Agca Letter Says Soviets Plotted Many Killings

ROME —  Imprisoned papal assailant Mehmet Ali Agca has claimed that the Soviet Union plotted not only to assassinate Pope John Paul II and Polish labor leader Lech Walesa but also to kill Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the American hostages in Tehran.

The surprising allegations were made in a letter that Agca wrote in August, 1983, to the office of the U.S. military attache at the Rome embassy. The text was published Friday by the Rome newspaper La Repubblica.

The paper said that Agca later retracted his claims in the letter as “the fruit of his imagination.”

Agca’s Letter Rambled The rambling missive, published in an Italian translation from the original Turkish, suggested that Agca had been in steady contact with the U.S. Embassy and referred to “our mutual friendship and interest.”

A spokesman for the embassy confirmed Friday that such a letter, “purporting to be from Mehmet Ali Agca,” was “sent to our military attache” and received in August, 1983.

But the spokesman, Joe Johnson, said the embassy was mystified by the letter’s contents and strongly denied that the U.S. government has ever dealt with Agca in any way. “We passed the letter to appropriate Italian authorities for transmittal to the investigating magistrate,” he said.

Magistrate Ilario Martella, who investigated Agca’s attempt to kill the Pope in May, 1981, and has since indicted three Bulgarians and four Turks in the case, confirmed by telephone that the version of the letter published by La Repubblica was authentic but said it had no direct relevance to the case. Two Turks and a Bulgarian are being held in Italy for a trial, expected in April. Martella has conceded that the trial will be based almost entirely upon Agca’s testimony.

In the letter, Agca presented himself as an old friend and expert giving advice to the U.S. government on “winning the great battle of the Cold War” by exposing Soviet plots known only to Agca and a mysterious Soviet defector he identified as Vladimir Kuzinitski.

“The most important thing is to find Vladimir Kuzinitski, the Soviet agent, who has fled to England after leaving Iran,” Agca wrote. He then listed various Soviet plots that the alleged defector could describe.

Concerning the papal assassination attempt, Agca wrote that “in 1979 . . . (the late Soviet President Yuri V.) Andropov decided to have both the Pope and Walesa assassinated. The aim was to destroy Solidarity, eliminate the influence of the Vatican in Poland and Eastern Europe and undermine the democracy of Italy and the West.”

Story Gets Even Stranger Even more bizarre was his description of a plot against Khomeini and the American hostages.

“In April of 1980, I, Kuzinitski and the Iranian Communist Party . . . had planned to kill Khomeini and the hostages of the American Embassy in Tehran inasmuch as the Soviets wanted America to occupy Iran,” Agca wrote.

He implied that the United States then would have invaded Iran, but “in this way would have lost much prestige in the eyes of the world; the Soviets would have adjusted the situations in Cambodia, Afghanistan and Poland, and when America would have withdrawn from Iran, they would have left it as a gift to the Soviets like a new Vietnam.”

He also wrote that the Soviet Union “trained, organized and financed terrorist movements in the Middle East and Europe” and still does.

Bulgarian’s Lawyer Annoyed The defense attorney for the indicted Bulgarian being held here criticized publication of the letter, which he said he had intended to use as evidence that Agca had contacts with the outside world while making his confessions in prison. Agca, therefore, could have been prompted in building a case against the Bulgarians, attorney Giuseppe Consolo said.

Consolo represents Sergei Ivanov Antonov, Rome station manager of the Bulgarian national airline, accused of helping Agca. Consolo said the letter demonstrates that Agca had a conduit from prison, where he is serving a life term for shooting the Pope, to the outside and could “receive mail the same way he sent out mail.”

Consolo characterized the letter as so bizarre that it could only have come from a person with an unstable mind.