[00:00] This podcast is a casted in touchstone production. Hi, I'm John Curriacchi. Welcome to Dead Drop, What Makes a Spy Tick. As always, we thank you for listening and if you haven't already, it would help us grow if you liked, reviewed, commented on, or shared the podcast on whatever platform you're listening to us. We really do appreciate it. Now that that's out of the way, let's get down to it.
[00:32] Athens, it turned out, was even more operationally rich than I could have imagined. For one thing, there were a lot more players on the field. It wasn't just 17 November, or even 17 November and all the revolutionary struggles suddenly in the air. No, there were Libyans and Iraqis, Palestinians and Syrians all in play, some with each other, some against each other, but invariably against us. I was a counterterrorism kid in a terrorism candy store.
[01:03] I wish I could tell you stories about some of those operations or some of those approaches, but alas, they remain classified. But as operationally rich and intensely satisfying as Athens was to work in, at the same time, it presented the kind of trap that I referred to in the last episode. The good news about regularity and routine is they make living one's day to day life a lot easier. The bad news, though, is that they create blind spots, both literal and figurative.
[01:34] At some point, whatever is living and breathing and maybe growing in your blind spot, that's the thing that should scare the crap out of you. The shit you don't know, oh my god, we'll get there. I told a story in an earlier episode about a waiter who inadvertently outed me as a spy when he remembered seeing me in a room with President Bill Clinton. Well here's the rest of that story. Apologies to Paul Harvey. This really was an early career highlight. We got a cable from the White House in late 1999 saying that the president was coming
[08:27] About five minutes before the president was due to come into the room, I put my gun in the safe and made up a little code and locked up my gun. First the Greeks came into the room. It was the prime minister, the foreign minister, the defense minister, and the Greek note taker. We had preordered everything on the room service menu. There was a folding table, two folding tables that had enough food for a hundred people. I'm not exaggerating. It had a big urn of coffee and a big urn of tea and anything your heart desired.
[09:01] We had it there. I said to the prime minister, Boronas Prosferocati na Fateh, can I offer you something to eat? He said no, thank you. Nobody wanted anything to eat. We have all this food. Then the president comes in with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and Ambassador Burns. There are hearty handshakes all around and Clinton is introducing the American side to the three Greeks and then everybody sits down.
[09:34] Clinton says to the prime minister, would you like something to eat? Prime minister says no, thank you. Mr. Foreign Minister, would you like something to eat? No, no, no. Some coffee, tea, anything? No, no, no. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Defense Minister, can I offer you something to eat? No, thank you, thank you, Mr. President. He even asked the Greek note taker, would you like to have some? We have so much food, he says. He turns to me and he says, just like this, may I offer you something to eat?
[10:05] And I said, oh, no, thank you, Mr. President. I'm fine. And he says, oh, are you with me? And I said yes, sir, I'm your note taker. And he said, I'm sorry, I thought you were Greek. And I said, I kind of am, but not really. I'm fine with you. And he says, okay, thank you. And then the meeting starts. I'm standing and the Greek note taker is standing. Everybody else is sitting. I've got my note pad. This is the most important meeting I've been in in my life since the day of the Iraqi
[10:36] invasion of Kuwait in 1990. And President Clinton says, Mr. Prime Minister, we love you so much. We have 1.2 million Greek Americans in our country. And the Greeks are all nodding. And he says, they own all the diners. They're all very successful. You gave us philosophy and medicine and mathematics. And the Greeks are nodding and smiling. So many Americans vacation in Greece.
[11:07] We love the Greek islands. I'm waiting to write something substantive. I look at the ambassador. He kind of shrugs. I don't know where he's going with this. I read up in the days before the meeting on the US Greek defense agreement, pending military sales, economic assistance, the trade numbers. Yeah, he was just being Bill Clinton. This is what Bill Clinton did. And then it comes time for the Prime Minister to speak.
[11:38] And he said, no, we love you. You give us security. You are our biggest trading partner. We welcome the 5 million Americans that come here every summer to enjoy our islands. We welcome American businesses that want to open centers for the Southeastern Mediterranean. And everybody's nodding and smiling. I'm looking at the Greek note taker. He's looking at me.
