INFORMED, FINALLY

THE MAN WHO DUG UP THE GOOD STUFF

The curious thing about a lot of the research that was unearthed concerning the assassination of John Paul II is that much of it—in Istanbul and Europe—was done by a Turkish reporter.

Not Henze. Not Sterling.

And certainly not Dewey.

A Turk.

Ugur Mumcu (Mum–ju) worked for Cumhurriyet, an intellectual center-left newspaper. He was a university-trained researcher with a bloodhound’s nose and a natural suspicion of authority. That made him a great investigative reporter. Mumcu was the man who traced the links between Turkey and the Bulgarian connection to which Agca had run and that sustained him while he ran on his long trip to St. Peter's Square. It was a small tragedy that the facts and links that Mumcu turned up were turned on their head for propaganda purposes.

Mumcu’s thesis was that Agca went to Bulgaria to seek help from the Mafia who made Sofia their headquarters for their underground assault on Europe. They were smugglers, most of them, men like Abuzer Ugurlu (Oo–ur–lu) and Bekir Celenk (Che–lenk). Those two dealt mostly in cigarettes and heroin, with no preference in either as a moneymaking commodity. Whatever sold, sold.

Mumcu published his findings in Cumhurriyet and in a book called Papa, Mafya, Agca. In all his writings, he insisted that not only Agca but the lords of the Turkish drug trade were linked to right wing thugs and the military in Turkey. These, in turn, could be linked to the Italian Mafia and fascist organizations in Italy. The links, he said, were clear.

Henze and Sterling did not agree. They showed up at Mumcu’s house one day and tried to talk him around to their point of view. His facts were OK, sure. In fact they were better than OK. They were impeccable, and in many cases they were the only ones that anyone had ever found. But Mumcu didn’t have the proper twist to the facts. The direction was wrong. Left was not the way to go, they said, and Mumcu was going way too far to the left.

Thereafter, as Sterling and Henze continued to filch Mumcu's research—as they spread it over the known world—they always took pains to condemn him and his interpretations as “leftist.” From the vantage point of today, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that what they really meant was “sensible.”

In any case, Mumcu held out that day, refusing to conform to their warped view of the world. He said that he would follow the information wherever it led, regardless of the direction. That seems like a sensible response, but it may be worth noting that before leaving Mumcu’s house Henze told him, “If you do that, you might find a nice surprise in store.”

At least that’s what Mumcu’s wife said that Henze said. But even she knew her husband was prejudiced when it came to the CIA. In the early 1970s, during one of Turkey’s periodic military coups, Mumcu had been arrested and tortured. His torturers said they were not worried about what he thought or said. “We are the Counter-Guerillas. Even the President of the Republic cannot touch us.”

By this time it should not be surprising to learn that the Counter-Guerillas were funded by the CIA. Although the Counter-Guerillas were a branch of the Turkish military-intelligence complex, they were paid for many years by the main intelligence branch of the US government. The Counter-Guerillas were part of an overall NATO program that called for underground groups to be formed in every member country in the event of a successful left-wing bid to take over that country.

It was all in a good cause, certainly, but woe to anyone who got in its way. It happened that in Turkey the Counter-Guerillas reached for allies where they could find them. They thought--not so strangely--that the best place to find allies was among the various right-wing groups. And the most right wing of all the groups were the stone-crazies of the Gray Wolves.

Henze knew that. He also knew that friends of his had done their best to get the Wolves off to a good start with weapons, training and tactics. The CIA did not control the Wolves, however. Who could? Who, after all, would even want to?

But Henze was determined not to point to those equivocal items. It was important for his country not to be linked to death squads that had gotten so far out of hand that they subverted their original purpose and ending up biting the hand that fed them.

The Gray Wolves had absolutely no respect for that hand. They hated Americans and Russians equally, as well as every other foreign group or nationality. They cared for Turkey to the exclusion of everything else and would do anything to make that exaltation come true.

These days, this entire complex might constitute what is called “blowback” in Langley-speak. But it was a nightmarish sort of blowback—the original archetypal huffing and puffing until the house came down.

So the connection had to be severed not only in reality, but in the mind of Western Civilization. That included the talk shows but did not include Soviet Russia.

The Paul and Claire Team hit the television circuit as hard as it’s ever been hit. They wrote the articles and the books, and they talked and talked even as they talked and walked. Every single fact they cited pointed to the even simpler fact that a right-wing killer had performed two very high-profile assassinations, one successful, the other nearly so, but if those two kept talking and shunting the media toward the Bulgarians and the KGB--as they were pretty sure they could--then everything would eventually fall into place.

And black would indeed be made white.

Color didn’t matter when your cause was just.

Henze’s book—The Plot to Kill the Pope—got rave reviews in every media, praised for its research and the soundness of its argument. Henze was praised by the head of his agency and feted by men who could not question his facts, since they were Mumcu’s; and could not question his conclusions, since they were what everyone wanted to hear. Henze was the supreme anti-communist of the moment and a propagandist par excellence.

Ugur Mumcu did not fare as well. Several years later he kissed his wife and children goodbye one morning in January, walked to his car, got in, and turned on the ignition. When the electrical current passed to the detonator that was attached to the plastic explosive that was attached to his Renault, he was blown to pieces.