Word: nbc
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...self-described "international terrorist," disappeared behind bars to serve a life sentence, leaving a stream of questions unanswered: Who was he? Why had he done it? Had he acted alone or on someone else's orders? In an hourlong special report that will be broadcast this week, an NBC News team headed by Correspondent Marvin Kalb follows the trail of suspicion and surmise all the way to the Kremlin. Kalb says he has uncovered "a great deal of evidence, some of it, to be sure, circumstantial, linking the attempted murder in St. Peter's Square to the political...
...back to his native Turkey, where he had rubbed shoulders with extremists of both right and left. In July 1979 Agca pleaded guilty to the murder of moderate Turkish Journalist Abdi Ipekci; he escaped from prison five months later. In July 1980 Agca appeared in Sofia, Bulgaria. According to NBC, he spent seven weeks in the best hotels there, received a counterfeit Turkish passport and mingled with members of the Turkish Mafia, which has long run a thriving drugs-for-guns trade with the cooperation of Bulgaria's hard-line Communist regime. It was in Bulgaria, Kalb speculates, that...
...stopped there, Kalb's case would not have added much to what other investigators, notably Journalist Claire Sterling, have already revealed. Where NBC does break new ground is in attributing a precise motive to Moscow. Citing unnamed Vatican sources, Kalb reports that the Pope sent a special envoy to the Kremlin in August 1980, while Poland was in the grip of a nationwide strike. The envoy allegedly gave Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev a handwritten letter from the Pope, who threatened to "lay down the crown of St. Peter" and return home to join the resistance if the Soviets moved...
Intriguing though it is, NBC's scenario falls far short of hard proof. A Vatican spokesman denied knowledge of any papal letter to Brezhnev or secret diplomatic mission to Moscow. Although U.S. Senator Alfonse D'Amato last week accused CIA officials of dismissing information he gave them in October 1981 that the Kremlin was involved in the plot to kill the Pope, U.S. intelligence officials told TIME they had no evidence that the Pope was involved in either Solidarity's birth or funding...
...National Football League's players are on strike. NBC plans to appease football enthusiasts everywhere, however, with its presentation of a Canadian Football League doubleheader featuring well-known personalities from the 11th round of the NFL college draft. And since the CFL doesn't play on Mondays (people are still wondering if the CFL really plays at all), rumor has it that ABC will instead feature back-to-back action-packed episodes of "Wild Kingdom" and "In Search...