He later decides to make contact with the local CIA station chief Edward Foley as well as his wife and agent Mary Pat Foley, intending to defect and then be extracted from the Soviet Union with his family, in exchange for providing information on the assassination plot as well as the names of KGB deep-penetration agents in the American and British governments. Meanwhile, Oleg Zaitzev, a communications officer in the KGB tasked with sending and receiving encrypted dispatches to and from KGB stations across Europe, pieces together the plot to kill the pope, and becomes deeply troubled with the prospect of murdering an innocent person for political purposes. The operation was later unanimously approved by the Politburo. Known only by its designated number 15-8-82-666 for security reasons, the assassin is then selected as a Turkish Muslim, Mehmet Ali Ağca, who would then be eliminated by Bulgarian KDS officer Boris Strokov afterwards for deniability. He decides to plan for the pope’s assassination, which he believes would reinvigorate Communism in Eastern Europe, perceived by many to be in a state of decline.

Called the Warsaw Letter, it was later forwarded to Moscow, enraging Committee for State Security (KGB) director Yuri Andropov. In 1982, Pope John Paul II privately issues a letter to the communist Polish government, stating that he will resign from the papacy and return to his hometown unless they cease their repression of counterrevolutionary movements in Poland, particularly the Solidarity trade union.

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