Revolutionary Organization 17 November (also 17 November, 17N, or N17) was a Greek far-left urban guerrilla group active between 1975 and 2002. It was the deadliest terrorist organization in the history of Greece, responsible for 28 confirmed murders including the CIA Athens station chief Richard Welch, two American defense attachés, a U.S. Air Force technical sergeant, and the British defense attaché Stephen Saunders.[1]
During the late 1990s the group’s continued operation caused Athens to be rated “critical threat” — the highest classification — for terrorism against American personnel. The U.S. embassy in Athens spent more on security during this period than its counterpart in Beirut.[2]
Membership and identification
17 November was extraordinarily successful at concealing the identities of its members. Despite a quarter-century of operations and an extensive U.S.–Greek intelligence effort, no member was identified prior to the group’s accidental exposure in 2002. Western intelligence services maintained a list of approximately 500 suspects; the group ultimately turned out to have only about a dozen members.[3]
Methods and weapons
17 November hits typically used two operatives on a motorcycle — a driver and a shooter on the back — who would approach the target’s vehicle, place two rounds in the victim’s head, and depart. No witness ever produced a usable identification of either rider.[4]
Every confirmed 17 November hit was carried out with the same .45 caliber pistol, which Western intelligence came to refer to as the Welch .45 after its use in the group’s first murder. See The Welch .45.[5]
In some operations the group also used long guns; the round that killed Stephen Saunders in March 2000 was armor-piercing and severed Saunders’s right hand from his body, leaving it on the floor of his vehicle.[6]
Funding and weapons sourcing
Western intelligence suspected during the 1990s that 17 November received weapons from Carlos the Jackal and from Libya. The Carlos connection turned out to apply not to 17 November but to a separate Greek group, Popular Revolutionary Struggle; the Libyan connection was partly accurate as a source for other Greek groups. 17 November itself was funded and armed entirely domestically.[7]
Operations
December 23, 1975 — Richard Welch
The group’s first attack was the assassination of Richard Welch, CIA station chief in Athens, in front of his home in the suburb of Psychiko. The hit was carried out by two gunmen on foot with two more operatives in a getaway car (a male driver and a female lookout). One gunman shouted “Richard Welch, get out of the car,” announced “Richard Welch, you have been convicted of crimes against the Greek people and you have been sentenced to death,” and shot Welch three times in the chest in front of his wife.[5][8] See Richard Welch for the full account.
Other American victims
In addition to Welch, 17 November killed two American defense attachés in Athens, permanently disabled the embassy’s DEA representative, and attempted to kill a State Department officer.[9] One victim was an Air Force technical sergeant, killed while doing his laundry in the basement laundry room of his apartment building.[1]
March 2000 — Stephen Saunders
The British defense attaché Stephen Saunders was assassinated by 17 November in March 2000 in heavy traffic on Kifissias Avenue in Athens. The original target for that morning’s operation had been John Kiriakou, the U.S. embassy’s lead CIA officer working the 17 November problem. In a manifesto mailed to a Greek left-wing newspaper after the attack, the group explicitly stated they had identified “the big spy” (Kiriakou) but elected to kill the “war criminal Saunders” instead because Kiriakou’s armored vehicle and arms made the hit too risky.[10][11]
The naming of Kiriakou in the manifesto triggered the emergency exfiltration of his family from Athens within hours; embassy staff packed and shipped their household possessions in their absence. See Stephen Saunders for the full account.[12]
The crimper peripheral
John Kiriakou’s sole confirmed recruitment of a 17 November–adjacent individual was of a peripheral figure — not a group member — who had nonetheless personally built and planted several of the bombs Western intelligence had attributed to 17 November on the basis of a recurring forensic signature: a distinctive crimp in the way the bomber twisted the wires inside each device. “He had a very unique way of connecting the wires and twisting them. So we could tell — in fact, we had a name for him based on the style of the crimp.”[13][14]
On recruitment in approximately the late 1990s the asset volunteered, unprompted, that he had personally built and planted the bombs that detonated at a Citibank branch, a McDonald’s, and an Inter-American Insurance Company office in Athens — closing six years of forensic guesswork. He demonstrated the bomb-construction technique in front of Kiriakou at a subsequent meeting using supplies he had brought along.[14][15]
The asset was, in 17 November’s organizational typology, “one of the many many peripheral figures that … had kind of brushed up against 17 November but never were asked to join the group.” He had then migrated to a separate anarchist circle — “what they wanted to do was just blow shit up for no reason other than to shout ‘yay anarchy.’”[16][17][18]
His on-the-spot recruitment vulnerability was financial — he had impregnated his girlfriend and could not afford his daughter’s care. Kiriakou paid him regularly, and on one occasion bought $5,000 of the asset’s wife’s jewelry at the station chief’s authorization (“call it an early Christmas bonus”) when the asset turned up at a 2:00 a.m. meeting in a desperate state with a paper bag of gold pieces.[19][20][21]
Kiriakou attempted to contact the asset on a post-CIA Greece visit and learned from his son that the asset had died of lung cancer two years earlier.[22]
Dissolution
The group was rolled up accidentally in 2002. A 17 November operative was carrying a bomb concealed in a paper bag, intending to place it under the car of a Greek shipowner in Piraeus, when the device detonated prematurely. The blast severed both of the operative’s hands and destroyed his right eye. Believing himself to be dying, he confessed to his role, named every other member of the group, and disclosed the locations of the safe house, the weapons cache, and the bombs. He survived. Greek authorities used the confession to arrest the entire membership; the group has not operated since.[23]
Related groups
Several other Greek far-left organizations operated alongside 17 November during the same period, including:
- Popular Revolutionary Struggle — recipient of weapons from Carlos the Jackal
- Revolutionary Nuclei
- Sons of the Anarchic (full name uncertain)[3]
Most of these were primarily anarchist; 17 November and Popular Revolutionary Struggle were the only groups Western intelligence regarded as full terrorist organizations during this period.[7]