[…] (April 1982) transferred to Sardinia. A month later Agca made his first statements on the role of the Bulgarian secret service in the attempted assassination of the Pope. But what of Musumeci’s role in this? In October 1984 General Pietro Musumeci, former vice-director of SISMI, was arrested on charges of embezzlement, conspiracy and alleged […]
[…] the assassination. The Western press were energetic proponents of the idea that the Soviets, working through their Bulgarian allies, were behind the 1981 assassination attempt on the Pope, even though the assassin himself belonged to a far-right group from Turkey, the Grey Wolves, and there was no evidence for a Soviet connection. In other […]
[…] alleged British ‘secret war’ activities from assassinations down can’t just print ‘fuck’ says quite a lot about the cultural climate in the Republic of Ireland, does it not? Reading ‘feck off’ my sympathy for those in Northern Ireland who don’t want a united Ireland went up a notch. Feck the Pope! (Especially this one) RR
[…] CIA in Europe, IRD, and the Korean war (US biological warfare). From the 1950s we skip to the 1980s and Reagan-era disinformation about the Soviets (shooting the Pope etc); and finally we arrive at the two assaults on Iraq and a long list of countries which the US has attacked/invaded/subverted in the post-war era. […]
[…] lodges, the Papacy first condemned Masonry in 1738. Although the official reason was that masonic rituals and beliefs were opposed to Christianity, Roberts mentions suggestions that the Pope was influenced by the Jacobites who, by that time, had lost their influence on Masonry. An interesting example of the bizarre interactions of different currents of […]
[…] of President Jimmy Carter found himself entangled with Libyan leader Ghadaffi. After working for Haig – and helping Claire Sterling promote the KGB plot to kill the Pope story – Ledeen became a consultant to Reagan’s National Security Council. There he figured importantly in the Iran-Contra scandal through his association with Manucher Ghorbanifar and […]
NB This issue of Lobster went to the printer in late May. At that stage no Iraqi ‘weapons of mass destruction’ had been found by the ‘coalition’ forces. Before the furore over the British government’s ‘dodgy dossier’ in February, in truth I hadn’t been really paying much too attention to the then impending assault on […]
[…] view is (reluctantly) confirmed by the studiedly anti-Soviet journal Survey (Autumn/Winter 1983). In a detailed run-through Soviet assassinations/covert actions etc. the only significant act they can find that took place recently and involved someone who was not a defector, is the attempt on the Pope, and the evidence on Soviet/Bulgarian involvement is thin, at best.
[…] nobility, royalty. While the Knights of Columbus are associated with lodge meetings and bingo, the Knights of Malta can pick up a telephone and chat with the Pope.” A total of forty countries recognise SMOM’s sovereignty and accredit its ambassadors. (The Vatican recently upgraded its relationship with SMOM to ambassadorial level. AP 11 January […]
[…] revised edition of Manufacturing Consent). I have even discussed its application to conspiracy theories, some the media treating as legitimate (the alleged KGB plot to murder the Pope in 1981), others dismissed as mere ‘conspiracy theories’ (the assassination of John F. Kennedy), according to political criteria easy to understand in our framework. Edwards doesn’t […]
