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May 22 - August 5, 2023
Early in 1982, Calvi discussed the pope’s involvement in laundering money for Solidarity with Flavio Carboni, an emissary to Ambrosiano from the CIA. In one of their secretly taped conversations, Calvi can be heard saying: Marcinkus must watch out for Casaroli, who is the head of the group that opposes him. If Casaroli should meet one of those financiers in New York who are working with Marcinkus, sending money to Solidarity, the Vatican would collapse. Or even if Casaroli should find one of those papers that I know of—goodbye Marcinkus, goodbye Wojtyła, goodbye Solidarity. The last operation
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on November 4, 1996, when Francesco Marino Mannoia, the leading pentito (collaborator working with the authorities) from the Sicilian Mafia, testified in the Andreotti trial. He told the court that Calvi became the key figure in laundering heroin revenue for the American Mafia
The heroin, according to Mannoia, continued to be sent to the Gambino family of Cherry Hill, New Jersey. The Gambinos deposited large sums of their earnings in the banks controlled by Calvi for cleansing by the IOR. Eventually, the money was used by the American mob to purchase hotels, land, and financial companies in Florida and the island of Aruba.
The day after Mannoia spilled his guts, his mother, sister, aunt, and two uncles were murdered within their homes in Bagheria, Sicily.
Beniamino Andreatta, Italy’s treasury minister, met with Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, the Vatican’s secretary of state, to urge the severance of all ties between the Holy See and Calvi. Casaroli presented these concerns to the Holy Father. But so much money was pouring into the IOR and Solidarity that John Paul II opted to ignore the warning.
On January 21, 1981, a group of Milanese shareholders in Banco Ambrosiano, fearing that the balloon would burst and their shares would be worthless, wrote a long letter to John Paul II, urging him to investigate
John Paul II neglected to give the shareholders the dignity of a response. Instead, in a gesture of cold indifference to their pleas, the pope elevated Marcinkus to the position of president of the Pontifical Commission for the State of Vatican City. This position made “the Gorilla” the governor of Vatican City, in addition to head of the IOR. The promotion was made on September 28, 1981, the third anniversary of the death of John Paul I. Regarding this “appalling effrontery,” author David Yallop wrote: Through his Lithuanian origins, his continual espousal, in fiscal terms, of Poland’s needs,
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Why John Paul would make such a promotion at this stage in his pontificate defies all rules of logic, let alone moral rectitude. One must realize that the pope—not less than common laymen—was aware that Marcinkus was a principal player in the $1 billion counterfeit securities scam, the collapse of Banca Privata, P2 and the strategy of tension, the Aldo Moro affair, and the mysterious death of his predecessor.
Careerism and promotion were all-important with every seminarian determined to become a bishop. To move up the ladder required finding a protector,
Moving up the ladder with the help of a protector also frequently required participating in an active homosexual relationship. Estimates of practicing homosexuals in the Vatican ranged from twenty to over fifty per cent. The village also housed factions including sects of Opus Dei members, and Freemasons, and fascists. The latter could be found particularly among priests, bishops and cardinals from Latin America.
While Sindona remained at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Licio Gelli made trips to Langley to meet with George H. W. Bush, the director of the CIA; William Casey, the manager of the Reagan-Bush campaign, who later became the CIA director; and CIA special agent Donald Gregg. The Worshipful Master was involved in planning the October Surprise—a covert effort to delay the release of the fifty-two American hostages held in Iran by the Ayatollah Khomeini until after the election. The meeting had been arranged by Bush, who had become an honorary member of P2 in 1976.
In January 1981, Gelli became an honored guest at Reagan’s inauguration. After the celebration, his lodge received a gift of $10 million in unvouchered CIA funds.27 That night, as he swirled around the dance floor at the inaugural ball, the P2 master had no idea that within a matter of weeks he would become a wanted fugitive.
On March 17, 1981, the police raided Gelli’s villa at Arezzo, where they found the official membership list of P2, 426 incriminating files on leading Italian figures, and top secret government reports. Within the office of Gelli’s mattress company in nearby Castiglion Fibocchi, the Italian police uncovered evidence showing that the P2 master had been the puppet-master of the strategy of tension, which had resulted in 356 people killed and more than 1,000 wounded.29 Warrants were issued for Gelli’s arrest. But the Worshipful Master was not to be found. He had fled to South America.
Conducting business as usual, Marcinkus did not appear concerned over the fate of Sindona, the flight of Gelli, and the plight of Calvi.
His composure in the face of the worsening circumstances engulfing the Vatican Bank may have been due to his awareness that a plan was in the works to deal with John Paul II, who had become a primary cause of setbacks within Operation Gladio.
