Word: bulgarians
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...time the political reputation of those who were helping to mold that snowball." The target of the unusual vituperation: widespread suspicions in the West that the KGB plotted or abetted or was at least aware of the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in May 1981, with the Bulgarian secret police serving as its proxy...
...Soviet government and the French Communist Party that demanded a greater diversity of views in the reporting by France's state-run radio and television networks. The reason for the hubbub was easy to discern: a desire to affect French news coverage of the Italian allegation that the Bulgarian secret police, and by implication the Soviet KGB, were behind Turkish Gunman Mehmet Ah Agca's attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul...
...coincidence, the Soviet theme was also taken up by the French Communist Party daily L'Humanite. The paper lambasted the French media for their alleged anti-Soviet bias and declared that there were "no established facts" and only "inexistent proof [and] uncertain hypotheses" behind the reports of the Bulgarian-Soviet connection. The television networks were singled out for blame because, the Communist newspaper said, they were state-run and thus "public services." The failure to give equal play to Soviet denials of a role in the assassination attempt, L'Humanite piously said, was "serious, serious for democracy." Added...
...Bulgarian agents have engaged in a number of dubious activities on behalf of the Soviet Union throughout the world. For years Western intelligence experts have believed that Bulgaria shipped millions of dollars worth of arms to right-wing terrorists in Turkey, helping create the anarchy that almost toppled the Turkish government in 1979. According to Israeli intelligence officials, more than 1,000 Palestinian terrorists have been trained in Bulgarian camps over the past decade, and all the heavy armaments used by the P.L.O. in Lebanon were shipped from the Black Sea port of Varna. Nicaragua's former Ambassador...
...every level, ties between the Soviet Union and Bulgaria are close, partly reflecting Bulgaria's longstanding gratitude for Russian help in expelling Turkish occupiers in 1878. Most Western intelligence officials agree that on international missions at least, the Bulgarians act only on direct orders from Moscow. The relationship between the KGB and its Bulgarian counterpart, says Stefan Sverdlev, a defector who was a colonel in the Bulgarian secret service until 1971, "is like that between master and slave." True as that may be, it does not constitute any proof of Soviet involvement in the Pope's shooting. Indeed...