[12:08] Neither one of us is writing down a word and then the meeting ends. And that was it. The Greeks get up, big hearty handshakes, big bear hugs as Clinton hugs each one of them, and the Greeks file out. After the Greeks leave, Albright and Burns walk out together into the hall to carry on a conversation there. Clinton and Berger walk out together and they're in the hall having their own conversation. And then I walk out. I'm standing about three feet away from Clinton and Berger.
[12:40] They finish their conversation and Berger then walks over to Albright and Burns. So the President and I are just standing there together. Just then the elevator at the end of the hall opens and Hillary Clinton gets off with Chelsea Clinton. And she had a look on her face. I could see it from 60 feet away. I thought, oh no, here it comes. Now this is about a year after the Monica Lewinsky situation. There was one thing about Bill Clinton. He hated silence. He hated Lolles in the conversation.
[13:47] He looks me right in the eye and he says, let's get the hell out of here. And he and I walk to the elevator together. The Secret Service immediately falls in behind us. And then Albright, Berger and Burns also get in the elevator. They go down to the basement where there is a room with 500 screaming women from the Greece, US, women's business, women's association, society, something I don't remember screaming. And he just basked in it.
[14:17] And he gave a speech that almost made me start to cry. That was the magic, the aura that Bill Clinton had. I'm told Ronald Reagan had that. Certainly John Kennedy had it. But I got to see it with my own eyes and it was a real thing. For weeks before he arrived, the Greeks would use this awful term, Oplanetarchis, the planet ruler. And every single time on every single network, when they would say his name, Oplanetarchis,
[14:52] Bill Clinton, they would cut to a clip of him saying, I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. And then 30 seconds later, they would say, well, Oplanetarchis is coming here to tell us how to run our economy. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky, to the point where you would hear that 20 times over the course of a single news program on every channel. They did it just to show contempt and disrespect.
[15:24] Well, the first thing he did when he arrived in Greece, he apologized for the junta that had never been done before. No one had ever spoken those words before. He apologized and he asked for the forgiveness of all Greeks for the subversion of their democracy. People just collapsed practically. As soon as he got on the plane and left, I went back home and turned on the news and they were like, oh, we were wrong. God bless Bill Clinton. He's the greatest president of the 20th century.
[15:57] We love Clinton. We have to join with the Greek Americans to celebrate Clinton. I'm like, are you kidding me? I learned so much in the two days that he was in Athens. Like, wow, there's a reason why he won twice. There's a reason why he went from 4% in the polls at the beginning of the Democratic primaries to winning the nomination. I later became friendly with the US ambassador to Luxembourg, Clay Constantino.
[23:10] There were senior CIA officers who hated that, who mocked me for it. I recruited more people than they did. I drew out more sensitive, life-saving information than they did. I never had to torture anybody for it. I never had to threaten to kill anybody's children for it. I learned a lot in Athens. Toward the end of my tour, a new British defense attaché arrived in Athens. Brigadier General Stephen Saunders. I liked Steve a lot.
[23:41] Everybody liked Steve a lot. But Steve was a media whore. He loved the camera. And no matter where he was, if there was a TV camera by God, he walked right up to it and offered up an interview. So he was on TV all the time. He was the British MOD, Ministry of Defense. He was the British Defense Attaché. Remember, my training is to not draw attention to myself. His training was to make himself the most popular foreign official in Athens. We also happened to be next door neighbors.
[24:13] Three or four weeks after he arrived, my car arrived from Germany. The agency had purchased a brand new BMW 540 that was fully armored with Level 4 armor. So this thing would stop anything. The windows were three inches thick, and they were acrylic, loose-site, not glass. This was the very first BMW 540 to be registered in Greece. We couldn't insure it because there was nothing to insure it against. We had to insure it with a company in Germany because there were no other 540s.
[24:46] Just to be on the safe side, we took it to the BMW dealership in Athens, and we had them remove the numbers 540 because they didn't want it to draw any more attention. Well, that night that the car arrived and I drove it home, there was a dinner party. And so I went to the dinner party, the American Defense Attaché, Steve went, and the French Defense Attaché. And we were standing, the four of us. Steve was making fun of me in a friendly way. He was making fun of my car. He said, you Americans, you're so paranoid about security.
