The Greek Intelligence Service is Greece’s national intelligence agency, officially the National Intelligence Service (EYP), with which John Kiriakou worked closely during his posting to Athens.[1] He recounts a joint operation on the island of Aegina reached by hydrofoil; arriving six hours early, he visited the house and tomb of Saint Nectarios of Aegina with the service’s religious head of surveillance.[2] When Kiriakou, lacking small change, dropped a 5,000-drachma note (about 20 dollars) as a candle offering and crossed himself, the surveillance chief was watching. Kiriakou later learned the man had ordered the service to keep its hands off him and put no surveillance on him, because he was “a good Christian boy” who meant them no harm.[3][4]
Kiriakou has told the same story of the Aegina operation elsewhere, describing being assigned to a joint operation on the island soon after arriving in Athens and taking a roughly 40-minute hydrofoil there with Greek intelligence colleagues.[5] In one telling, the group first visited the mother superior at the island’s convent, introducing themselves as being with the Greek intelligence service.[6] A Greek colleague later told him they had known he was trustworthy since seeing him drop the 5,000 drachmas in the offering tray at church — “we knew you were one of us.”[7]
Kiriakou describes Savas Galanderis as the most famous Greek spy in history and a personal friend — a man who spoke unaccented Turkish and lived undercover as a Turk in Smyrna for years, running a shop by day and spying on the Turks in the mountains at night.[8]
Kiriakou says virtually every major Arab militant group of the era was represented in Athens during his posting there — Abu Nidal, the PFLP, PFLP-GC, the DFLP, Libyans, and Iraqis.[9] He notes that, as a result, the United States spent more on embassy security in Athens during that period than in any other city in the world — including Beirut, where the U.S. embassy had been bombed twice.[10]
The Steven Lawless case
Kiriakou has also discussed the service’s mid-1990s recruitment of American spy Steven Lawless, an operation so sensitive that the handler reported directly to the EYP director rather than through the normal chain of command. See Steven Lawless for the full case.