VILLOT'S SATCHEL
Villot appeared in a matter of moments. To Magee's amazement, the cardinal was shaved, well groomed, and in full ecclesiastical attire. It seemed as though Villot was set to make a public appearance. The time was 5:00 a.m.31
Before proceeding with the rite of extreme unction, Villot began placing items from the pope's bedroom in a satchel, including the vial of low blood pressure medicine that John Paul kept on a bedside table, the papers that were scattered on the bedcovers, and the pope's appointment book and last will. Finally, he removed John Paul's glasses and slippers. None of these things were ever seen again.32
A PHYSICIAN'S PRONOUNCEMENT
Villot telephoned Dr. Renato Buzzonetti, the Vatican physician, and instructed Magee to make arrangements for the immediate transfer of Sister Vincenza to the cloistered environment of her Motherhouse in Venice. At this point in the story, the nun disappeared. No investigator—not even John Cornwell, who became the official Vatican snoop in this case—was permitted to interview her. Cornwell was merely told that she had died shortly after arriving at the Motherhouse.33 The British journalist accepted this explanation without question. Neither he nor any other reporter who probed into John Paul's death has been able to uncover the proper name of Sister Vincenza, let alone a reason for her abrupt dismissal from the Vatican.
Dr. Buzzonetti arrived at 5:45, examined the body, and announced to Magee and Villot that the pope had suffered “a coronary occlusion,” that he had died “between 10:30 and 11:00 the previous evening,” and that he had “suffered nothing.”34 But the Holy Father's bulging eyes and horrific grimace seemed to tell a different story.
BIZZARE POSTMORTEM
Shortly after the physician left, two morticians—Ernesto and Arnaldo Signoracci—appeared out of nowhere. It was 6:00 a.m. Villot must have summoned them as soon as he received the call from Father Magee—that is, before 5:00 a.m., before he called Dr. Buzzonetti, and before he had even seen the body.35 What's more, the morticians had been transported to the Vatican by an official car that presumably had to be dispatched before Villot entered the papal bedchamber.36 When Cornwell interviewed the Signoracci brothers, they were unable to confirm the time of their arrival. They only affirmed that it was early in the morning.37
Even though the bodies of the popes are traditionally not embalmed, the two morticians, under instructions from Villot, began to inject embalming fluid into John Paul's body as soon as they arrived. This unorthodox means of embalming without draining the corpse of blood would serve to prevent any possibility of a complete autopsy and any accurate determination of the cause of death.38 The morticians also manipulated the distorted jaw of the pope, corrected his horrible grimace, and closed his eyes.39 When interviewed by Cornwell, the brothers admitted that they had opened the dead pope's femoral arteries and injected an “anti-putrid” fluid before removing the body from the Vatican. They could not remember either the room or the place where they had performed this procedure.40
A FABRICATED STORY
While the pope's body was being infused with the fluid, Villot instructed Magee to relate to the world a fabricated story about the morning's events. Magee was to say that he, not Sister Vincenza, had found the pope's body. He was to make no mention of the papers that were strewn across the bed or the items Villot tucked away in his satchel. What's more, in order to provide a proper ecclesiastical spin to the tale, Magee was to say that John Paul had died with a copy of The Imitation of Christ, the great devotional work by St. Thomas a Kempis, clutched in his hand.41
