NEW YORK (Sep 16, 1996 7:23 p.m. EDT) - Pope John Paul II and former
President Ronald Reagan established an informal "secret alliance" to
bring about the fall of Communism, according to a new book co-authored
by Watergate investigative reporter Carl Bernstein.
The book, "His Holiness: John Paul II and the Hidden History of Our
Time," by Bernstein and Italian journalist Marco Politi, claims that
Reagan and his Central Intelligence Agency chief William Casey traded
sensitive intelligence information with the Polish-born pontiff
because they viewed the 20 block-long Vatican as a "spiritual
superpower."
The book, which will be published this week by Doubleday, also says
that the Reagan administration secretly spent $50 million to keep
Solidarity, Poland's independent trade union organization, alive from
1982 to 1989.
The pope was kept informed, although he was careful not to learn too
many of the details, the book said.
Bernstein and Politi did not draw a conclusion as to whether the
Soviet Union or Communist Bulgaria was behind the assassination
attempt on the pope's life in 1981, but the book said Casey and the
pope's closest aides were convinced that Bulgaria was involved -- an
idea rejected by the pontiff.
The authors said the pope did not want to see investigations pursued
out of fear that if the Soviet Union was involved it would throw
international relations into a hopeless crisis.
They quote the pope as telling a close friend, "Whoever was
responsible was literally doing the work of the devil. It doesn't
interest me because it was the devil who did this thing and the devil
can conspire in 1,000 ways ... "
But the authors said they obtained top secret Soviet documents that
detailed increased Soviet preoccupation with the pope and the
frustration of Soviet leaders with Poland for not cracking down on the
Catholic church in the weeks preceding the assassination attempt by
Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca.
After the attempt, the pope ordered the statue of the Fatima virgin
brought to the Vatican where he prayed before it, asking for the
liberation of the Soviet Union from atheism.
The book said: "Beginning in the spring of 1981, the Reagan
administration maintained an intelligence shuttle at the highest level
between the White House and the pope, who was regularly briefed by
Casey and Vernon Walters, a former CIA deputy director. Between them
Walters and Casey secretly visited the pope about 15 times over a
six-year period to discuss matters of mutual importance."
It added that the pope received "some of America's most carefully
guarded secrets and sophisticated political analysis: information from
satellites, from intelligence agents, from electronic evesdropping,
from political discussions at the White House, State Department and
CIA. And the United States received information from the pope."
The book also said that during this period of Vatican-U.S.
collaboration, the Reagan administration reinforced the pope's
opposition to abortion by blocking funds for family planning programs
around the world.
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