[25:20] This is an EU country. It's a NATO country. What are you so afraid of? And everybody chuckled. And I said, you Brits, live in a dream world. If you think because they have palm trees in pretty beaches that they're not going to kill you, if they have the chance, they're going to kill you. And everybody chuckled again. Two weeks later, I did something that I had never done before in Athens. I slept through my alarm. I woke up, I look, I said, oh my God, it's 8 o'clock.
[25:52] Oh my God, I don't have time for a surveillance detection route. I have to get on the main road and just go straight into the embassy. Well, I lived about a half a mile off of the main thoroughfare called Keefe CS Boulevard. When you got close to the embassy, it changed names to Vasile C. Sophie's, Queen Sophia Boulevard. They're concrete Jersey berries. So once you get on, you can't get off until you're in Athens. And it was exactly 10 miles from where I got on to the front door of the embassy. We lived up on the mountain where it was a little cooler and you just go 10 miles
[26:25] straight down the mountain to the front door of the embassy. So I said, damn it, I have to, I have to get on Keefe CS. I get on Keefe CS and it is a parking lot. I remember thinking, I haven't seen traffic like this since Cairo or Bangkok, but I'm committed. I'm on the road. I can't get off. So I just start inching my way down the mountain, bumper to bumper traffic. And then I did something else that I never did.
[26:55] I turned on the radio. They taught us in training and they were adamant about this. Don't do anything that's going to distract you. You have to constantly scan the mirrors to make sure they're not riding up on a motorcycle to blow your brains out while you're fidgeting with a radio. So I turned on the radio and I'm listening to the station and the Greek announcer says, avoid Keefe CS Boulevard. There is a traffic incident at Filothé. Filothé was the halfway point between where I lived in Keefe CS and the embassy in Athens.
[27:30] And I said, damn it, five miles of this traffic and inching down the mountain. A half an hour later, he comes back on the radio and he says, avoid Keefe CS Boulevard. There was a criminal incident at Filothé and I remember thinking to myself, criminal incident. I've never heard that before. And I continue to inch my way down and I'm getting to the spot where this situation is. And he comes back on the radio and he says, avoid Keefe CS Boulevard.
[28:00] There was a terrorist attack in Filothé. I had definitely not heard that before. I get up to the situation. There is a white rover in the left lane. The police are putting police tape around it. I notice the license plate and it begins with the letters YBH. Well Athens was so dangerous for Americans that we weren't allowed to have diplomatic license plates on our cars. But the Greeks in their infinite wisdom gave everybody in the embassy license plates
[28:33] that began with YHB. Mine was YHB 1442. My wife was YHB 1367. I still remember. And I looked and that license plate is YBH and I thought, oh my God, it's 17 November. They killed an innocent Greek thinking it was one of us because they transposed the B and the H. And then I remembered, wait a minute, the British Embassy is YBH. They don't have diplomatic plates either. And Stephen drives a white rover.
[29:03] So as I'm inching up to the car, I see that the interior of the car is soaked in blood. It's on all the windows. And I get my phone and I call the chief. He says, where are you? I'm stuck in traffic on Keefe CS. But I think Stephen Saunders was just assassinated. He said, what? What do you see? I told him about the car and the YHB and the YBH. It's a rover. It's his rover. There's blood everywhere. And the driver's side window is blown out. And he said, all right, get in as quickly as you can.
[29:35] I'm going to call the British Embassy. He called the British Embassy. The secretary says, British Embassy, good morning. He said who he was and that one of his officers is reporting that Stephen Saunders may have been the victim of a terrorist attack. The words didn't register with her. And she said, I'm sorry, Stephen's not in yet today. And he said, no, you're not listening to me. We think Stephen's been shot. Two 17 November assassins drove right up alongside of him. One of them shot him with a rifle, carrying an anti-tank round,
[30:07] an armor piercing round. We learned years later that first shot blew Stephen's right hand off at the wrist. And he held up the stump and looked at it. And then he looked at the shooter. Like, why did you do that? And then the other shooter shot him three times in the chest with the Welch 45. The motorcycle took off. And I'm sure they had surveillance there doing surveillance and maybe counter surveillance. But a taxi driver got out of his taxi, pulled Stephen out
[30:40] of the car, put him in the back of the taxi, and raced to the Red Cross Hospital, which happens to be next door to the British Embassy. He died about 20 minutes later. He bled to death. So that day, headquarters made an emergency decision to declare all of us in Athens Station to MI6. We went over to the British Embassy. I said, hi, I'm John Kiriakou, CIA. This is my buddy so-and-so, CIA. This is CIA.
