Category: Events

62 articles in this category

1953 Iran coup — The U.S.- and UK-backed overthrow of Iran's democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh; per John Kiriakou, the coup served British national interests rather than American ones, and the subsequent outlawing of secular political opposition under the Shah forced dissent into the mosques — producing a religious rather than secular revolution in 1979.
1993 Bush Kuwait assassination plot — Iraqi intelligence plot, foiled by Kuwaiti authorities, to assassinate former President George H. W. Bush during his post-liberation "victory lap" visit to Kuwait; the U.S. response, per John Kiriakou's first-person account of his telephone call with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell, was 47 cruise missiles fired into the Iraqi Intelligence Service headquarters in Baghdad eight hours later.
Afghanistan 2011 Kerry Trip — John Kiriakou's 2011 trip to Afghanistan as senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under Chairman John Kerry, where the pair sat through a briefing with 11 one-to-four-star generals presenting an optimistic account of the war — after which Kerry mused the U.S. might win, only for Kiriakou to tell him the U.S. controlled only Kabul, and that the same rosy briefing had been given every year since 2002.
Bahrain Posting (1994–1996) — John Kiriakou's 1994–1996 assignment to Bahrain under U.S. State Department cover as second secretary for economic affairs — arriving with his wife Joanne and infant son Chris on August 1, 1994, into a tiny Gulf monarchy whose sectarian tensions erupted, two months later, into the first Intifada.
Bahrain Intifada (1994) — The first Bahraini Intifada, a Shia uprising against the Sunni Al Khalifa monarchy that began roughly two months into John Kiriakou's 1994 Bahrain posting with a bombing at the Ministry of Labor, led by Abdul Amir Al-Jamri, and met by the government first with police, then armored personnel carriers and tanks, and executions.
Bojinka plot — 1996 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed–planned operation, prepared in a Manila, Philippines apartment, to hijack as many as fourteen Boeing 747s and crash them into buildings along the U.S. West Coast; disrupted only by accident, when a cleaning lady let herself into the apartment while the planner was out, recognized the materials laid out as a terrorist plot, and called the police — who alerted Filipino intelligence and, in turn, the CIA. The plot's architect was known to U.S. intelligence for the next six years only by the alias "Mukhtar," his true identity as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed surfacing only when Abu Zubaydah named him to FBI agent Ali Soufan in 2002.
Camp David Final Talks — Middle East peace negotiations held at Camp David in the final days of the Clinton administration. Per John Kiriakou — relaying an account from a senior NSC officer who was present — the talks came extraordinarily close to a comprehensive agreement: with President Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres around an enormous Sharpie-marked map of Jerusalem, dividing the city block by block. When the division was complete, Gore said 'My God, we have peace' — and Arafat replied 'I can never sell this to the Palestinian people' and walked out.
Chinese spy balloon incident — 2023 controversy over a high-altitude balloon that crossed U.S. airspace, widely labeled in media coverage as a "Chinese spy balloon"; John Kiriakou notes no U.S. government official ever officially confirmed it was conducting espionage, and says he personally believes it was likely a weather balloon, since satellite surveillance already renders such balloons unnecessary for spying.
Founding of the CIA (1947) — John Kiriakou's account of the CIA's creation under the National Security Act of 1947 — built with British MI6 help after a chaotic 1945-47 interregnum, and opposed by J. Edgar Hoover until Truman falsely promised him the new agency would be part of the FBI.
CIA Gmail account felony case — Per John Kiriakou, a CIA colleague working the counterterrorism fusion center night shift was ordered by cable to check a terrorist suspect's Gmail account and password, did so, and was later charged with a felony for illegally accessing a computer — despite having acted only on explicit written instructions from headquarters.
Dasht-i-Leili massacre — Late-November 2001 mass suffocation of approximately 2,000 surrendered Taliban prisoners in unventilated shipping containers in the Afghan desert; the prisoners' surrender was negotiated by the CIA via the Northern Alliance, the transport order was issued by the CIA, and the operation was overseen by Northern Alliance warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum; John Kiriakou in 2009 as Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigator attempted to reopen the case under a 2008 Obama campaign promise; the CIA's classified response was, per Kiriakou, "go fuck yourself."
