CIA Confirmed Russians’ Role in Shooting of Pope John Paul II, Reagan Biographer Writes
Contrary to what “pragmatists” in U.S. government agencies concluded, top officials with the Soviet Union were behind the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, a biographer of Ronald Reagan told The Daily Signal in an exclusive interview.
Paul Kengor, a Grove City College political science professor and author, has acquired what he calls never-before-seen information about the Reagan administration’s “supersecret investigation” into the shooting and wounding of the pope.
The information details the role of the Soviet GRU, the Russians’ brutal foreign military intelligence unit, and KGB spy agency head Yuri Andropov in the attempt on John Paul II’s life, Kengor said.
President Reagan and his CIA chief, William Casey, had suspected from the outset that the Soviets had a hand in the shooting of John Paul II on May 13, 1981, in Saint Peter’s Square in Rome, he said.
But their suspicions weren’t confirmed until after Casey organized his own secret probe spearheaded by two female researchers, according to Kengor’s just-released book, “A Pope and a President: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century.”
“Their suspicions ran completely contrary to the establishmentarians in the institutional CIA, at the State Department, and among the White …read more