[31:10] Hi, I'm Doug, MI6. Hi, I'm Brian, MI6. I'm Nigel, MI6. All of us got into three cars. And we went to the Greek Intelligence Service. And we read them the riot act. It's been 25 years. There have been 27 assassinations. When are you going to start to take this seriously? This has to stop. And they were apologetic. They were sympathetic. But they were also incompetent. Stephen's widow did something that
[31:42] was so incredibly courageous that I still think about it all these years later. She went on Greek national television that evening. She said, this is not a crime against my husband. It's not a crime against the British government. This is a crime against all Greek people. There's nothing romantic about this organization. They're just murderers. Nothing more. They're just murderers. And every Greek should be furious that this
[32:12] is happening on Greek soil. That one interview on that horrible day, the worst day of her life, completely changed Greek public opinion. Because the idea was, if it can happen to him, it can happen to me, or you, or anybody, any Greek. And so we noticed a real change in public opinion polls. One of the things that 17 November normally did was they would drop a manifesto at the site of an operation, at the site of an assassination.
[32:44] They never dropped a manifesto when they killed Stephen. And they didn't always drop a manifesto. Sometimes they would put one in a nearby garbage can. Sometimes they would mail it to a leftist newspaper. In this case, months passed. Stephen was killed in April of 2000. And then on August 16, 2000, I went into the office like a normal day. And my boss ran into my office and said, did you see the manifesto?
[33:15] I said, what manifesto? He said, the Saunders manifesto. I said, there was no manifesto. We looked all over the place for it. He said, no. They sent it to Eleftherotipia, which means the free press. It was the left-wing newspaper. They sent it to Eleftherotipia today. No, I didn't hear anything about it. They mentioned you. Me? That's not possible. He said, look. And he hands me the manifesto. There's a line in there. It says, ila me to mega locatascopos. We saw the big spy, but he was in an armored car
[33:47] and we knew he was armed. So we decided to carry out the revolutionary sentence on the war criminal Saunders. And I said, my God, how did they find me? I'm so careful about my security. So careful. How in the world could they have found me? Well, we learned later after an investigation. They were looking for him. He was on TV all the time and we lived next door to each other and they saw my car and they saw that it had a YHB license plate which meant it was American. And then they noticed how thick the windows were
[34:19] and they said only a CIA man would drive an armored car with American embassy license plates. The ironies were tripping over each other. 17 November found me because I lived next door to Stephen, who had first attracted their attention. Realizing who I was and what I was, 17 November planned to assassinate me, even bringing an anti-tank round to attack my car. Murderous as 17 November was, they weren't stupid.
[34:49] Correctly suspecting I was heavily armed, they turned their attention from their original hard target, me to a softer, easier target, the guy who had drawn their original attention just because he thought that was part of his job, Stephen. But now that my true identity was public knowledge, I had a problem. As my boss pointed out, I could no longer be there in Athens. I had to leave and I mean as in right fucking now. Well, that was another problem because I had just dropped my kids off at school.
[35:22] He said, we'll pick up your kids, we'll pick up your wife, we'll pack out your house, you've got to go to the airport right now. I hadn't even taken my jacket off. I get in a car with one of the other guys, they take me to the airport, they pick up my kids, they pick up my wife, they go to the airport. So there we were, our lives suddenly yanked out from under us. The emotions in that moment, as Joanne and I waited to fly back to America,
[35:54] as we sat on the plane together, there was lots of bewilderment, it filled our hand luggage, everything else was anger and resentment flowing every which way. I knew with absolute certainty that day that our marriage was over. On top of everything else, that made it a supremely bad day. But that day wasn't my worst day. That had happened a little earlier that year and it was why I knew with certainty that Joanne and I were done.
