The Assassins of a Pope

Both were members of the Grey Wolves. Both had worked together in a previous assassination effort. In 1979, Ali Agca killed a Turkish newspaper editor. Catli was in on the plot. When the police arrest Agca, they found a false passport belonging to Catli.

Catli then reportedly helped organize Agca's escape from an Istanbul military prison, and some have suggested Catli was even involved in the Pope's assassination attempt.

The CIA said the assassination attempt was the work of the Soviets, through their Bulgarian allies. This has never been proven, and a much more plausible case can be made that it was a rightist plot. The Grey Wolves were clearly implicated, and they are directly related to the Turkish counterguerrilla force.

But why would a Turkish rightist squad have an interest in assassinating the Pope? The answer may lie with links between the "stay behind" organizations in various European countries, which all had a stake in blaming terrorism on the left.

Most is known about the Italian Gladio, Latin for sword, which worked with the Mafia and neofascists to prevent Italian communists from taking power through insurrection or the vote. Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti acknowledged the existence of the Gladio in testimony before an Italian parliamentary commission on August 2, 1990. He said Italy had used a "strategy of tension" to undercut the influence of the legal communist party.

That strategy was terrorism. The Gladio conducted bombings, and then blamed the bombings on the left. The assassination attempt on the Pope may have been part of this strategy of tension.

At the scene of the Mercedes-Benz crash, Turkish investigators found Catli with a fake passport. "The person on this photo, Mehmet Ozbay, works as a specialist for the police directorate and he is allowed to carry guns." Mehmet Ozbay was an alias -- the very same alias that Mehmet Ali Agca had on his own passport.