David Rockefeller in Bahrain — Per John Kiriakou — economic officer at the American Embassy in Bahrain, 1994–1996, and control officer for a David Rockefeller visit — Rockefeller's award from the US-Bahrain Banking Society was a cover stop. After three days of documented public appearances, Rockefeller flew on a military plane to Baghdad to deliver a secret message to Saddam Hussein: stop violating sanctions, or the United States would take military action. Kiriakou cites the trip as a textbook case of how public figures are used as deniable back-channel intermediaries.
Democratic Party 2025 Political Snapshot — John Kiriakou's 2025 assessment of Democratic Party weakness — a record-low 24% approval rating, seven Senate Democrats crossing over to hand Trump a spending-bill win with no concessions, and California governor Gavin Newsom's surprising denial of parole to a large group of long-incarcerated eligible inmates, which Kiriakou reads as Newsom "playing the long game."
Forward Operating Base Chapman Attack — December 30, 2009 suicide bombing at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan, killing seven CIA officers and wounding more than a dozen others — the deadliest single day in CIA history. Per John Kiriakou, the officer who led the base was a GS-14 with zero security training, assigned to the post as a career-promotion checkbox before her required elevation to the Senior Intelligence Service. The bomber — a Jordanian national who walked into the American consulate in Istanbul claiming to be Osama bin Laden's doctor — was never polygraphed because CIA personnel 'wanted so badly for this to be true.'
Galls.com sponsor story — John Kiriakou's account of outfitting the CIA's post-9/11 Islamabad station for terrorist-safe-house raids by ordering roughly $50,000 of tactical gear from the law-enforcement retailer galls.com on his CIA credit card, shipped to Pakistan via State Department diplomatic pouch in under a week — a story he now retells as an ad-read for the retailer, which sponsors one of his podcast appearances.
Gay Diplomat Operation — Per John Kiriakou, a CIA recruitment operation he ran against a foreign diplomat who was closeted and gay. After months of cultivation under cover as a gay man, Kiriakou attempted to kiss the diplomat at his apartment and was deflated by the response: 'I am gay. I'm just not into hairy guys.' The romantic gambit failed — but the recruitment ultimately succeeded anyway, because the diplomat had been passed over for a promotion and was angry enough at his own government to cooperate. Kiriakou cites the operation as evidence that financial motivation and personal grievance, not coercion, are the reliable drivers of recruitment.
Giuliani Pardon Solicitation — Per John Kiriakou, a meeting at the Trump International Hotel in Washington in which Rudy Giuliani's associate solicited $2 million in exchange for a presidential pardon — a story that subsequently appeared as a front-page New York Times article. Giuliani publicly denied ever meeting Kiriakou; Kiriakou sent the Times the photograph taken at the meeting that morning, and the paper published the story with the note that it had seen documentary proof.
Haqqani White House meeting — A mid-to-late-1980s White House meeting between President Ronald Reagan and a Taliban delegation, per John Kiriakou — a former boss of his served as translator. One member of that delegation, a man named Haqqani, went on to found the Haqqani network, later responsible for the capture of Bowe Bergdahl and the kidnapping, rape, and torture of a Canadian couple.
Haroon Yenor trial — Federal terrorism prosecution in which John Kiriakou testified as a defense expert witness; Yenor, arrested in November 2024 on charges tied to an alleged plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange and a synagogue, was acquitted on all six charges on June 30; Kiriakou's expert testimony argued the FBI supplied the idea, the bomb, the explosives, the timer, the detonation cord, and the getaway car.
Hunter Biden Laptop — John Kiriakou's assessment of the Hunter Biden laptop controversy — he saw nothing related to child sex abuse in the material but says the Biden family, particularly Hunter, has serious documented substance-abuse problems; and that the 2020 open letter in which 51 former intelligence officials called the story a Russian/KGB-style operation used deliberately hedged, CIA-trained language and was later shown (per Michael Morell's testimony) to have been solicited by the Biden campaign.