[36:25] The Athens experience was not what she thought it was gonna be. I took this job so seriously, I was so paranoid about security that it just made it not fun for her. I was shaving one morning, getting ready to go to work and my eldest son, who was six years old at the time, was sitting on the floor next to me and he was talking to me about his day and his friends. As I was shaving, he said, I told mommy she shouldn't kiss Uncle Stelios on the lips.
[36:55] She should only kiss you on the lips and she told me to mind my own business. I felt like I had been punched in the gut. Half shaven, I walked into the bedroom and I kicked the bed and she woke up and she said, what? Who the fuck is Stelios? Where did you hear that name? Who is he? And she said, don't believe everything a six year old says. I wiped the shaving cream off my face, only half shaven and I said, I am gonna leave before I do something that I will regret for the rest of my life.
[37:28] And I got in the car and I drove to the embassy. We had a little store in the embassy and I went down, I said I need a razor and some shaving cream and I cleaned myself up and went up to the office. That afternoon she began calling me on my cell phone every five minutes. I just wouldn't pick up the phone. I didn't even wanna hear her voice. Finally the secretary came in and she said, your wife is on the phone and she's crying. Yeah, she should be crying.
[38:00] No, she says that she was injured in a car accident. I picked up the phone. I said, what? She said that she was first car in line to make a left hand turn. There were like six cars behind her. The sixth car didn't wanna wait in line. He tried to pass the entire line of cars on the left and as she made the turn, he T-boned her which broke her wrist and both of the kids were in the car and the car was totaled. Where are you? She gives me the intersection. It was near the house.
[38:30] I get in the car. I speed up to the intersection. And the cars are both mangled. They're totaled. The guy is standing there with his wife, Greek guy. And I went up to him and I said, this is what happened to him. I said, what the hell happened here? And he's angry, agitated and animated. And he says to me, you're not your wife. Your wife, she's a whore. My wife is a whore. I beat him
[39:01] until he was unconscious in the street. I probably would have done lasting damage to him had two policemen not pulled me off. Of course I was arrested, taken to the local police station, but one of the Wacken Hut guards who patrolled our houses went with me to the station and said, he has diplomatic immunity, which I did. So they put me in a cell but they left the cell door open. They also didn't take my gun. The police captain came into the cell
[39:32] and he said, so you have diplomatic immunity. I said, yes I do. Do you have your diplomatic card? It's in my fanny pack. I'm gonna reach for it and I'm only gonna take the diplomatic ID out. He said, do you have a gun in there? Yes I do. He said, okay, give me the ID. So I pulled the ID out gingerly and I handed it to him. Do you have a gun permit? Of course I do. He said, from the Hellenic National Police, I said yes. Would you like to see that? Yes, it was in my wallet. I took it out, I handed it to him. Never asked to see the gun. It was licensed and I'm a diplomat.
[40:03] So he said, what happened? And I said, you know, there's this accident. He called my wife a whore. He called your wife a whore. I said, yeah, he told me in Nekasu Butana. The guy had come too. I had really done a number on this guy's face. I also had 50 pounds on him and probably four inches too. He's upset, he's near tears. He's telling his story and the captain interrupts him and he says, did you call his wife a whore? He said, I was angry. She made the turn and I was trying to get in front and did you call his wife a whore?
[40:35] Yes, you're under arrest. It is a crime in Greece to call another man's wife a whore. Only in Greece. Can you imagine? They arrested him. I felt bad. I said, listen, I don't wanna press charges against this guy. He can't press charges against me because I have diplomatic immunity. But I don't wanna press charges against this guy. The police captain told him, if you apologize to this American, we won't charge you. He said, I apologize and he put out his hand. I had literally broken my hand on his face.
