Book claims CIA framed Bulgaria over assassination attempt on Pope
April 25, 2011 Leave a comment
John Paul II
By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A new book claims that the United States Central Intelligence Agency concocted a link between the Bulgarian intelligence services and the 1981 failed assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II. Entitled Kill the Pope: The Truth About the Assassination Attempt on Pope John Paul II, the book is authored by Italian investigative journalist Marco Insaldo and Turkish researcher Yasemin Taksin. Both say that Kill the Pope is the result of a twenty-year study into the incident. Pope John Paul II was shot four times by a 9mm handgun fired by Turkish citizen Mehmet Ali Ağca, while riding in the back of an open-roof car at the Vatican’s St Peter’s Square. Although Ağca’s motives are shrouded in mystery, many intelligence historians believe that he was operating as an agent for the Bulgarian secret services. It has been speculated that the Soviet KGB instructed Bulgarian intelligence to use Ağca and another Turk, Oral Çelik, to kill the Polish-born Pope, because he had strong ties with Poland’s dissident Solidarność (Solidarity) movement. But Insaldo and Taksin insist that there is no evidence to connect the Bulgarian government to the assassination operation, and that Ağca operated under the command of Turkey’s Grey Wolves, a nationalist, anti-Western paramilitary group, which consists of both secular and Islamist factions. Read more of this post
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Controversial Swiss master-spy dies in Ireland
April 26, 2011 by intelNews 2 Comments
Albert Bachmann
By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
One of Switzerland’s most controversial Cold War figures, who set up a clandestine guerrilla unit to combat a feared Soviet invasion, has died in Cork, Ireland. Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger has said last week that Colonel Albert Bachmann, who headed Switzerland’s military intelligence force, the Untergruppe Nachrichtendienst der Armee (UNA), from 1976 until 1979, died on April 12. Although Bachmann was a communist in his student years, he later headed Projekt-26 (P-26), a clandestine project to set up a ‘left-behind’ force of Swiss guerrillas trained in sharp shooting, bombing and assassination techniques. The guerrilla force was designed to engage the Soviet military if it ever invaded Switzerland. In the late 1970s, Colonel Bachmann also secured government funds to purchase the 200-acre Liss Ard country estate near the Irish town of Skibbereen, in west Cork. The estate was to be used as a base for a Swiss government-in-exile following a feared Soviet invasion of central Europe. Furthermore, the basement of one of the two manors on the estate was designated as a secret depository of Switzerland’s gold reserves, in the event of a Soviet invasion of the Alpine country. Read more of this post
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Albert Bachmann, Cold War, Cork (Ireland), Georges-André Chevallez, history, intelligence oversight, Liss Ard Estate, military intelligence, News, paramilitary units, Projekt-26, Skibbereen (Ireland), Switzerland, UNA (Switzeland), USSR