More money on security in Athens than Beirut
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Describing his posting to Athens as the Counterterrorism Center representative, John Kiriakou gives a single figure to convey the threat level.

The comparison

"Athens was so dangerous for Americans, well, was back then, we spent more money on security in Athens than we did in Beirut. That's how dangerous it was, because of this group."

The group was Revolutionary Organization 17 November. Kiriakou describes it as so deadly that it had murdered 28 people and wounded hundreds, and had never been caught, indeed, "we were never able to identify a single one of them." The assassinations were carried out in broad daylight in front of thousands of people, "and nobody saw a thing because they were so petrified of being the next victim."

What the spending bought

It bought armour and routine. Kiriakou drove a fully armoured BMW 540, the first in Greece, and uninsurable there because there were no others, so it had to be insured through a company in Germany. He was armed with a 9mm in a tear-away waist pack, a .38 snub-nose on his ankle and a knife in his back pocket. Every day he left the house at a different time by a different route, on the standing principle that a pattern tells an assassin where to stand.

What it did not buy

The one measure the danger ruled out was diplomatic plates: they were "too dangerous. It would allow them to more easily identify us as Americans."

What replaced them defeated the purpose. "The Greeks in their infinite wisdom gave literally everybody in the American embassy license plates that began with YHB. Everybody. It was worse than a diplomatic plate."

Kiriakou still remembers his own registration a quarter-century later, and his wife's. The same convention identified the British embassy, and it is how he recognised the car in which Stephen Saunders had just been shot while he inched past it in traffic.

That morning was the one on which he had overslept and skipped his two-hour surveillance detection route, the only reason he was on that road at all.

See also

- John Kiriakou
- Revolutionary Organization 17 November
- Stephen Saunders
- Surveillance detection route
- Operational vehicles
