Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance Between the Vatican, the Cia, and the Mafia

by Paul L. Williams

In the months before the scheduled hit, Ağca and Çatlı were safe and secure in Munich. It was a perfect place of refuge. In 1981, West Germany was home to fifty thousand Grey Wolves, who acted as storm troopers for the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND—Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service) to address any protest or problem with the 1.5 million Turkish workers.17 The BND was an outgrowth of Gladio. It had been set up by the CIA under former Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen, who became a member of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta in 1956.18 The complicity of the BND in the assassination attempt on John Paul II has been widely ignored by the US press, even though Çatlı later testified to a judge in Rome that he had received three million marks by the German secret service to perform the hit.