The salesmen will not tire of repeating the Lie – we should not give up repeating the Truth.
As many times as necessary, and as long as we have the opportunity to do so.
This text was written 10 years ago. I offer it with some abbreviations.
On this day, 40 years ago, the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II was carried out.
At the end of July 2011, the Foreign Minister/then Nikolay Mladenov did something unparalleled in the Bulgarian Parliament.
Which made it clear what a slut Bulgarian politics is, what a pointless occupation it is, how everything is distorted and remade, etc. Mladenov seized the right moment and forced thirty or so half-asleep deputies to stand up and honor the memory of the recently deceased Dimi Panitsa.
Among them were a dozen socialists.
And in a hurry, thirty or so daredevils built a monument to the notorious “Bulgarian trace” in the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II.
A filth that Bulgaria has not been able to shake off for decades – and now it was resurrected in two minutes!
There is no such parliament in the world, there cannot be, with such ignorant people, ready to swallow any nonsense – and every insult.
With the ease with which such things are swallowed, tomorrow Mladenov can make them stand up for Bulgaria's funeral, if he decides that NATO and one or two foreign embassies are enough for us.
These people have no limit to their exaltation, their biases, their knees are bruised from kneeling here and there, before this or that temporary Deity.
But not before the Truth.
These people will never provoke the initially sleepy deputies to honor the memory of a Bulgarian of great caliber who truly deserves our respect, or ultimately - the memory of a real victim.
Do you want an example? Here - Sergey Antonov, an ordinary Bulgarian who became a victim of the most disgusting conspiracy during the Cold War.
Antonov is nothing to such people, the suffering of the victims does not interest them at all.
When Antonov died, not a single Bulgarian statesman went to his funeral. They found him a few days after his death.
There has never been a dumber game of the world services - than the one to which our poor man became a victim.
People remember the story of the Russian spy Colonel Abel, who was exchanged on a bridge in Germany with the American pilot Powers, and other similar stories are known, always heroic, very often involving double and triple traitors.
Towards the end of the Cold War, they were highly valued, and both systems reeked of the rot of betrayal. However, this was presented as heroism.
And our man became the victim of a truly idiotic conspiracy. At that time, unfortunately, the Guantanamo Bay detention center was also gone - if it had been there, they would have found out in 20 minutes at most that Antonov was innocent.
The trick for everything came from the aforementioned Panitsa.
Now it is mentioned that for years he gave a journalism award in the name of some foundation of his. Although it would have been much more honest if the award had been named after Claire Sterling - the Wizard of Lies - which he generously financed.
On June 22, 2003, I spoke with Professor Melvin Goodman via a television bridge to Washington.
Goodman was a senior and chief analyst in the CIA's Soviet Affairs Division. He was also a senior analyst at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department, as well as an intelligence advisor to the negotiations on limiting strategic arms in Vienna and Washington. Expert on the Eastern Bloc. General of the CIA.
Prof. Goodman at the time of the interview was a senior fellow and director of the National Security Project at the Center for International Policy. Chairman of the Department of International Relations at the US National War College. Adjunct Professor of Government at the American University. Professor – PhD from Indiana University. Co-author of the book “Eduard Shevardnadze's Wars“.
From time to time, testimonies like this interview need to be recalled so that the new Janissaries cannot completely gnaw away at History.
- Prof. Goodman, you claim that you do not believe in the “Bulgarian trace“?
- No, I do not. From 1981 to 1985, the CIA had very solid evidence that Bulgaria was not involved in the assassination, nor was the Soviet Union. However, the CIA director at the time, William Casey, and his deputy, Robert Gates, commissioned a report that would have implicated either the Bulgarians or the Soviets as conspirators in the Pope's assassination.
All this was done in secret, I was not informed. When I learned of this report, I officially protested to Mr. Gates, claiming that all this violated the ethics of intelligence work and intelligence analysis. However, a year later, Robert Gates was nominated as director of the CIA for the second time by President George H.W. Bush. And I testified before the Senate committee that was supposed to confirm Robert Gates' appointment - I insisted that he not be appointed, because a person who distorts the truth, who actually lies, should not hold such a position. The inscription in the lobby of the CIA - "And you shall know the truth, and it shall make you free" - is a quote from the Bible. Mr. Casey was not interested, Gates was not interested in the truth either.
- Have you seen the Bulgarian who provided information for the preparation of the report commissioned by Casey?
- No, I have not seen him. And he was not a particularly important source, which is why the secret services were reluctant to accept his information. They would not have seen the light of day if William Casey had not shown special interest in the subject.
- Is there a connection between this report and the later investigation of Claire Sterling?
- Many of the claims in her book are literally black propaganda, which, thanks to the efforts of the CIA, ended up in European newspapers. Bill Casey simply bought a copy of Sterling's book and asked his associates: “Okay, why don't we write the kind of analyses that Claire Sterling writes?“ Many of the things in Sterling's book are pure disinformation, propaganda, the source of which is the CIA itself. A few years later, she already specifically wrote about the assassination attempt on the Pope, blaming the Bulgarians and the Russians. And to a large extent, this work was related to Casey's initiative.
- Can it be said that in this case the CIA was a kind of ideological tool? Or at least Casey?
- In most cases, the CIA does its job very well. With the exception of this case of assessing the assassination, for which the two of them - Gates and Casey - are responsible. Then the entire department was manipulated by the director and his deputy. And yet, I would not judge the CIA on this single case. Obviously, the analysis then was too compromised, too dishonest, but compared to the overall work of the CIA, this can be called an exception.
- A Bulgarian, Sergey Antonov, became a victim of this affair. You know the CIA people. What do they think about ordinary people, do they even notice them?
- The question is definitely very relevant. However, I am afraid that the CIA does not work at this level. Look, we are talking about analysts who work in a kind of think tank, like a scientific research unit. In my opinion, they do not think much about the consequences of their mistakes. /end of interview/
So, from the very beginning, Casey/CIA does not trust Sterling. She has been drained and discarded.
Immediately after the changes in 1989, I ordered the Budapest television correspondent Radoslav Mihaylov to interview Claire Sterling, who was there at the time.
The lady had softened up a lot. Perhaps the fall of the Wall had shaken her - perhaps she was aware that the market for fakes would already be shrinking.
Then Sterling said the following: “I am convinced that if a full investigation of the case is conducted, it will be possible to clear the name of the Bulgarian people.“
Later in the interview she complained that she was “blocked“ by the secret services, by the CIA, who did not want to talk to her, to give her any information.
And they rejected her “information“ as invalid.
However, one person does not reject it. And he, of course, is Bulgarian.
John-Dimi Panitza was deputy editor-in-chief of the magazine “Reader’s Digest“ in those years. For Sterling's "information" rejected by the CIA, he offered her financial terms that no reporter had ever received before.
Her book is an unimaginable garbage of unprovable claims. It's as if M. Lawson's phrase was invented for her - "the literary equivalent of carrot juice."
Her book is also evidence that the authors of some documentary "research" are increasingly resembling looters on the battlefields of History.