'His information is often so precise that many people believe he is the unofficial historian of the secret services. His books are peppered with deliberate clues to potential front-page stories' (The Sunday Times)
The THIRD Secret
The rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s, which began the undermining of the Soviet Bloc and the defeat of international communism, was essentially funded by the CIA covertly, through the Vatican. Pope John Paul II (elected in 1978) had a deep interest in mysticism and long believed in "the third secret" - the third piece of advice given to the eldest of the three children at Fatima (Portugal) in 1917 by an apparition of the Virgin Mary. This secret, written down by the last surviving child, who became a nun, was revealed by the Pope in 1980 and described an avoidable apocalyptic catastrophe in Europe. Thereafter the Pope began his ideological offensive against the Soviet Bloc.
"In May 1981 a Turkish Mafioso, Mehmet Ali Aga, attempted but failed to kill the Pope in St Peter's Square. western intelligence has been trying to discover who was behind the attack ever since. West has conducted the most painstaking and detailed investigation of this mystery to date... Chapters on the Solidarity movement in Poland, and the eventual victory of Solidarity, which sparked off the disintegration of European Communism, read like an entertaining adventure novel."
Oleg Gordievsky, The Literary Review