Did Gorby order hit on Pope John Paul II?

Pope John Paul II in the moments after the May 1981 assassination attempt

Smoking new allegations in a new book charge former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, now the darling of the West, signed off on an assassination plot against Pope John Paul II – a plot that resulted in the late pope being wounded by a Turkish gunman.

In the decades since the May 1981 attempt on the pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, allegations have been made that prominent Soviet leaders were involved.

John O. Kohler's new book, titled "It's About the Pope: Spies in the Vatican," just released in the late pope's home of Poland, contains sensational documents pointing the finger at Gorbachev.

The book published by ZNAK Publishing House, known for its publications about the late pope, reveals information from a document signed by Soviet Politburo members calling for the use of "all available possibilities to prevent a new political trend, initiated by the Polish pope." The command is interpreted, by the author, as an "informal death sentence" against the former pope. Among the signatories was then senior Soviet Communist Party official and later leader of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev.

The command was given to members of the KGB by members of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party in November 1979.

"I was shocked, when I had found this order," Kohler said. "The means 'beyond disinformation and discreditation' meant only one thing: an approval to kill the pope," he told a leading Polish weekly, Wprost, prior to the official launching of his book in Poland.

Polish journalists, Rafal Paztelanski and Grzegorz Sadowski released an article in the Polish weekly, Wprost, on the same day the book was released, agreeing with the books claims.

Mikhail Gorbachev

According to the article, Koehler discovered KGB documents in the archives of the Stasi, the secret service of the communist East Germany, instructing that the involvement of the Bulgarian secret services in the plot against the pope be suppressed.

Other signatories included prominent Soviet Communist Party members including: the chief of the Soviet propaganda, Mikhail Suslov; members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Andrei Kirilenko and Konstantin Chernenko; and secretaries of the Central Committee, Vladimir Ponomarev, Ivan Kapitonov, Mikhail Zimyanin, Vladimir Dolgikh and Konstantin Rusakov, who was responsible for establishing the contacts with the Polish Communist Party.

For years, allegations of Bulgarian involvement in the attempt on the former pope's life have circulated. U.S. writer Claire Sterling released "Time of the Assassins" in 1983, furthering the allegation. She purported that the KGB had assigned the Bulgarian secret service to assassinate John Paul II. They later came up with a plot involving the Turkish extremist group that had been involved in drug smuggling with Bulgaria.

Ali Mehmet Agca, a Turkish extremist, was sentenced in July 1981 for shooting the pope. John Paul II later met with him and publicly forgave him. Agca was later released after he repented of the crime.

In March 2006, an Italian parliamentary commission declared the USSR had backed the attempt of the pope's life, because of his support for Solidarity, the trade union federation that opposed the communist regime in Poland. The commission also alleged that Bulgarian secret service agents tried to cover up any involvement of the USSR.

In May 2002, while visiting Bulgaria, the former pope said he never believed that Bulgaria had been involved in the assassination attempt. However, a book released after his death revealed that privately the pope may have believed the KGB was behind the attempt and did not rule out Bulgarian complicity.