For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents … to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as “internationalists” and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure—one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty,
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The raid on Gelli’s villa had provided Italian police officials with evidence of the covert operation, including statements of payments, linking P2 to right-wing terrorist outfits and criminal organizations
The confiscated files also provided insight into Gelli’s close ties to the CIA and SISMI. Adding to the treasure trove of information came proof that Sindona, Calvi, and Marcinkus were members of the secret society;
The Italian police officials were now aware that US political leaders, including the vice president, the secretary of state, and the US ambassador to Italy were intricately involved in the inner workings of the lodge. All of these discoveries were made possible by John Paul II’s failure to provide assistance to Sindona—a failure that led to the fake kidnapping, the visit to Arezzo, and Sindona’s incarceration in a New York prison, where he was beginning to break out in song.
By refusing to shore up the losses incurred by the IOR’s shell companies, the pope had been remiss. The payments of the loans should have been made through the Holy See from the seemingly bottomless reservoir of black funds, but John Paul II intransigently refused to acknowledge such debts for fear that the common laity might come to learn that Holy Mother Church was a very worldly institution.
The raid at Arezzo produced another devastating result: the loss of power for the Christian Democrats in Italy. Since 1947, the CIA had bolstered the party with over $65 million in cash, making sure it would remain in control of the Italian government.
The overseers of Gladio, at the bidding of the elite members of the Trilateral Commission, had engineered the pope’s election and catered to his every demand.4 They had directed covert action against the proponents of Liberation Theology. They had bolstered the Christian Democratic Party so that it would remain the dominant governing force in Italy. They had engaged in the arrest and execution of troublesome laymen and priests, including Bishop Óscar Romero. And they had shelled out more than $200 million in black funds to Solidarity.
John Paul II, in his naivety, simply assumed that such support was his proper due as the Vicar of Christ. Ingratitude, while grating, was permissible, but the pope’s sudden decision to undermine the fundamental objective of Gladio by seeking a rapprochement with the Soviets was intolerable.
In January 1981, John Paul II met with Wałęsa and an eight-strong Solidarity delegation, who sought his presence among the union workers to ward off any plans of Leonid Brezhnev for a Soviet invasion of Poland.
Neither Mazowiecki nor Wałęsa nor any other delegation member realized that John Paul II was engaged in talks with the Kremlin to bring about a political rapprochement between the Soviet leaders and the union organizers.
But an accord between Solidarity and the Kremlin forged by the Holy See would violate the claims and trust of the Reagan Administration, which spoke of the “evil empire” in order to spend $2.2 trillion on new weapons, including the Star Wars initiative, a fanciful technology supposed to vaporize any Soviet missiles approaching the United States from outer space.11 What’s more, John Paul II’s unwanted efforts would undermine the CIA’s anticipated victory in the Cold War. The Soviets, after all, had stumbled into “their own Vietnam,”
To make matters worse, the Holy Father was negotiating with the Kremlin about other matters, including an agreement for nuclear disarmament and recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization.13 He had entered a political arena, where his presence was neither warranted nor welcomed.
The pope’s timing could not have been worse for Gladio. In Belgium, plans were being drawn for the Brabant Massacre, which would result in the killing of eight people, including an entire family.
In Spain, the Gladio unit continued to hunt down and assassinate the leading members of the Basque separatist movement.19 In France, the secret army was preparing to murder Marseilles police inspector Jacques Massié and his entire family, since Massié had launched an investigation into drug trafficking and Gladio.20 In Germany, the Gladio unit under Heinz Lembke had launched a major terror attack in Munich.
But nowhere was Gladio at a more decisive stage than in Turkey. TERROR IN TURKEY In 1980, General Kenan Evren, the commander of the Counter-Guerrillas, a Gladio unit, had staged a coup that toppled the government of Bülent Ecevit and the Democratic Left Party.
Before the coup, Zbigniew Brzezinski, his national security advisor, had said: “For Turkey, a military government would be the best solution.”22 Upon assuming power, Evren dissolved Turkey’s parliament and suspended legislation governing the civil liberties and human rights of Turkish citizens, stating that such acts were needed to establish political stability.
The coup was successful due to the intensive training the Gladio units, including the youth division of Counter-Guerrilla, known as the Grey Wolves,
The key to gaining control of northern Eurasia, according to Brzezinski and other members of the Trilateral Commission, remained Turkey, once the heart of the great Ottoman Empire.
The pan-Turkish banner was unfurled by the Grey Wolves, who published their statements of belief in Bozkurt, their official newsletter: “Who are we? We are the Grey Wolves (Bozkurtcu). What is our ideology? The Turkism of the Grey Wolf (Bozkurt). What is the creed of the Bozkurtcu? We believe that the Turkish race and the Turkish nation are superior.