Iran 12-Day War — 2025 Israeli air campaign against Iran during which Israel killed at least fourteen Iranian nuclear scientists by destroying the apartment buildings they lived in; preceded for each scientist by Farsi-language telephone calls from Iranian-Jewish Mossad and Shin Bet officers offering defection in lieu of certain death; characterized by John Kiriakou as a categorical departure from CIA targeting doctrine in its acceptable-civilian-casualty calculus.
Iran's 2024 drone retaliation — John Kiriakou's account of Iran's telegraphed 2024 drone strike on Israel — hundreds of slow drones, launched with advance warning to the U.S. and Jordan, nearly all shot down, which he reads as a controlled show of force and an intelligence victory that exposed the Iron Dome.
Iran-Contra — The mid-1980s scandal in which the Reagan administration secretly sold weapons to Iran and diverted the proceeds — laundered through Cyprus — to fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Per John Kiriakou, Iran-Contra marks the precise end of what he calls the 'golden age' of congressional intelligence oversight: the roughly 1975–1982 window opened by the Church and Pike Committees, when 'serious people, heavyweights' actually held the CIA accountable. After Iran-Contra, he says, the oversight committees reverted to being 'cheerleaders' for the agency — a posture that has held ever since.
Iran Nuclear Assessment — Per John Kiriakou's assessment, the US–Israeli military campaign against Iran was a war of choice driven by Israeli political pressure rather than genuine intelligence indicating an Iranian nuclear weapons threat. The CIA produced two National Intelligence Estimates concluding Iran had no nuclear weapons program; Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei issued a fatwa in the 1980s forbidding such a program. The U.S. went to war anyway, in Kiriakou's view, after President Trump replaced the Joint Chiefs of Staff with officers willing to accept Israeli intelligence and proceed.
Iraq War Israeli tower sabotage — Per John Kiriakou, after the U.S. rejected Israel's request to join the coalition for the Iraq War in late 2002/early 2003 — fearing the loss of Jordanian, Egyptian, and Saudi cooperation — communications towers across the western Iraqi desert began being toppled by explosives; when the New York Times asked the CIA if Israel was responsible, the agency denied any Israeli involvement.
Ismail Haniyeh assassination — John Kiriakou's account of the killing of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, which he says Israel carried out via a bomb planted months in advance in Haniyeh's regular guesthouse and detonated remotely — an operation he contrasts with the diplomatic and airspace complications a missile strike would have entailed.
Jack Murphy NATO Sabotage Story — John Kiriakou's account of a story reported by podcaster Jack Murphy — over a year in the making, drawing on CIA and Army intelligence sources — alleging the CIA worked through a NATO partner to conduct sabotage inside Russia, including munitions-warehouse fires and rail explosions; killed before publication after the CIA deputy director denied it on a call with the editor and blamed "rogue Ukrainians."
JFK assassination — November 22, 1963 killing of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. John Kiriakou's position, drawn from a Pakistan-station encounter with Bay of Pigs commander Jean Gately, an RFK Jr. account of CIA Director John McCone's same-day exchange with Bobby Kennedy Sr., and a White House contact's confirmation that the remaining classified Kennedy documents all contain the word "Israel," is that elements of the CIA were probably involved and that Israeli intelligence was involved as well.
Kent State shooting — The 1970 shooting of unarmed student protesters by the Ohio National Guard; John Kiriakou says a family friend's daughter was among those killed — an event that, alongside the King and Kennedy assassinations, helped form his political conscience.
Khobar Towers bombing — June 25, 1996 truck bombing of a U.S. military housing complex in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, that killed 19 U.S. Air Force personnel. John Kiriakou, then a CIA officer living across the water in Bahrain, felt the blast shatter his own windows and drove to the scene the next morning. He says the U.S. government worked hard to blame Iran and a small Saudi Hezbollah cell with no evidence, when the attack was in fact carried out by a radical Saudi group — a predecessor of al-Qaeda, which took credit for it.
Kiki Camarena case — 1985 abduction and murder of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena in Mexico; cited by John Kiriakou as the trigger for the 1985 U.S. statute authorizing the extraterritorial seizure of foreign nationals — the legal authority underpinning the 2026 U.S. operation that seized President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela.
