http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1774290/posts
Moscow's Assault on the Vatican
The KGB made corrupting the Church a priority
National Review Online ^ | January 25, 2007 | Ion Mihai Pacepa
Posted on 01/26/2007 12:15:33 PM PST by Iris7
The Soviet Union was never comfortable living in the same world with=20
the Vatican. The most recent disclosures document that the Kremlin was=20
prepared to go to any lengths to counter the Catholic Church's strong=20
anti-Communism.
In March 2006 an Italian parliamentary commission concluded "beyond=20
any reasonable doubt that the leaders of the Soviet Union took the=20
initiative to eliminate the pope Karol Wojtyla," in retaliation for=20
his support to the dissident Solidarity movement in Poland. In January=20
2007, when documents disclosed that the newly appointed archbishop of=20
Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus, had collaborated with Poland's Communist-
era political police, he admitted the accusation and resigned. The=20
following day the rector of Krakow's Wawel Cathedral, the burial site=20
of Polish kings and queens, resigned for the same reason. Then it was=20
learned that Michal Jagosz, a member of the Vatican's tribunal=20
considering sainthood for the late Pope John Paul II, has been accused=20
of being a former Communist secret police agent; according to the=20
Polish media, he had been recruited in 1984 before leaving Poland for=20
an assignment to the Vatican. Currently, a book is about to be=20
published that will identify 39 other priests whose names have been=20
found in Krakow secret police files, some of whom are now bishops.=20
Moreover, this seems to be just scratching the surface. A special=20
commission will soon start investigating the past of all religious=20
servants during the Communist era, as thousands more Catholic priests=20
throughout that country are believed to have collaborated with the=20
secret police. And this is just Poland - the archives of the KGB and=20
those of the political police in the rest of the former Soviet bloc=20
have yet to be opened on the subject of operations against the=20
Vatican.
In my other life, when I was at the center of Moscow's foreign-
intelligence wars, I myself was caught up in a deliberate Kremlin=20
effort to smear the Vatican, by portraying Pope Pius XII as a=20
coldhearted Nazi sympathizer. Ultimately, the operation did not cause=20
any lasting damage, but it left a residual bad taste that is hard to=20
rinse away. The story has never before been told.
BATTLING THE CHURCH
In February 1960, Nikita Khrushchev approved a super-secret plan for=20
destroying the Vatican's moral authority in Western Europe. The idea=20
was the brainchild of KGB chairman Aleksandr Shelepin and Aleksey=20
Kirichenko, the Soviet Politburo member responsible for international=20
policies. Up until that time, the KGB had fought its "mortal enemy" in=20
Eastern Europe, where the Holy See had been crudely attacked as a=20
cesspool of espionage in the pay of American imperialism, and its=20
representatives had been summarily jailed as spies. Now Moscow wanted=20
the Vatican discredited by its own priests, on its home territory, as=20
a bastion of Nazism.
Eugenio Pacelli, by then Pope Pius XII, was selected as the KGB's main=20
target, its incarnation of evil, because he had departed this world in=20
1958. "Dead men cannot defend themselves" was the KGB's latest slogan.=20
Moscow had just gotten a black eye for framing and imprisoning a=20
living Vatican prelate, J=F3zsef Cardinal Mindszenty, the primate of=20
Hungary, in 1948. During the 1956 Hungarian Revolution he had escaped=20
from jail and found asylum in the U.S. Embassy in Budapest, where he=20
began writing his memoirs. As the details of how he had been framed=20
became known to Western journalists, he was widely seen as a saintly=20
hero and martyr.
Because Pius XII had served as the papal nuncio in Munich and Berlin=20
when the Nazis were beginning their bid for power, the KGB wanted to=20
depict him as an anti-Semite who had encouraged Hitler's Holocaust.=20
The hitch was that the operation was not to give the least hint of=20
Soviet bloc involvement. The whole dirty job had to be carried out by=20
Western hands, using evidence from the Vatican itself. That would=20
correct another mistake made in the case of Mindszenty, who had been=20
framed with counterfeit Soviet and Hungarian documents. (On February=20
6, 1949, just days before Mindszenty's trial ended, Hanna Sulner, the=20
Hungarian handwriting expert who had fabricated the "evidence" used to=20
frame the cardinal, escaped to Vienna and displayed microfilms of the=20
"documents" on which the show trial was founded. Hanna demonstrated,=20
in an excruciatingly detailed testimony, that all were forged=20
documents, "some ostensibly in the cardinal's hand, others bearing his=20
supposed signature," produced by her.)
