KGB tried to shoot me, Pope tells MP

'Bulgarians' behind bungled assassination attempt
BY BRUCE JOHNSTON IN ROME Tr-rE Poi E is "convinced" that the KGB was behind the failed attempt on his life 17 years ago, according to an Italian MP and former magistrate.
Fredinando Imposimato, who has dedicated much of his private time to the case after leaving the magistrature for politics, told Milan's Corriere della Sera this week that the Pope had recently received him and confided that he himself firmly believed in the so-called "Bulgarian connection".
He also said he was now certain that the Vatican had been infiltrated by a spy.
The theory that the Bulgarians had arranged the attempt on behalf of the Soviets first emerged from the testimony given by Mehmet Ali Acga, the Turkish militant, two months after he shot and wounded the Pope in St Peter's Square on 13 May, 1981.
Mr Imposimato's "findings" have now been included In a new investigation which has been opened into the attempt by Antonio Marino, an italian magistrate, in which Ivajn Dontchev, a former Bulgarian embassy employee in Rome, has already been incriminated.
The newspaper said that Agca was trained at a KGB base in Syria for a rapid-action strike force of terrorists, and used to infiltrate the Turkish Grey Wolves militant group.
Sent to Teheran to await orders to assassinate the Ayatollah Khomeini, Agca was later removed when the plan was dropped. He passed under the control of the Bulgarian secret service, with orders to kili the Pope.
After giving evidence over the "Bulgarian connection" soon after his arrest, Agra retracted the claims in an Italian court in 1985, when he began to appear mentally unstable.
According to Corriere della Sera, the reason is that Agca WRS approached by a Bulgarian magistrate with the permission of the Italian authorities who was really a KGB agent.
Speaking in Turkish, the agent threatened to wipe out Agca's family if he did not retract his claims. Agca did so, pretending to be crazy.
Besides threatening the daughter and son-in-law of Dario Martella, the first Italian investigator to head the probe, to the extent that they were forced to flee from their home in London, the KGB sent "messages" to Agca, to say that they were trying to free him.
One such "message" was in the form of the 1983 kidnapping of Ernanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee, the report said.
Leaving notes in the same parts of Rome where Agca said he had been with the Bulgarian while preparing for the assinalion, the Grey Wolves claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.
Mr Imposimato told the Corriere that he also learnt that French intelligence had warned Vatican authorities in advance that the kidnapping of someone in order to damage someone the Holy See was imminent.