[00:00] Throughout your career at the CIA, did you ever come close to getting assassinated? >> Oh, twice. Close. Close. Uh, the first time was in um in Athens in 2000. I was I was stationed in Athens as the counterterrorism um center representative and I was there specifically to work against a group called Revolutionary Organization 17 November. This was a group that was so deadly.
[00:32] They had murdered 28 people. They had wounded hundreds. And not only had they never been caught, we were never able to identify a single one of them. They would do these they would do these assassinations in broad daylight in front of 2,000 people and nobody saw a thing because they were so petrified of being the next victim. So, as a CIA officer, I drove a fully armored BMW 540. It was the first 540 in
[01:03] Greece. As a matter of fact, we we couldn't even insure it because there were no other 540s. We had to insure it through a company in Germany. And and I was always heavily armed. We all were. I had a 9mm and a tear away fanny pack on my waist. I had a 38 snubnse on my ankle. And then just in case things really went to [ __ ] I had a buck knife in my back pocket. So every day, and this is what we're all trained to do, every day you leave your house at a different time and you take a
[01:33] different route to work every single day because as soon as you establish a pattern, they know where to be standing to kill you as you go through that intersection. So the British embassy in uh oh I guess it was February or March of 2000 got a new defense atache Steven Saunders and Steven moved in next door to me. Our our backyards abudded
[02:04] and he was just such a lovely guy. He was the life of the party. So in early April of 2000, we're at a dinner party and I was standing with Steve and with the French defense attaches and the American defense attache and he was making fun of me because I had just gotten my BMW. And he said, "You Americans are so paranoid about security." He goes, "This is an EU country. It's a NATO country.
[02:36] what are you so afraid of? And they all chuckle. And I said, "You Brits live in a dream world. If you think that because they have palm trees and pretty beaches that they're not going to kill you if they have the chance. If they have the chance, they're going to kill you." We all laughed again. Two weeks later, I did something that I had never done before. I slept through my alarm and I woke up and I looked at the clock and I was like, "Oh my god, I slept in." Which
[03:07] meant I didn't have time to do this 2-hour surveillance detection route. I just had to get on the main road, go straight to the embassy. So, I get in the car, I get on QVCs, it's a parking lot. And I I was like, "Great. Now, what am I going to say when I get there 2 hours late?" Right? And the thing with GVCS is it had these concrete jersey barriers. So once you were on, you were on. >> You're not getting back off. >> Can't get back off. >> So I'm inching, like literally inching. So I turn the radio on and the the DJ is
[03:42] saying, uh, avoid Kicas Boulevard. There was a criminal incident at Felith. And I thought, huh, I never heard that before. I wonder what kind of criminal incident at 9:00 in the morning would jam up traffic like this. And still inching down the mountain, another half hour passes and the guy says, "Avoid GCS Boulevard. There was a terrorist attack at Filoth." Well, I definitely had never heard that before. And he says it just as I'm approaching this white rover in
[04:13] the left lane and the cops are putting tape around it and I saw the license plate. Now, Athens was so it well was back then so dangerous for Americans. We spent more money on security in Athens than we did in Beirut. That's how dangerous it was because of this group. So, we didn't have diplomatic license plates. It was too dangerous. It would it would allow them to more easily identify us as Americans. But the Greeks in their infinite wisdom
[04:45] gave literally everybody in the American embassy license plates that began with YHB. Everybody. It was worse than a diplomatic plate >> cuz you knew. >> Yeah. My mine was YHB1 1442. I still remember it after 25 years. My wife was YHB 1367. So I look at this license plate on this rover and it's YBH and four numbers. And I thought, "Oh no, they killed some poor Greek thinking that it was one of us." And then I remember, "No, the British embassy is YBH
[05:16] and Steve Saunders drives a white rover." So I called the station and my boss says, "Where are you?" I said, "I'm stuck on F on uh KYCS Boulevard, but I think Steven Saunders was just assassinated." He said, "Why? What do you see?" And I I told him, you know, it's a white rover. I said, "It's just soaked. The interior's soaked in blood." and the driver's side windows shot out and he said, "Okay, get here as quickly as you can." So, just as I get past the car, of course, traffic opens up. I run into the station. Everybody's waiting
[05:46] for me. So, I told them what happened. My boss picks up the phone. He calls the British embassy and this the British the MI6 secretary answers and uh and he says, "We think Steven Saunders was just assassinated." And it's like she didn't like it didn't register or or she misheard. And she says, "I'm sorry. Steven's not in yet today." And he said, "No, you're not listening to me. We think Steven was just assassinated." And she says, "Oh, oh my god, we'll call you right back." And then she called us back 20 minutes later and she said he had
[06:17] just died at the Red Cross hospital, which ironically is next door to the British Embassy. So several months passed. Now what 17 November used to do is they would drop a manifesto. This was a this was a an incredibly violent Marxist Leninist um group. They would drop a manifesto at the site of the hit or they would put a manifesto in a garbage can somewhere in the neighborhood and then call a leftist newspaper to tell them where the the garbage can was that they could go retrieve it. But they didn't leave a
[06:49] manifesto with him. They had done that once or twice before, but it was unusual. That was in April. On August 16th, I go into the office and my boss runs into my office and he says, "Did you see the manifesto?" And I said, "There was no manifesto." He said, "No, they dropped it today." And I said, "No, I didn't hear anything about it. I didn't, you know, run my radio in the car normally." And he said, "They mentioned
[07:20] you in the manifesto." I said, "What? Not possible." I said, 'I am more careful than anybody in this office with my security. And he hands me the manifesto and it says in Greek mealas, we saw the big spy, but he was in an armored car and we knew he was armed, so we elected to carry out the revolutionary sentence on the war criminal Saunders. And he says, "You got to go." I said, "Where?" He says, "Home." Like now. I said, "I just dropped my kids off at school. I can't
[07:52] just go." He said, "We'll get your kids. We'll get your wife. We'll pack your house out. You got to go to the airport now." So, they put me in another armored car. They took me to the airport. They picked up my wife, picked up my kids. They get to the airport and my wife says, "I want a divorce. I can't do this anymore." And that was the last day that we, you know, lived together as husband and wife. But they didn't get me.