John Paul II - life ends and myth remains

Yahoo! News - Pope dies, millions mourn after historic 26-year reign :
"In 1981 the pope was nearly killed in an assassination attempt by rightwing Turkish fanatic Mehmet Ali Agca, who shot him at close range in Saint Peter's Square."

In an otherwise fairly sensible assessment of the life of the late pope, was the whopper quoted here. Whatever the relationship of the Grey Wolves (the terror network of which Agca was allegedly a part) to Turkey's domestic politics, the implication of that statement is that the assault on the pope came from the political right.

Yet, Bulgarian intelligence complicity has been known for decades (Agca himself confessed that he had been recruited and controlled by the Bulgarians) and just this week Corriere della Serra published a report of documents found by the German government showing that the assassination of the pope was ordered by the Soviet Union through the KGB with Bulgarian intelligence tasked with recruiting and training the assassin and the Stasi, the intelligence service of the former East Germany, providing support and covering up the evidence. These new details, of course, would not have been known to the triggerman.

The assassination attempt on John Paul II was clearly a Soviet reaction against the great encouragement the first Polish pope was giving to Lech Walesa and the Solidarity free trade union movement which was sweeping Poland and encouraging other reform elements in Warsaw Pact countries.