Bulgarian Secret Service Files Researched

[Jan Klimkowski]

Ed - very interesting. Thanks for posting.

There's a DPF thread about the Gladio cell: the Grey Wolves.

The identification of Col. Alparslan TurkeÅŸ, a former Turkish liaison officer to the German Wehrmacht, as a Grey Wolves originator and protagonist, further reveals the links between Gehlen's Nazi intelligence network and Gladio.

JB: In our research we reviewed a large number of intelligence reports and classified correspondence devoted to the "assassination of the century"- the attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II by Mehmet Ali AÄŸca of the Turkish Grey Wolves terrorist group.
While it has been already established that no documents give credibility to the theory that there had been a "Bulgarian connection" in the attempted assassination of the Pope, our research revealed that the Bulgarian political and state authorities were taken completely by surprise by the claims linking Bulgaria's intelligence agencies to the assassination attempt; "Darzhavna Sigurnost" was also shocked initially by media claims about the association attempt made between the Bulgarian airline representative, Sergei Antonov, and the Turkish terrorist AÄŸca.
In our study of the classified files, we also discovered that most of Bulgaria's intelligence data on the "Grey Wolves" was compiled after the assassination attempt, not prior to it. Apparently, Western media reports on the alleged "Bulgarian connection" in the assassination attempt prompted the Bulgarian intelligence agencies to start gathering extensive intelligence data on the "Grey Wolves," and to devote its intelligence resources in Western Europe to monitor the movements and contacts of their known members.
CF: As we know, the Grey Wolves were used as a "stay-behind" paramilitary force even in the 1960's. Did you found any information about their activity before 1982 in the Darzhavna Sigurnost files?
JB: Actually, there exist three operational files on the "Bozkurtlar" organization (Grey Wolves), codenamed "Spiders," "Kurt," and "Wolves." One of these files discusses even the broader biographic data of the Wolves inspirer and boss Col. Alparslan TurkeÅŸ his background as a Turkish liaison officer to German Wehrmacht in 1944, his active participation in the military coup in 1960 and the assassination of the Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, etc.
The Bulgarian intelligence documents commented as well on the Grey Wolves role in the internal right-wing terror against the liberal and leftist intellectuals in Turkey in the mid-1970s. However, the significance of the Grey Wolfs as an international terrorist organization was defined after Ali AÄŸca attempt on the Pope's life. The organization was viewed also as dangerous from the point of view of its hostile activity against Bulgarian citizens and facilities in Western Europe in the mid-1980's, when the relations between the two neighboring Balkan states drastically eroded due to the bad treatment of the Bulgarian Turks.

The claims made about cooperation between western and eastern bloc intelligence services in tracking the likes of Baader-Meinhof, the Red Brigades, and the Red Army Faction, are also provocative:

While the files on Western European leftist terrorist groups, such as the Italian Brigate Rosse, the Red Army Faction/Baader-Meinhoff Gang in Germany and the French Action Directe are thickly coated in Cold War-inspired ideological language, our research confirmed what was already known about the composition of these terrorist groups and their motivation.
Actually, the files reveal that the communist leadership in Eastern Europe did not relate to the causes embraced by the Western leftist groups; moreover, the communist leadership mistrusted them and repeatedly expresses the view that left-wing terrorism was a problem of capitalist societies that Eastern Bloc countries should be involved in [countering]. This is evidenced by the level of cooperation and sharing of intelligence data on ultra-left terrorist groups between the intelligence services of the West and those of Eastern Bloc countries. One example was the collaboration between Bulgaria's Darzhavna Sigurnost and the West German authorities in the case of the "Red Army Faction."
CF: So, there is information on collaborative efforts of East European and Western intelligence agencies in the countering of international terrorism organizations?
JB: There are occurrences of secret contacts made by the intelligence agencies on both sides of the Iron Curtain, most notably the cooperation between the Bulgarian and West German authorities in the surveillance of "Red Army Faction" members' eventual presence on Bulgarian territory. Members of the "Red Army Faction" were arrested in the Bulgarian Black Sea resort of Sunny Beach [near Nesebar] in the summer of 1978, in a collaborative action of the Bulgarian and West German counter-intelligence agencies.
This collaboration continued and, in December 1985, the Bulgarian authorities took immediate action against known RAF terrorists residing in Bulgaria, upon the request of the West German security services.
We discovered archival data on similar secret contacts of the Bulgarian Darzhavna Sigurnost and Austrian and French intelligence agencies; we also discovered files describing secret anti-terrorism collaboration between the Bulgarian intelligence agencies and the security services of Japan and the United States: for example, there was intelligence exchange and joint discussions between the Bulgarian, Japanese and U.S. agencies in December 1990 and January 1991, in order to prevent terrorist acts against the U.S. Embassy in Sofia that were being planned by Japanese and Philippine terrorists.