Kiriakou Greek whistleblower law — A whistleblower protection law John Kiriakou says he was hired by the Greek government to write in 2015, at the invitation of Greece, after which it was passed by both the European Parliament and the Greek Parliament and became law across the European Union. Per Kiriakou, the law's first courtroom use involved a whistleblower who exposed Greece's defense minister for taking bribes from Siemens; the resulting press coverage led a consortium of Greece's four wealthiest families to ask Kiriakou to run a private equity fund for them.
Kiriakou's mother's 2008 trip to Israel — John Kiriakou recounts his mother's 2008 church-group trip to Israel and the West Bank, during which she was struck by the contrast between first-world Tel Aviv and a walled, mined Palestinian town, and witnessed an IDF soldier tear apart a Palestinian bus driver's novel as suspected "PLO propaganda." Kiriakou made two trips of his own to Israel in 2022, including one to cover the elections, during which he personally witnessed a fatal stabbing at Jerusalem's Iron Gate.
Kiriakou's transfer to the Directorate of Operations — John Kiriakou's roughly two-month internal campaign to transfer from the CIA's analytic Directorate of Intelligence to the operational Directorate of Operations, overcoming what he calls a "natural bias in operations against the eggheads on the analytic side," followed by an Athens posting secured because he was the only person in the entire CIA fluent in both Greek and Arabic. Covers his full CIA career arc from 1988/1990 recruitment through analyst years on Iraq, the switch to operations, 9/11, the enhanced-interrogation refusal, executive assistant to the deputy director for operations, and his eventual resignation and post-CIA career.
The Kite Runner rescue mission — 2007 covert operation in which John Kiriakou, newly departed from the CIA and working as a corporate-intelligence consultant, was hired by Paramount Studios to secretly evacuate the Afghan child actors of the film "The Kite Runner" and their extended families after real death threats over the film's content.
Iraqi invasion of Kuwait — John Kiriakou's most detailed account of the intelligence process around the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and its 1991 liberation. As a first-year CIA analyst on a 'training account' covering Iraq, Kiriakou produced the June 30, 1990 warning paper for the White House; suggested calling the US Defense Attaché in Baghdad to drive to the border and report what he saw (the answer: 'Literally the entire Iraqi military is heading south'); briefed the August 2 Oval Office meeting with Bush; and later took a single phone call from General Colin Powell that led, eight hours later, to 47 cruise missiles striking the Iraqi Intelligence Service headquarters in Baghdad.
Kuwait Liberation Day — February 1991 expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait by the U.S.-led coalition; John Kiriakou entered the country with U.S. Marines on the day of liberation; the small American flags waved by the crowds — and the post-liberation arrival of Democratic and Republican National Committee personnel ostensibly to assist the country's transition to democracy — were, per Kiriakou, the work of professional propagandist John Rendon.
Kuwait oil fires — The February 1991 sabotage by retreating Iraqi forces of an estimated 600–800 Kuwaiti oil wells; per John Kiriakou's first-person account, the fires blackened the desert and blotted out the sun as far away as Riyadh, vaporized two French journalists who drove onto a sheet of melted-sand glass, and were extinguished only by an international team led by American specialist Red Adair using a Rolls-Royce jet engine to blow the flames out.
Lincoln's last turd — A purported piece of human waste attributed by a Pennsylvania circus-freak-show museum to Abraham Lincoln on the night of his assassination; auctioned for $5,000; subsequent DNA analysis disproved the attribution. John Kiriakou's failed bid for the artifact is the anecdote that, recirculated in early 2026, made him an internet meme figure.
Maduro Capture — CIA-driven nighttime operation in which a team of Delta Force commandos entered Venezuela and removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife from their beds. Per John Kiriakou, the key enabling intelligence — per a New York Times account he cited — came from a CIA asset inside Maduro's presidential palace who called when Maduro went to sleep: 'He's sound asleep. If you're going to do it, do it now.' At least eighty people were killed in the operation, including approximately thirty-five Cubans. Kiriakou compares it to the 1989 capture of Manuel Noriega, in which US forces blasted death metal at the Vatican Embassy until Noriega was asked to leave.
