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]
The relationship reached the top of the service. Asked in 2026 for a story he had never told publicly and unable to give one, Kiriakou offered instead a joke he says was told to him by the director of the Ethniki Ypiresia Pliroforion himself.[8][9] A Russian, an American and a Greek intelligence officer go drinking. The Russian says his country has a bomb big enough to destroy an entire city; the American says his has one big enough to destroy an entire region; the Greek says his boot is so big that ten birds can land on it side by side. They drink on, and the boasts collapse: the Russian admits there is no such bomb, and the American admits the same. The Greek does not retract. He adds that when the tenth bird lands, it usually has to ask the others to shuffle along.[10][11] (The auto-captions render the Greek officer’s boast as “boot”; the word may be “boat”. The transcription is retained as it stands.)
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.[12]
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.[13] 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.[14]
The Steven Lalas case
Kiriakou has also discussed the service’s mid-1990s recruitment of American spy Steven Lalas, an operation so sensitive that the handler reported directly to the EYP director rather than through the normal chain of command. See Steven Lalas for the full case.
See also
Assessment, 2026
Asked what the Greek service is known for, Kiriakou’s answer is single-minded: “It’s Turkey, Turkey, Turkey, all the time” — plus a little counterterrorism. He puts the proportion at “95% of what the Greeks do is to try to mitigate that Turkish threat,” on the basis that “Greece’s only real enemy, the true enemy, is Turkey,” and that the Turks are “a clear and present military danger.”[15][16]
On competence he describes a marked improvement over his own time in the country: “they were good when I was there 26 years ago. Not great, but good. Now they’re really, really good.” The reason he gives for the change is a change of trainer — “not because they continue to be trained by us, but now they’re trained by the Israelis” — and he calls them quick learners.[16]