees of state-owned Bulgarian National Radio (BNR), who worked for the country’s secret services before 1989. The individuals, who previously worked as operatives or officers for Bulgaria’s Committee for State Security (CSS), include a former BNR deputy general secretary, as well as a former general secretary and numerous media celebrities. Prominent among numerous controversial allegations of CCS operations during the Cold War is the 1978 assassination in London of exiled Bulgarian writer Georgi Markov, with the aid of a poisoned pellet shot from a modified umbrella. CSS has also been accused of complicity in the 1981 assassination attempt against the late Pope John Paul II. [JF]