Dear Patriotic Global Citizens and Friends of Ethiopia/Africa/USA:
I am writing to express my profound sadness to the loss of Paul and his wife who I knew for over 40 years in Africa, Europe and here in North America. At last, this great man has passed to another universe in a different form separate from the one we knew here on earth! May be we will meet at Andromeda, Cassiopeia galaxies some time in the future.
If there was one common man in the fore front of the Cold War, that I knew had passion and personal involvement, it was Paul B Henze. He passionately believed Communisms is a serious danger to civilization. He used his camera, power point presentations and personal computer to fight it every where, in the villages of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, London, Moscow, Warsaw or Washington, DC.
Paul was a phenomenon. For me one of the reliable sources of factual information about what was happening in my home country Ethiopia when it was closed to the rest of the world. For the few Ethiopian Diaspora, Paul kept the good faith, by giving us up-date information
He knew the Cold War is an informational war as much as distant proxy war. The Horn of Africa and mainly Addis Ababa was the battle ground. Family members approached by CIA and KGB Agents were fighting it out in the streets and bushes for over 20 years. Thank God for the dedication of Bush Senior and people like Paul, eventually, freedom prevailed.
I would like to express my respect to Paul and his wife to his children and family, who perhaps may not know how much Paul ment to many of us in the Diaspora.
At last, he was able to connect the Polish Catholic Pope who really is the hero of the Cold War who stood up to International Communism face to face and by educating the world about the evil dictatorial system that is now 20 years since its disappearance.
Paul, may your soul rest in peace, you have fought a good fight and the Millennium Blue Nile Dam is one of the products of your hard fight where the whole horn will generate power for industrialization and global communication.
Paul, peace for eternity until we meet some time in another universe! Those of us the living should honor and respect the heroes before us and the Memorial Weekend remembers Paul Henze and his wife.
with regards
Dr BMJ
www.GlobalBelaiJesus.com
Paul B. Henze, former CIA and national security specialist, dies at 86
Paul B. Henze, a former CIA and National Security Council specialist in psychological operations who wrote a compelling and provocative book arguing that the Soviet Union had engineered an attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II, died May 19 at a rehabilitation center in Culpeper, Va.
He was 86 and died of complications after a series of strokes.
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( / FAMILY PHOTO ) - Paul B. Henze wrote “The Plot to Kill the Pope.” The book investigated the 1981 attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II.
Mr. Henze was a CIA station chief in Turkey and Ethi o pia during the 1960s and ’70s and served in the Carter administration as a deputy to National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski.
After retiring from government service near the end of President Jimmy Carter’s term, Mr. Henze became a consultant for the Rand Corp., a think tank. He wrote widely about the history and politics of Ethi o pia and Central Asia in mainstream publications and several books.
Perhaps his best-known book was his first, “The Plot to Kill the Pope” (1983), an investigation into the 1981 attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II, who was shot four times while addressing a crowd at St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City.
A Turk, Mehmet Ali Agca, was convicted of the shooting and spent 19 years in an Italian prison. Mr. Henze argued that Agca, who offered several contradicting explanations for his actions, had been part of a conspiracy involving the Bulgarian and Soviet secret police.
His conclusion was the result of an exhaustive examination into Agca’s connections with suspected terrorist organizations. Using a wide range of sources across Europe, Mr. Henze, who spoke fluent Turkish, reconstructed the would-be assassin’s journey to St. Peter’s via Iran, Bulgaria and Germany.
According to Mr. Henze’s book, Soviet officials saw the Polish-born pope — and his support for Poland’s Solidarity movement and human rights in general — as a threat to the communist empire’s stability.
Another book published soon after Mr. Henze’s — “The Time of the Assassins” by American journalist Claire Sterling — made the same argument, though Mr. Henze’s probed deeper into geopolitical analysis. The two volumes played a key role in opening debate about the attempted slaying.
Writing in the New York Times in 1984, author Edward Jay Epstein declared that Mr. Henze’s volume “provides a brilliant and completely original analysis of sponsored terrorism in Turkey — a subject that, unless new evidence comes to light about the shooting of Pope John Paul, will probably prove to be of more enduring interest than the papal assassination plot.’’
The plot has remained a subject of debate for decades and inspired several books, including the Tom Clancy novel “Red Rabbit” (2002).
The so-called “Bulgarian connection” was endorsed by the CIA. But in 1991, former agency analyst Melvin A. Goodman told the Senate Intelligence Committee that high-ranking CIA officials had pressured staff to conclude that the Soviet KGB had ordered the pope’s assassination.
“The CIA had no evidence linking the KGB to the plot,” Goodman said.
More recently, in 2006, an Italian commission reexamined the assassination attempt and concluded that it had indeed been masterminded by Soviet military intelligence. Russian and Bulgarian officials condemned the finding.
Paul Bernard Henze was born Aug. 29, 1924, in Redwood Falls, Minn. He served in the Army in Europe during World War II.
He graduated in 1948 from St. Olaf College in Minnesota and received a master’s degree in Soviet studies from Harvard University in 1950. He spent many years with Radio Free Europe in Munich, where he first worked alongside Brzezinski.
Among Mr. Henze’s other books were “The Horn of Africa: From War to Peace,” a 1991 analysis of the region’s political and economic troubles, and “Layers of Time” (2000), which traces Ethiopia’s history from 2,000 years ago to the present.
“Henze’s familiarity with the country is encyclopedic, and over the years he must have traveled more widely in Ethi o pia than any other foreigner,” wrote reviewer Christopher Clapham in the London Times Literary Supplement.
Mr. Henze moved from Bethesda to Virginia’s Rappahannock County in 2001. His wife of 59 years, Martha Heck Henze, died in 2009.
Survivors include six children, John Henze of Fredericksburg, Mary Henze of Fairfax County, Sam Henze of Brussels, and Libet Henze, Martin Henze and Alex Henze, all of Rock Mills, Va.; a sister, Lois Henze Martin of Bethesda; a brother, Richard Henze of St. Paul, Minn.; and nine grandchildren.