At 6:30 a.m., Villot conveyed the news of the pope's death to Cardinal Carlo Confalonieri, the eighty-six-year-old dean of the Sacred College; Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, head of the Vatican Diplomatic Corps; and Sergeant Hans Roggen of the Swiss Guards.42 The news was beginning to spread throughout the Vatican village. At 6:45 a.m., Sergeant Roggen came upon Archbishop Marcinkus in a courtyard near the Vatican Bank. This was most unusual. Marcinkus, who lived twenty minutes from the Vatican in the Villa Stritch, was a late riser who never appeared at his office before 9:00 a.m. When the sergeant blurted out the news, Marcinkus stared at Roggen, displayed no emotion, and made no comment. Later, when questioned by Cornwell about his lack of reaction, Marcinkus offered this explanation: “I thought he [Roggen] said, ‘Hey, I dreamed the Pope was dead.’”43
At 7:27 a.m., nearly three hours after Sister Vincenza discovered the pope's body, Vatican Radio made the following announcement: “This morning, September 29, 1978, about five-thirty, the private secretary of the pope, contrary to custom not having found the Holy Father in the chapel of his private apartment, looked for him in his room and found him dead in bed with a light on, like one who was intent on reading. The physician, Dr. Renato Buzzonetti, who hastened to the pope's room, verified the death, which took place presumably toward eleven o'clock yesterday evening, as ‘sudden death’ that could be related to acute myocardial infarction.”44
THE STORY UNRAVELS
Despite Cardinal Villot's care in fabricating the fiction, the story quickly began to unravel upon inspection. The first problem came with The Imitation of Christ. John Paul's copy could not be found within the papal apartment. It remained among his belongings in Venice, where he had served as patriarch. On October 2, the Vatican was forced to admit that the Holy Father was not reading The Imitation of Christ at the time of his demise, but rather was holding in his hands “certain sheets of paper containing his personal writings such as homilies, speeches, reflections, and various notes. On October 5, after continual badgering from the press, the Vatican came clean and admitted that the papers the Holy Father was clutching concerned his decision to make critical changes within the Roman Curia, including the Vatican Bank.45
The second problem came with the work of the morticians. Italian law dictated that no embalming should be undertaken until twenty-four hours after death, without dispensation from a magistrate. For this reason, the immediate injection of “anti-putrid” fluid into the body of the pope without draining the blood smacked of foul play.46
On October 1, Corriere della Sera, Milan's daily newspaper, published a front-page story titled, “Why Say No to an Autopsy?” The story called for a complete disclosure of all facts relating to the pope's death and concluded by saying:
The Church has nothing to fear, therefore, nothing to lose. On the contrary, it would have much to gain. Now, to know what the pope died of is of a legitimate historical fact, it is part of our visible history and does not in any way affect the spiritual mystery of his death. The body that we leave behind when we die can be understood with our poor instruments, it is a leftover; the soul is already, or rather it has always been, dependent on other laws which are not human and so remain inscrutable. Let us not make out of a mystery a secret to guard for earthly reasons and let us recognize the smallness of our secrets. Let us not declare sacred what is not.47
NO CARDIOPATHIC SYMPTOMS
These demands intensified when John Paul's personal physicians said that the pope was in good health. “He had absolutely no cardiopathic characteristics,” Dr. Carlo Frizzerio said. “Besides, his low blood pressure should, in theory, have made him safe from acute cardiovascular attacks. The only time I needed to give him treatment was for the influenza attack.”48 This diagnosis was verified by Dr. Antonio Da Ros, who examined the pope on Saturday, September 23, and told the press: “Non sta bene ma benone” (“He is not well, but very well”).49 The pope's good physical condition was attributed to his lifestyle. He exercised regularly, never smoked, drank alcohol only rarely, and kept a healthy diet. At the time of his death, John Paul was 65.
