Paul B. Henze
US intelligence officer, writer (1924–2011)
Paul Bernard Henze (29 August 1924, Redwood Falls – 19 May 2011, Culpeper) was a writer, Central Intelligence Agency operative and American broadcaster with Radio Free Europe. Henze was the CIA station chief for Ethiopia and Turkey during the 1960s and 1970s.
Henze graduated from St. Olaf College and Harvard University. During the Carter Administration he served as a deputy to National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. He was encouraged Zbigniew Brzezinski in the formation of the Nationalities Working Group in 1978, of which Henze was appointed head. Influenced by his friend Alexandre Bennigsen, this group advocated the promotion of Islamism as a tool for undermining Soviet hegemony in Central Asia.
Henze wrote The Plot to Kill the Pope in which advocated the view that the Soviet Union was involved in an assassination attempt on John Paul II in 1981.
Works
Henze has published 156 works, including:
Layers of Time: A History of Ethiopia (35 editions, 1999–2004) ISBN 1137117869
The Plot to Kill the Pope (18 editions, 1983–1985) ISBN 068418060X
The Horn of Africa: From War to Peace (18 editions, 1991–2016) ISBN 9781349214563
Personal life
Henze died on May 19, 2011 (aged 86) in Culpeper, Virginia due to complications from a stroke.
“Paul B. Henze” enters the record as uS intelligence officer, writer (1924–2011). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Paul, Henze and intelligence can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6095388. VIAF identifies the subject as 110828845. The Library of Congress control number is n78013532. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1924, 2011, 1978 and 1981.
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This entry incorporates text from “Paul B. Henze” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.