To avoid another Mindszenty catastrophe, the KGB needed some original=20
Vatican documents, even ones only remotely connected with Pius XII,=20
which its dezinformatsiya experts could slightly modify and project in=20
the "proper light" to prove the Pope's "true colors." The difficulty=20
was that the KGB had no access to the Vatican archives, and that was=20
where my DIE, the Romanian foreign intelligence service, came in. The=20
new chief of the Soviet foreign intelligence service, General=20
Aleksandr Sakharovsky, had created the DIE in 1949 and had until=20
recently been our chief Soviet adviser; he knew that the DIE was in an=20
excellent position to contact the Vatican and obtain approval to=20
search its archives. In 1959, when I had been assigned to West Germany=20
in the cover position as deputy chief of the Romanian Mission, I had=20
conducted a "spy swap" under which two DIE officers (Colonel Gheorghe=20
Horobet and Major Nicolae Ciuciulin), who had been caught red-handed=20
in West Germany, had been exchanged for Roman Catholic bishop Augustin=20
Pacha, who had been jailed by the KGB on a spurious charge of=20
espionage and was finally returned to the Vatican via West Germany.
INFILTRATING THE VATICAN
"Seat-12" was the code name given to this operation against Pius XII,=20
and I became its Romanian point man. To facilitate my job, Sakharovsky=20
had authorized me to (falsely) inform the Vatican that Romania was=20
ready to restore its broken relations with the Holy See, in exchange=20
for access to its archives and a one-billion-dollar, interest-free=20
loan for 25 years. (Romania's relations with the Vatican had been=20
severed in 1951, when Moscow accused the Vatican's nunciatura in=20
Romania of being an undercover CIA front and closed its offices. The=20
nunciatura buildings in Bucharest had been turned over to the DIE, and=20
now housed a foreign language school.) The access to the Papal=20
archives, I was to tell the Vatican, was needed in order to find=20
historical roots that would help the Romanian government publicly=20
justify its change of heart toward the Holy See. The billion (no, that=20
is not a typographical error), I was told, had been introduced into=20
the game to make Romania's alleged turnabout more plausible. "If=20
there's one thing those monks understand, it's money," Sakharovsky=20
remarked.
My earlier involvement in the exchange of Bishop Pacha for the two DIE=20
officers did indeed open doors for me. A month after receiving the=20
KGB's instructions, I had my first contact with a Vatican=20
representative. For secrecy reasons that meeting - and most of the=20
ones that followed - took place at a hotel in Geneva, Switzerland.=20
There I was introduced to an "influential member of the diplomatic=20
corps" who, I was told, had begun his career working in the Vatican=20
archives. His name was Agostino Casaroli, and I would soon learn that=20
he was truly influential. On the spot this monsignor gave me access to=20
the Vatican archives, and soon three young DIE undercover officers=20
posing as Romanian priests were digging around in the papal archives.=20
Casaroli also agreed "in principle" to Bucharest's demand for the=20
interest free loan, but he said the Vatican wished to place certain=20
conditions on it. (Up until 1978, when I left Romania for good, I was=20
still negotiating for that loan, which had gone down to $200 million.)
During 1960-62, the DIE succeeded in pilfering hundreds of documents=20
connected in any way with Pope Pius XII out of the Vatican Archives=20
and the Apostolic Library. Everything was immediately sent to the KGB=20
via special courier. In actual fact, no incriminating material against=20
the pontiff ever turned up in all those secretly photographed=20
documents. Mostly they were copies of personal letters and transcripts=20
of meetings and speeches, all couched in the routine kind of=20
diplomatic language one would expect to find. Nevertheless, the KGB=20
kept asking for more documents. And we sent more.
THE KGB PRODUCES A PLAY
In 1963, General Ivan Agayants, the famous chief of the KGB's=20
disinformation department, landed in Bucharest to thank us for our=20
help. He told us that "Seat-12" had materialized into a powerful play=20
attacking Pope Pius XII, entitled The Deputy, an oblique reference to=20
the pope as Christ's representative on earth. Agayants took credit for=20
the outline of the play, and he told us that it had voluminous=20
appendices of background documents put together by his experts with=20
help from the documents we had purloined from the Vatican. Agayants=20
also told us that The Deputy's producer, Erwin Piscator, was a devoted=20
Communist who had a longstanding relationship with Moscow. In 1929 he=20
had founded the Proletarian Theater in Berlin, then sought political=20
asylum in the Soviet Union when Hitler came to power, and a few years=20
later had "emigrated" to the United States. In 1962 Piscator had=20
returned to West Berlin to produce The Deputy.
