Plot to kill John Paul II
General Giuseppe Cucchi Confirms New Evidence
By David Dastych
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
In my previous article (CFP Cover Story: "New evidence about the plot to kill John Paul II in 1981", Monday, February 5, 2007) I described a revelation published by a leading Polish weekly Wprost: Polish Communist Military Intelligence knew about a plot to assassinate John Paul II, several weeks prior to the attempt on St. Peter's Square, on May 13, 1981. And it did nothing to prevent the attempt on John Paul's life.
In a follow up article, "The Moscow Trail", the Polish weekly reports about a meeting with General Giuseppe Cucchi in Rome and about his confirmation of the facts, presented in Wprost report three weeks ago. Two journalists of the weekly magazine met with General Cucchi in his CESIS office, in the presence of his personal secretary and of an official from the cabinet of Prime Minister Romano Prodi, responsible for the contacts with the media. The meeting was official, approved by the Prime Minister and by the State Undersecretary in charge of the Italian Special Services. General Cucchi himself holds a high office of the Secretary General of CESIS (Comitato Esecutivo per i Servizi di Informazione e Sicurezza, Executive Committee for Intelligence and Security Services), a government committee supervising Italy's two primary intelligence agencies: Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Democratica (SISDE) (Civil Intelligence and Security Service) and Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare (SISMI) (Military Intelligence and Security Service).
The version of the General
In a long conversation with the journalists of Wprost -- Mr.Grzegorz Indulski and Mr. Jaroslaw Jakimczyk -- the investigative reporters and authors of the previous article, Gen. Giuseppe Cucchi confirmed that while he was Military Attache of the Italian Embassy in Cairo (since 1985), he met his Polish counterpart, Colonel Bak. The two officers got to know each other at official embassy cocktail parties and other functions and soon became friends. Cucchi was surprised by Colonel Bak's frequent criticism of the Soviet Union and of Poland's subservience to the USSR in the structures of the Warsaw Pact. "He was a talker", said General Cucchi, "His criticism could make trouble. Military attaches from Czechoslovakia or East Germany, who always were around, could denounce him. Also a diplomat from India could report to some Warsaw Pact representatives about these critical opinions, voiced by a Polish officer. India was closely cooperating with the Soviets then in the military field." The Italian general told Wprost reporters that he had informed a liaison officer of SISMI in the Italian Embassy about Col. Bak's opinions. The military intelligence officer advised him to try to recruit the Polishman into a NATO's secret service. Cucchi tried that, but Colonel Bak reacted with a downright refusal.
Some time in the late Spring or early Summer of 1986, Colonel Cucchi talked to his Polish friend in the Italian Embassy. He asked his permission to tape the conversation and Col. Bak agreed. The present coordinator of the Italian secret services told the Polish journalists that he had heard from the Polish colonel about a document Col. Bak had in his hands in 1981, while he was serving in the Second Department (Military Intelligence) of the General Staff of the Polish Army. The document (a secret note form an operative in an Arab country) informed about a plot hatched by Turkish extreme-right Grey Wolves to kill John Paul II, a few weeks before the actual date of Agca's attempt (May 13, 1981). The Polish officer told then Colonel Cucchi that he had passed this document to his superiors in the Second Department (Military Intelligence).
General Giuseppe Cucchi confirmed to the Polish reporters in Rome that he had passed the tape-recording of his conversation with the Polish attach to a SISMI officer in the Italian Embassy in Cairo. He was sure, the tape had been sent to the HQ of SISMI in Rome. But he had no idea what happened to it later.
Who was a Soviet 'mole'?
When the two journalists of Wprost weekly wrote their first story three weeks ago, they supposed that General Cucchi could be a "link" to the KGB (or GRU), because -- in 1986 -- the news about the secret note passed by Colonel Bak to Col. Cucchi was quickly leaked to the secret services of the Warsaw Pact. During the meeting in Rome, two weeks ago, General Cucchi strongly denied he had any links to the Soviets, in 1986 and then. He told them he had been vetted many times in Italy and in the NATO HQ in Brussels, where he served as Italy's representative in the Military Committee. Later on he advised not only to the left-wing Prime Ministers of Italy but also to Silvio Berlusconi. Therefore, linking him to the KGB is absurd.
But he remembered well a sudden departure of the Polish colonel from Egypt, in 1986. He learned about Col. Bak's departure only after returning from a vacation in Italy. When he inquired about him in the Polish Embassy, he was told the attach had sudden "health problems".
General Cucchi doesn't know how the Warsaw Pact services could have learned about the secret note and about his tape-recorded conversation with Colonel Bak in Cairo.
The two friends met again during an international security conference in Paris, in the early 1990s. General Cucchi remembered that the Polish colonel suggested the information he had passed to then Col. Cucchi in Cairo could leak to the KGB through a priest from Ghana, employed in the administration of the Holy See. According to the Polish colonel, the Vatican received a copy of the conversation taped in Cairo from the Italian authorities, and a priest from Ghana, who passed it to the Soviets, had been recruited in his country. At that time, Soviet and East German military advisors and intelligence operatives were operating at large in Ghana, and some of them recruited several Ghanaian Catholic priests (or so called priests!) who were later sent to the Vatican as covert agents to spy for the communist services.
General Cucchi told the Polish reporters that in the 1980s the Italian counter-intelligence made a routine check on the Vatican's offices. They found bugs, installed in a small sculpture of the Holy Virgin, standing on the desk of the head of the Vatican's diplomacy, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli.
But Gen. Cucchi did not believe the tape of his conversation with Col. Bak in Cairo got to the Soviet intelligence through a Vatican-based priest. It had to be passed to them much earlier, probably through a KGB'mole' in the Italian secret services.
Polish officers warned the pope
When the report of the meeting of Wprostjournalists with General Giuseppe Cucchi was published, last week, I received a phone call from one of my longtime military contacts in Warsaw. The man told me, asking me not to reveal his name, that in fact the Polish Military Intelligence made a proper use of the secret note, received from its operative, probably from Damascus, in Spring of 1981. Polish officers, probably from the Embassy in Rome, visited Monsignore Stanislaw Dziwisz, then the private secretary of the pope, and told him about a threat to John Paul II. According to my source, Mgr Dziwisz did not believe that anybody would dare to shoot the pope amid the crowds of faithful on St. Peter's Square, and in the Vatican John Paul II was well protected. The pope was always reluctant to wear a bullet-proof jacket and he insisted to use his open-roof "papamobile" while making tours of the Square and meeting people.
Unfortunately, the attempt on May 13, 1981 has proven that he was wrong.
But John Paul II had always in mind his God-inspired mission, and he strongly believed that the intervention of the Virgin Mary of Fatima had saved his life, after Agca shot several bullets into his body.
As to the origin of the plot and the attempt on pope's life on May 13, 1981, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz wrote in his recent book "A Life With Karol" (in Poland it was published as "The Testimony") that both he and the pope thought the former Soviet Union was behind the attempt on John Paul II's life in 1981.
"All roads lead back to the Soviet KGB," Dziwisz wrote.
David Dastych, 2007
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