Averting Armageddon
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984. First Edition. Presumed first printing. Hardcover. 24 cm. x, [4], 322 pages. Index, DJ worn, soiled, and edge tears, ink notation and pencil erasure on front endpaper, a few marginal ink marks & notations. Derived from a Kirkus review: The Vatican as an International Crisis Center, with the Pope and a corps of clerical diplomats manning the telex machines, dashing around the globe on emergency missions, trying to bring peace to belligerent states and order to the Church. Thomas and Morgan-Witts are old Vatican hands (since '63). They now turn to Mehmet Ali Agca and the Bulgarian Connection, Papa Wojtyla's duels with the Jaruzelski government and Moscow, the strong CIA presence in Rome, efforts at intervention in Lebanon and Guatemala, etc. The authors provide inside information garnered from people like the head of Vatican security, Camillo Cibin. Their report is crammed with detailed little items of some interest and at least one large question mark (secret agent Frank Terpil's part in the assassination plot). More