Throughout my years in Romania, I always took my KGB bosses with a=20
grain of salt, because they used to juggle the facts around so as to=20
make Soviet intelligence the mother and father of everything. But I=20
had reason to believe Agayants's self-serving claim. He was a living=20
legend in the field of desinformatsiya. In 1943, as the rezident in=20
Iran, Agayants launched the disinformation report that Hitler had set=20
up a special team to kidnap President Franklin Roosevelt from the=20
American Embassy in Tehran during the Allied Summit to be held there.=20
As a result, Roosevelt agreed to be headquartered in a villa within=20
the "safety" of the Soviet Embassy compound, which was guarded by a=20
large military unit. All the Soviet personnel assigned to that villa=20
were undercover intelligence officers who spoke English, but, with few=20
exceptions, they kept that a secret so as to be able to eavesdrop.=20
Even given the limited technical capabilities of that day, Agayants=20
was able to provide Stalin with hourly monitoring reports on the=20
American and British guests. That helped Stalin obtain Roosevelt's=20
tacit agreement to let him retain the Baltic countries and the rest of=20
the territories occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939-40. Agayants was=20
also credited with having induced Roosevelt to use the familiar "Uncle=20
Joe" for Stalin at that summit. According to what Sakharovsky told us,=20
Stalin was more elated over that than he was even over his territorial=20
gains. "The cripple's mine!" he reportedly exulted.
Just a year before The Deputy was launched, Agayants had pulled off=20
another masterful coup. He fabricated out of whole cloth a manuscript=20
designed to persuade the West that, deep down, the Kremlin thought=20
highly of the Jews; this was published in Western Europe, to great=20
popular success, as a book entitled Notes for a Journal. The=20
manuscript was attributed to Maxim Litvinov, n=E9 Meir Walach, the=20
former Soviet commissar for foreign affairs, who had been fired in=20
1939 when Stalin purged his diplomatic apparatus of Jews in=20
preparation for signing his "non-aggression" pact with Hitler. (The=20
Stalin-Hitler Non-Aggression Pact was signed on August 23, 1939, in=20
Moscow. It had a secret Protocol that partitioned Poland between the=20
two signatories and gave the Soviets a free hand in Estonia, Latvia,=20
Finland, Bessarabia, and Northern Bukovina.) This Agayants book was so=20
flawlessly counterfeited that Britain's most prominent historian on=20
Soviet Russia, Edward Hallet Carr, was totally convinced of its=20
authenticity and in fact wrote an introduction for it. (Carr had=20
authored a ten-volume History of Soviet Russia.)
The Deputy saw the light in 1963 as the work of an unknown West German=20
named Rolf Hochhuth, under the title Der Stellvertreter. Ein=20
christliches Trauerspiel (The Deputy, a Christian Tragedy). Its=20
central thesis was that Pius XII had supported Hitler and encouraged=20
him to go ahead with the Jewish Holocaust. It immediately ignited a=20
huge controversy around Pius XII, who was depicted as a cold,=20
heartless man more concerned about Vatican properties than about the=20
fate of Hitler's victims. The original text presents an eight-hour=20
play, backed by some 40 to 80 pages (depending on the edition) of what=20
Hochhuth called "historical documentation." In a newspaper article=20
published in Germany in 1963, Hochhuth defends his portrayal of Pius=20
XII, saying: "The facts are there - forty crowded pages of=20
documentation in the appendix to my play." In a radio interview given=20
in New York in 1964, when The Deputy opened there, Hochhuth said, "I=20
considered it necessary to add to the play a historical appendix,=20
fifty to eighty pages (depending on the size of the print)." In the=20
original edition, the appendix is entitled "Historische=20
Streiflichter" (historical sidelights). The Deputy has been translated=20
into some 20 languages, drastically cut and with the appendix usually=20
omitted.
Before writing The Deputy, Hochhuth, who did not have a high school=20
diploma (Abitur), was working in various inconspicuous capacities for=20
the Bertelsmann publishing house. In interviews he claimed that in=20
1959 he took a leave of absence from his job and went to Rome, where=20
he spent three months talking to people and then writing the first=20
draft of the play, and where he posed "a series of questions" to one=20
bishop whose name he refused to reveal. Hardly likely! At about that=20
same time I used to visit the Vatican fairly regularly as an=20
accredited messenger from a head of state, and I was never able to get=20
any talkative bishop off into a corner with me - and it was not for=20
lack of trying. The DIE illegal officers we infiltrated into the=20
Vatican also encountered almost insurmountable difficulties in=20
penetrating the Vatican secret archives, even though they had airtight=20
cover as priests.
During my old days in the DIE, when I would ask my personnel chief,=20
General Nicolae Ceausescu (the dictator's brother), to give me a=20
rundown of the file on some subordinate, he would always ask me, "For=20
promotion or demotion?" During its first ten years of life, the Deputy=20
leaned toward the Pope's demotion. It generated a flurry of books and=20
articles, some accusing and some defending the pontiff. Some went so=20
far as to lay the blame for the Auschwitz atrocities on the pope's=20
shoulders, some meticulously tore Hochhuth's arguments to shreds, but=20
all contributed to the huge attention this rather stilted play=20
received in its day. Today, many people who have never heard of The=20
Deputy are sincerely convinced that Pius XII was a cold and evil man=20
who hated the Jews and helped Hitler do away with them. As KGB=20
chairman Yury Andropov, the unparalleled master of Soviet deception,=20
used to tell me, people are more ready to believe smut than holiness.