Believing this credo would unite central Asia, the Wolves became the favored lap dogs of the bureaucrats at Langley and untold billions were spent upon the pack. Although the Turkish people in large numbers esteemed the Wolves, they remained blissfully unaware of Gladio, let alone that the right-wing youth group was a stay-behind unit. In 1978, Doğan Öz, a public prosecutor in Ankara, uncovered the existence of such units and issued the following report to President Ecevit: There is such an organization. It includes people from security forces, such as the army and the secret service. During
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The CIA’s financial support for the Wolves was also necessitated by the need to protect the Balkan route and the flow of heroin into the Anatolian plains from Afghanistan and Iran—said to be worth $3 million an hour.
The Wolves were so integral to the drugs-for-arms enterprise that it became almost impossible to make a clear-cut distinction between this Gladio unit, the Turkish Mafia, and Turkey’s National Intelligence Operation (MIT), a so-called unofficial arm of the CIA. All three organizations were interlocked in Ergenekon, a clandestine ultranationalist movement that operated as a shadow state.
Ergenekon was the bastard son of Gladio—the illegitimate offspring of US intelligence and the babas
Ergenekon enabled street thugs, assassins, and drug lords to act with impunity. Even if incarcerated, such criminals had little to fear. Ergenekon could arrange their escape; it could create false identities; it could arrange the transfer of large sums of cash.
Ağca began his criminal career as a drug smuggler on the Balkan route. He rose to become one of Uğurlu’s trusted couriers, making regular trips to deliver messages and payments to Henri Arsan at Stibam in Milan. Eventually, he became one of the baba’s bodyguards and hit men, working with Çatlı and Oral Çelik.
On February 1, 1979, Ağca took part in the murder of Abdi İpekçi, the editor-in-chief of Milliyet, one of Turkey’s leading daily newspapers. When taken into custody, Ağca quickly confessed, saying, “Yes, I shot and killed İpekçi. I was alone and I fired four or five times.” But there was a problem with his testimony. A total of thirteen spent cartridges were found at the scene of the crime.40 İpekçi was one of Turkey’s most distinguished journalists and his assassination shocked the nation. Ağca received a life sentence and was incarcerated in an Istanbul prison. After serving six months, he
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Ağca was not only an experienced assassin, who already had spewed his hatred of John Paul II, but also a radical Islamist and pan-Turkish visionary, who longed for the return of the Ottoman Empire. Even better, he suffered paranoid delusions, at times professing that he was Jesus Christ.
Early in April 1981, Abuzer Uğurlu received word from Gladio: Kill the pope and blame the Communists. It was to be the ultimate false flag attack. The message came with a payment of $1.7 million.44 The arrangements had been made by members of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, P2, and the Safari Club, a covert organization that had been established by Henry Kissinger. The gunmen would be Çatlı and Ağca.
Shackley was also a member of the Safari Club, an intelligence allegiance that was forged by Henry Kissinger on September 1, 1976. Members included the heads of the intelligence agencies of the United States, France, Egypt, Iran, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia and a host of CIA agents and former agents. The primary function of the club was the orchestration of terrorists and proto-terrorists by proxy groups throughout the world
Shackley arrived in Rome on February 3, 1981, for a series of meetings with General Santovito.10 The assassination, in keeping with the strategy of tension, would be blamed on the Soviets. The plan would involve a multitude of CIA associates, including journalist Claire Sterling; Paul Henze, the station chief in Ankara; Michael Ledeen, a consultant to the US National Security Council; Fr. Felix Morlion of the right-wing Pro-Deo movement; Francesco Pazienza, a CIA informant and SISMI official who helped engineer the Bologna bombing; and Frank Terpil, the agent who had been assigned to work with
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At the end of March 1981, Count Marenches passed a warning to the Vatican security services about a planned attack by an “unspecified foreign power” that was to take place in the immediate future. The count could not provide details. The warning had come to him from his agents within the Eastern Bloc. The security officials duly noted the warning, unaware that de Marenches was merely building a platform that would support the Bulgarian thesis. When the message was conveyed to the Holy Father, he merely dismissed it with the wave of his hand. He knew he had nothing to fear from his new friends
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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
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On April 23, the day John Paul II was holding a private audience with CIA director William Casey, the Turks were provided with 9mm Browning Hi Power semiautomatic pistols with 13-round cartridge clips. They had received training on the use of these weapons by CIA agent Frank Terpil.
On May 13, 1981, John Paul II appeared in the “papamobile,” an open-top jeep, before an adoring crowd of five thousand. As he was being driven around St. Peter’s Square,
He had been struck by four bullets—two remained lodged in his lower intestine; the others had hit his left index finger and his right hand.