Mark Zuckerberg–Angela Merkel Meeting — Per Kiriakou, a meeting Mark Zuckerberg held with then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel around the time of Barack Obama's election, to discuss hate-speech policy on Facebook.
Mir Aimal Kansi CIA headquarters attack — The 1993 shooting outside CIA headquarters by Pakistani gunman Mir Aimal Kansi, who killed two and wounded seven CIA-bound commuters before fleeing to Pakistan; per John Kiriakou, the CIA located Kansi months later but had to hand the arrest to the FBI, and the resulting "how the FBI got their man" Time magazine cover so enraged senior CIA officers that it shaped the agency's insistence on going it alone against al-Qaeda after 9/11.
Ninth Circuit contractor ruling (2025) — Approximately July 2025 U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruling, in a case brought by Abu Zubaydah against CIA contractors who had tortured him, holding that contractors operating under a written CIA contract are legally protected as agents of the agency; extends Executive Order 12333 authority to contractor operations including the Blackwater assassination program; received almost no U.S. media coverage.
Nord Stream pipeline sabotage — The 2022 destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, whose responsibility John Kiriakou treats as genuinely unresolved — citing Seymour Hersh's reporting that the CIA did it, a later Ukrainian special-forces claim of a sailboat-based operation carried out without Zelensky's knowledge, and a retired CIA colleague's private theory that Putin blew up his own pipeline to blame the Americans.
October 7 attack — John Kiriakou's analysis of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack as a policy failure, not an intelligence one — Israel was warned repeatedly, but Itamar Ben-Gvir diverted response forces to the West Bank, and Kiriakou believes Israel welcomed a pretext for overwhelming retaliation.
Pakistan Station (2002) — John Kiriakou's January 2002 arrival in Islamabad to become CIA chief of counterterrorism operations — a journey via London and Kuwait with lost luggage, a warning that steered him away from the soon-to-be-bombed Marriott, a skeleton counterterrorism branch of seven CIA retirees, and the raids that followed.
Principals Committee Meeting (February 2003) — Senior-most interagency forum of the U.S. national security apparatus, normally chaired by the president. Per John Kiriakou — who served as notetaker for CIA Director George Tenet at the eve-of-Iraq-invasion meeting on February 19–20, 2003 — Vice President Dick Cheney chaired in place of Bush, General Tommy Franks ended his order-of-battle briefing with 'If all goes as planned, we can be in Tehran by August,' and an NSC senior director said 'When we cross that border tomorrow morning, they're going to throw flowers at us.'
Qala-i-Jangi uprising — The late-November 2001 prisoner uprising at a fortress in northern Afghanistan during which CIA officer Mike Spann was killed; the event during which the American al-Qaeda figure John Walker Lindh was captured; among the first major firefights of the post-9/11 Afghan campaign.
Remains of the Day Treasury Clerk Story — John Kiriakou's account of finding the grave of an obscure Treasury Department clerk who, during the 1814 British burning of Washington, rescued the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Washington's military commission from the National Archives — and who, after later being deemed too difficult, was quietly transferred to the National Lighthouse Service, where out of boredom he invented the refractor light still used in American lighthouses today.
RFK Assassination — Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968 in Los Angeles; per John Kiriakou, physically impossible to attribute to Sirhan Sirhan alone — Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi determined the fatal shot was fired from behind and below Kennedy's right ear at close range while Sirhan stood in front, the crime scene yielded more bullets than Sirhan's revolver could hold, and a hotel security guard named 'Caesar' was captured on video standing behind Kennedy at the moment of the shooting.
Rhodes Jewish deportation and family rescue story — John Kiriakou's account of the 1944 Nazi roundup and deportation of roughly 2,000 Jewish residents of the island of Rhodes to Auschwitz, of whom only 14 survived — and of his own great-grandfather, a chauffeur, hiding his Jewish employer from the Nazis until the war's end.