FALSEHOODS UNDERMINED
Toward the mid 1970s, The Deputy started running out of steam. In 1974=20
Andropov conceded to us that, had we known then what we know today, we=20
would never have gone after Pope Pius XII. What now made the=20
difference was newly released information showing that Hitler, far=20
from being friendly with Pius XII, had in fact been plotting against=20
him.
Just a few days before Andropov's admission, the former supreme=20
commander of the German SS (Schutzstaffel) squadron in Italy during=20
World War II, General Friedrich Otto Wolff, had been released from=20
jail and confessed that in 1943 Hitler had ordered him to abduct Pope=20
Pius XII from the Vatican. That order had been so hush-hush that it=20
never turned up after the war in any Nazi archive. Nor had it come out=20
at any of the many debriefings of Gestapo and SS officers conducted by=20
the victorious Allies. In his confession Wolff claimed that he had=20
replied to Hitler that his order would take six weeks to carry out.=20
Hitler, who blamed the pope for the overthrow of Italian dictator=20
Benito Mussolini, wanted it done immediately. Eventually Wolff=20
persuaded Hitler that there would be a great negative response if the=20
plan were implemented, and the F=FChrer dropped it.
It was also during 1974 that Cardinal Mindszenty published his book=20
Memoirs, which describes in agonizing detail how he was framed in=20
Communist Hungary. On the evidence of fabricated documents, he was=20
charged with "treason, misuse of foreign currency, and conspiracy,"=20
offenses "all punishable by death or life imprisonment." He also=20
describes how his falsified "confession" then took on a life of its=20
own. "It seemed to me that anyone should at once have recognized this=20
document as a crude forgery, since it is the product of a bungling,=20
uncultivated mind," the cardinal writes. "But when I subsequently went=20
through foreign books, newspapers, and magazines that dealt with my=20
case and commented on my 'confession,' I realized that the public must=20
have concluded that the 'confession' had actually been composed by me,=20
although in a semiconscious state and under the influence of=20
brainwashing... [T]hat the police would have published a document they=20
had themselves manufactured seemed altogether too brazen to be=20
believed." Furthermore, Hanna Sulner, the Hungarian handwriting expert=20
used to frame the cardinal, who had escaped to Vienna, confirmed that=20
she had forged Mindszenty's "confession."
A few years later, Pope John Paul II started the process of=20
sanctifying Pius XII, and witnesses from all over the world have=20
compellingly proved that Pius XII was an enemy, not a friend, of=20
Hitler. Israel Zoller, the chief rabbi of Rome between 1943-44, when=20
Hitler took over that city, devoted an entire chapter of his memoirs=20
to praising the leadership of Pius XII. "The Holy Father sent by hand=20
a letter to the bishops instructing them to lift the enclosure from=20
convents and monasteries, so that they could become refuges for the=20
Jews. I know of one convent where the Sisters slept in the basement,=20
giving up their beds to Jewish refugees." On July 25, 1944, Zoller was=20
received by Pope Pius XII. Notes taken by Vatican secretary of state=20
Giovanni Battista Montini (who would become Pope Paul VI) show that=20
Rabbi Zoller thanked the Holy Father for all he had done to save the=20
Jewish community of Rome - and his thanks were transmitted over the=20
radio. On February 13, 1945, Rabbi Zoller was baptized by Rome's=20
auxiliary bishop Luigi Traglia in the Church of Santa Maria degli=20
Angeli. In gratitude to Pius XII, Zoller took the Christian name of=20
Eugenio (the pope's name). A year later Zoller's wife and daughter=20
were also baptized.
David G. Dalin, in The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII=20
Rescued Jews From the Nazis, published a few months ago, has compiled=20
further overwhelming proof of Eugenio Pacelli's friendship for the=20
Jews beginning long before he became pope. At the start of World War=20
II, Pope Pius XII's first encyclical was so anti-Hitler that the Royal=20
Air Force and the French air force dropped 88,000 copies of it over=20
Germany.
Over the past 16 years, the freedom of religion has been restored in=20
Russia, and a new generation has been struggling to develop a new=20
national identity. We can only hope that President Vladimir Putin will=20
see fit to open the KGB archives and set forth on the table, for all=20
to see, how the Communists maligned one of the most important popes of=20
the last century.
-Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa is the highest-ranking intelligence=20
officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc. His book=20
Red Horizons has been republished in 27 countries.
.
|