[41:05] I have a titanium plate with two screws in my hand now. He squeezes my hand, my completely shattered hand and gives me this hearty handshake. We both ended up going from the police station to the hospital. He needed stitches in his face and I had surgery that night on my hand. Actually, I had a follow-up surgery back in the States to get it right. As you probably surmised, Joanne cheating on me was a shock. Like I said, my focus was elsewhere. Since I was happy and no one else appeared unhappy,
[41:38] I assumed we were all happy for the same reasons. I should have known something was afoot because there were indications that she was cheating on me. I mentioned that she had inherited her grandmother's house on the island of Chios. She would go with the kids on a ferry, on Saturday morning and come back Sunday night. Then she started going on Friday night and coming back Sunday night. Okay, no big deal. Then she started going on Thursday night and keeping the kids out of school on Friday
[42:09] and coming back Sunday night. And then finally, she would go on Thursday night and come back Monday night with the kids missing school on Friday and Monday. I said, what are you doing? My parents are both educators. I said, you can't keep the kids out of school for two days every week because you wanna go hang out on the island. It just never occurred to me she was going to see a man. As soon as I finished at the hospital, one of the station officers picked me up and he said, buddy, I got bad news. The ambassador wants to see you
[42:39] and he doesn't care how late it is. And I said, he's gonna expel me. My career's never gonna recover from this. He's gonna expel me. I thought, well, you did it to yourself. Take it like a man. We drove back to the embassy. The station chief was waiting for me. And he said, listen, let me do the talking. You just be contrite when I turn to you, but let me do the talking. So we go into the ambassador's office and he was absolutely livid. He said, I'm expelling you. And the station chief says, ambassador, wait, please,
[43:10] hear me out. He's literally my best guy. He's recruited more people in two years than I recruited in the first 10 years of my career. He's our leading expert on 17 November. You know that. You turn to him for every 17 November briefing. What they ended up agreeing to was to wait for 24 hours. If the fight made the Greek papers, I was out. But if the papers didn't pick it up, I could stay.
[43:42] I must've gotten up at five o'clock in the morning the next day and I went to the kiosk in my neighborhood and I bought literally every paper in the country. And the guy said to me, what's up with the papers? And I said, ah, there's something that I'm looking for. Hoping I can find it. I went to an all night cafe, which would still be open at five o'clock in the morning. And I started leafing through every single newspaper. Nobody had picked it up.
[44:13] I thought for sure that this guy would've called his newspaper of choice on the left, on the right, in the center, who knew? And he never did. So there we all were on the flight back to America. As Joanne tended to the kids, at one point, I remembered a conversation I'd had with my mom when she and my dad were visiting Athens. We had gone to Rhodes to see my dad's cousins and hang out for a while. We were in the medieval city, walking past a jewelry store that just happened
[44:45] to be owned by my mom's cousin. She said, let's go in. I wanna get some earrings for Joanne. I said, no, don't do that, mom. Why? She says. I took a deep breath. Mom, Joanne and I are going to get a divorce. And my mom gasped. She said, can I call your sister? She's going to be so excited. I said, thanks a lot, mom. I appreciate your support. As you see, Joanne wasn't very popular on my side of the family. So on the one hand, I was getting divorced,
[45:16] but it wasn't gonna be the end of the world. On the other hand, I was going home because my cover had been blown. And that was now colored by the fight. Though it had gone unnoticed for the most part in Athens, it didn't go unnoticed at Langley. That word, hothead, started floating around again. My division chief told me in a classified email that I would have to sit in the penalty box for about a year. No promotions, no advancement, nothing, but no permanent harm. I was hardly the first CIA officer to have his cover blown
[45:47] or to punch a guy in the face. Our flight from Athens arrived at JFK. I booked a flight for myself to Washington, and Joanne took the kids to catch a connecting flight to Cleveland. She and the kids were going to stay with her family. I hugged and kissed the boys, told them goodbye. When I stood up, Joanne put her hand out for me to shake. I just looked at her. Don't insult me like that. I turned and walked away.
[46:17] In the next episode of What Makes This Spy Take, my experience in the CIA wilderness gets truncated when a guy named Osama Bin Laden arrives on the scene big time and 9-11 changes everything. In the meantime, if you're enjoying the podcast and we sure hope that you are, please do us the kindness and like, review, share, or leave a comment. It all helps. Until next time, I'm John Kiriakou. Dead Drop is written by John Kiriakou and Alan Katz.
[46:47] Cost Art and Touchstone Productions produces the podcast and John Kiriakou, Alan Katz, and Nick Mechanic are its executive producers. This podcast, it's a Cost Art and Touchstone production.