Ruby Ridge — 1992 federal standoff in Idaho involving Randy Weaver, triggered by an allegation that Weaver had sold a shotgun with a barrel two inches shorter than the legal minimum; per John Kiriakou, FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi shot and killed Weaver's wife while she was holding her baby, and Horiuchi was never punished. Kiriakou describes Ruby Ridge as one of the events that, after his own imprisonment, caused him to fundamentally reassess his earlier acceptance of the official government account.
Senate Torture Report — The December 2014 executive summary of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's study of the CIA's post-9/11 detention and interrogation program; the first public disclosure of techniques including rectal feeding with hummus, sexual assault with broomsticks, and prolonged sleep deprivation.
Truman's CIA op-ed — A 1963 Washington Post op-ed in which former President Harry Truman — who signed the CIA into being in 1947 — called it a 'damn fool mistake' that should be disbanded; John Kiriakou notes the piece ran in the morning edition and vanished from the evening one.
Venezuela Boat Strikes — September 2025 U.S. military strike on a boat in the Caribbean that killed 11 people the White House called drug traffickers; John Kiriakou calls it piracy on the high seas followed by mass murder, arguing the victims were never charged with a crime and that the boat's unusual passenger count undercuts the drug-trafficking story.
Venezuelan embassy occupation (2019) — A 2019 sit-in at the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, D.C., which John Kiriakou says he joined at the Venezuelan government's request the night the United States broke relations with Venezuela; he says he still keeps Venezuelan government property from that night at his house.
2026 congressional landscape — John Kiriakou's read on two developments affecting the 2026 midterm landscape — the Supreme Court's disallowance of Virginia's redistricting, which he says makes a Democratic House win less certain given widespread Republican-favoring gerrymandering, and Marjorie Taylor Greene's resignation despite winning her last race with 77.5% of the vote, because she knew she could not survive another Republican primary.
Waco Siege — 1993 federal operation against the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, led by David Koresh, resulting in the deaths of more than twenty-seven people — more than half of them children. Per John Kiriakou, a CIA colleague's reaction upon hearing the news was 'It's about time.' Kiriakou describes this as the kind of response he once might have shared, but which his later experiences with government abuse of power caused him to revisit.
Witness K case — Australian intelligence scandal in which a former ASIS officer known as Witness K exposed Australia's bugging of the East Timorese cabinet during oil and gas revenue negotiations; his lawyer, Bernard Collaery, describes the ASIO raids on both their homes and offices as paralleling the FBI's raid on John Kiriakou.
Yellowcake Niger forgery — The fabricated intelligence document claiming Iraq had attempted to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger; passed to the U.S. via the British (originally from the Italians); identified by CIA analysts including John Kiriakou as a forgery on sight ("it's not even in the right font"); pulled from President George W. Bush's State of the Union draft by Colin Powell; reinserted by Vice President Dick Cheney; pulled out by the CIA again; delivered in the 2003 State of the Union address anyway.
Yemen Diplomatic Pouch Arrest — Per John Kiriakou, his most wholly negative experience with a foreign intelligence service: arrested at Sana'a Airport in Yemen in 1991, eighteen months into his CIA career, after his Riyadh station chief asked him to carry a diplomatic pouch on a long-weekend trip. Yemeni officials demanded the sealed pouch go through the X-ray machine. When the scan revealed a handheld walkie-talkie inside, someone shouted 'Jassus' — spy — and Kiriakou was handcuffed and placed in an airport cell. The incident triggered a diplomatic chain reaction reaching the Yemeni Prime Minister before a Yemeni officer hacked open the diplomatic seal with a curved jambiya dagger to confirm the pouch contained only mail and the radio. Kiriakou spent the rest of the weekend under heavy surveillance; he later said each of his five trips to Yemen was worse than the last.
Zakynthos Holocaust rescue — John Kiriakou's account of the Greek Ionian island of Zakynthos, where the mayor and Orthodox bishop responded to a Nazi demand for a list of the island's Jews by submitting only their own two names, while residents hid every Jewish islander — making Zakynthos, per Kiriakou, the only place in Greece where no Jew died in the Holocaust.