Numerous heart specialists throughout the world, including Dr. Christiaan Barnard of South Africa and Dr. Seamus Banim of London, took to task Dr. Buzzonetti's diagnosis of myocardial infarction without conducting an autopsy as “incredible” and “preposterous.”50 Such critiques caused Villot to concoct another story. He told his fellow cardinals, who pressed for an autopsy, that the
real cause of John Paul's death was not a heart attack. The Holy Father, he assured them, had unwittingly taken a fatal overdose of Effortil, his blood pressure medicine. If an autopsy was conducted, Villot said, it would give rise to the belief that the pope had committed suicide.51
CANON LIES
When this explanation failed to quiet the clamor for an autopsy, Villot proclaimed that canon law expressly prohibited the body of a pope from being subjected to postmortem surgery. This statement gave rise to yet another problem. Canon law neither banned nor condoned papal autopsies but failed to address the subject. What's more, scholars quickly pointed out that an autopsy had been performed on the body of Pius VII in 1830.52
Rumor quickly became rampant that John Paul had died of poisoning. Some speculated that a lethal dosage of digitalis had been added to the Effortil, the liquid medicine for low blood pressure the pope kept by his bedside. Such a mixture would induce vomiting—vomiting that would account for the necessity of Villot's removal of the pope's glasses and slippers. Brother Fabian, the Vatican pharmacist, used this theory to provide a final explanation for the pope's demise. John Paul, he said, was taking Digoxin for a heart problem and could have swallowed a few pills before taking a slug of Effortil—with tragic results. But this explanation also proved to be bogus. John Paul had never received a prescription for Digoxin. That drug had been used by Paul VI.53
“È UN POLACCO”
On Monday, October 16, 1978, the CIA's plans came to fruition as its dark horse candidate ascended to the papal throne as John Paul II. The news of the selection of Karol Wojtyła's election caught the teeming crowd gathered in St. Peter's Square by surprise. The people expected the election of some established member of the Vatican bureaucracy, such as the progressive Cardinal Benelli or the conservative Cardinal Siri. They were stunned to hear the name of Wojtyła. Even members of the press turned to one another to ask: “Who is Wojtyła?” His strange-sounding name led many to believe that the new pope might be an African or Asian. Eventually, Fr. Andrew Greeley of Chicago told them: “È un polacco” (“He is a Pole”).54
It was one thing to elect a Pole—such as the famous anti-Communist cardinal Stefan Wyszyński—but quite another to elect one about whom so little was known. Who was Wojtyła? How had a junior cardinal come to the throne in less than two days of balloting?
Not only was the election unexpected, but the new pope also looked unusual as a Holy Father. He lacked the delicate—almost effete—features of Paul VI and Pius XII. His hulking physical frame and his nonintellectual mannerisms seemed to some observers antithetical to the Roman grace and refinement of many of his predecessors. This “lack of refinement” came to the fore during his first public appearance. Wojtyła, as John Paul II, approached a group of American reporters and beseeched them with the folded hands of a penitent to be “good” to him. A few minutes later, in a further effort to ingratiate himself with the press, the new pope cupped his hands like a megaphone and shouted his blessing to the milling crowd like a cheerleader at a football game.55
THE UNKNOWN WOJTYŁA
Gradually, the public came to learn that Wojtyła, as a young man, had sought not to become a priest but an actor.56 They further learned that he had worked in a chemical factory under Nazi control during World War II—although no one knew for certain if he had been the leader of “an underground movement which assisted Jews” or a Nazi collaborator.57 Rumors persisted that he had developed romantic attachments to many women and may have been married. The alleged marriage helped to explain the so-called “great gap” in John Paul's career—the five-year span of time between 1939 and 1944.58
But certain things about the new pope eventually came to light. Cardinal Villot and the “Masonic Cardinals” had engineered his campaign with the help of American Cardinals Cody and Krol and celebrated his election not with traditional Te Deums and official prayers but rather a gala champagne party in which the new Holy Father filled the empty glasses of the nearest cardinals and nuns, while warbling his favorite song, a Polish number called “The Mountaineer.”59
After the coronation, the Vatican, Inc. returned to business as usual. Cardinal Villot remained secretary of state and Archbishop Marcinkus returned to his position as the head of the IOR. The ties to Roberto Calvi, Licio Gelli, and the CIA were renewed. And the time became ripe for a deal with the Turks.
