Pope John Paul II, meeting with President Reagan in the Viscaya, a lavish mansion on Biscayne Bay, Miami, September 10, 1987. One of many face-to-face meetings with Reagan.
From AP News Service
In a partnership that involved many trade-offs on such issues as abortion and nuclear arms, the US government and Pope John Paul II secretly worked together to hasten the fall of communism in Poland and other Eastern European countries, according to the new book, co-written by Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein.
The Pope met many times with the late CIA Director William Casey and former Deputy Director of CIA Vernon Walters – in total, 15 times, exchanging sensitive information in a joint effort to bring democracy to Poland, while avoiding Soviet military intervention, according to the book, written together with the Italian reporter Marco Politi.
As part of this informal alliance between the United States and the pontiff in the Vatican, President Reagan cut off funding for family planning programs overseas, and the Pope kept silent on US efforts to install cruise missiles in Western Europe.
The authors obtained classified US cables to the White House, CIA and State Department, revealing the contents of secret discussions between the Pope and the Reagan administration. They also conducted hundreds of interviews with the key players in Rome, Washington, Warsaw and Moscow.
Of course the Vatican had no response to the book: "His Holiness: John Paul II and the Hidden History of Our Time," released last month by Doubleday.
But in 1992, after the TIME magazine article written by Bernstein made similar claims of an alliance between the Pope and the US government, the Papal Vatican spokesman, Joaquin Navarro called the conclusions "bizarre" and said that the Pope never met with Casey of the CIA.
The Pope said publicly that Reagan and himself were committed to fighting totalitarianism.
According to the book and the documents obtained, the Pope was informed, consulted and was in agreement with the secret funding of the Polish counter-revolutionary Solidarity Union, totaling more than $50 millions.
The agreement to stop funding millions of dollars for family planning around the world was done "in deference to the Pope" the book says.
The book also notes that the Pope agreed to be silent, after appeals from President Reagan, on the introduction of a new generation of US cruise missiles into Western Europe, facing the Soviet Union.
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