Peter Hebblethwaite writes:
1) My complaint was about a lack of hard evidence in the television programme for the KGB theory. Nor is any produced in Mr Manyon's letter. Instead we are told that it is all in the hands of various secret services. Maybe. But that confirms rather than falsifies my point. Anyway, why was this evidence not produced during the trial?
2) I never suggested that Agca was a Moslem. I said that he has a Moslem background. That is indubitable and enough to affect the way he thinks.
3) If Agca acted for money, why did he have no credible get-away plan? A hit man doing a job would have wanted to escape and spend his earnings. Yet Agca did not even know from which side of St Peter's Square the Pope would emerge.
4) The fact that Agca did not go to Libya from Tunisia does not prove that he made no contact with Libyans.
5) Neither the programme nor the letter offers any plausible explanation for the visit to Majorca. Up to five days before the assassination attempt, Agca was in Palma, Majorca, on a package tour with Italian honeymoon couples. This event, at such a crucial moment, is so bizarre as to require explanation. Or is Palma a notorious haven for the Bulgarian secret service?
6) Even after 16 years of reporting Vatican affairs, I am not so cynical as to believe that a Vatican 'denial' means the opposite of what it says.
7) Finally, the 'philosophical' problem that I was raising was missed. What makes an explanation a 'good' explanation? Is it enough that is should be coherent? What counts as evidence?
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