What is important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard, 1998
With the fall of Saigon, the drought in Southeast Asia, and the eradication of the poppy fields in Burma and Thailand, the CIA set its sights on the Golden Crescent, where the highlands of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran all converge, for a new source of drug revenue. Since the seventeenth century, opium poppies were grown in this region by local tribesmen, and the market remained regional. By the 1950s, very little opium was being produced in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with about twenty-five hundred acres in both countries under cultivation.1 At the close of the Vietnam War, the fertile growing fields of Afghanistan's Helmand Valley were covered with vineyards, wheat, and cotton.2
The major problem for the CIA was the Afghan government of Nur Mohammad Taraki, who sought to eradicate poppy production in the border regions of the country that remained occupied by radical Islamic fundamentalists. This attempt at eradication sprang from Taraki's desire to unite all the Pashtun tribes under Kabul rule.3 The fundamentalists spurned such efforts not only because of their desire to keep the cash crops but also because they viewed the Taraki government as shirk (blasphemy). The modernist regime advocated female education and prohibited arranged marriages and the bride price. By 1975, the tension between the government and the fundamentalists erupted into violence when Pashtun tribesmen mounted a revolt in the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul.4 The tribesmen were led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who became the new darling of the CIA.
THE MUSLIM MADMAN
Hekmatyar made his public debut in 1972 at the University of Kabul by killing a leftist student. He fled to Pakistan, where he became an agent of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the leader of Hezb-e-Islami, an organization dedicated to the formation of a “pure” Islamic state ruled by the most intransigent interpretation of Sunni law.5 Hekmatyar urged his followers to throw acid in the faces of women not wearing a veil, kidnapped rival Islamic chieftains, and, in 1977, began to build up an arsenal, courtesy of the CIA.6 The Agency also began to funnel millions to the ISI, which became its surrogate on the Afghan border.7
The CIA believed that Hekmatyar, despite the fact that he was clearly unhinged, would be of inestimable value not only in undermining the Taraki government but also in gaining control of the poppy fields in the Helmand Valley. Its faith was not misplaced. Throughout 1978, a year before the Soviet invasion, Hekmatyar and his mujahideen (“holy warriors”) burned universities and girls’ schools throughout Afghanistan and gained feudal control over many of the poppy farmers. The pro-Taraki militants, aware of the destabilization plot, assassinated Adolph “Spike” Dubs, the US ambassador to Kabul, on February 14, 1979.8
Thanks to Hekmatyar's actions, heroin production rose from four hundred tons in 1971 to twelve hundred tons in 1978. After the assassination of Dubs and after the millions had begun to flow to Hekmatyar's guerrilla army, the production soared to eighteen hundred tons and a network of laboratories was set up by the mujahideen along the Afghan-Pakistan border.9 The morphine base was transported by caravans of trucks from the Helmand Valley through northern Iran to the Anatolian plains of Turkey.
THE HOLY WAR
In the summer of 1979, six months before the Soviet invasion, the US State Department issued a memorandum making clear its stake in the mujahideen: “The United States’ larger interest…would be served by the demise of the Taraki regime, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reform in A
fghanistan…. The overthrow of the DRA [Democratic Republic of Afghanistan] would show the rest of the world, particularly the Third World, that the Soviet's view of the socialist course of history as being inevitable is not accurate.”10
In September 1979 Taraki was killed in a coup organized by Afghan military officers. Hafizullah Amin was installed as the country's new president. Amin had impeccable western credentials. He had been educated at Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin. He had served as the president of the Afghan Students Association, which had been funded by the Asia Foundation, a CIA front.11 After the coup, he met regularly with US Embassy officials, while the CIA continued to fund Hekmatyar's rebels in Pakistan. Fearing a fundamentalist, US-backed regime at its border, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan on December 27, 1979.12
The CIA got what it wanted. The holy war had begun. For the next decade, black aid—amounting to more than $3 billion—would be poured into Afghanistan to support the holy warriors, making it the most expensive covert operation in US history.13 Such vast expenditures demanded an exponential increase in poppy production, which Hekmatyar and his fellow jihadists were pleased to provide.
AFGHANISTAN DELIGHT
The war in Afghanistan delighted state department officials, including Secretary of State Zbigniew Brzezinski. Voicing the utopian vision of what author Chalmers Johnson called the “military-industrial complex,” Brzezinski wrote of the plans to control Eurasia, including Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan:
For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia…. Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia—and America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained….
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