Richard “Dick” Welch was the Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Athens at the time of his assassination on December 23, 1975. He was the first victim of Revolutionary Organization 17 November and one of the most senior CIA officers killed in the line of duty during the Cold War. The .45 caliber pistol used to kill him would subsequently be used in every confirmed 17 November murder over the following twenty-seven years and is referred to in CIA records as The Welch .45.[1]
Assassination
On the evening of December 23, 1975, Welch and his wife attended the U.S. ambassador’s Christmas party at the residence in Athens. Afterward they were driven back to their home in the close-in, high-end Athens suburb of Psychiko. At the time, the residence had a manual gate; their driver pulled the car up to the gate, put it in park, and got out to open it.[2]
Across the street, a second car was waiting with two occupants — a male driver and a female passenger — serving as the getaway team. Two other men exited the waiting car and approached. One was armed with a .45 caliber pistol; the second carried a .38 revolver.[1]
The driver fled. One of the gunmen shouted “Richard Welch, get out of the car.” Welch exited the vehicle with his wife. After Mrs. Welch had also stepped out, one of the assassins announced:
Richard Welch, you have been convicted of crimes against the Greek people and you have been sentenced to death.[3]
The gunman shot Welch three times in the chest. The four operatives then calmly returned to the second car and drove away.[3]
Mrs. Welch
Mrs. Welch is described as “very stoic and very strong” and was the only direct witness to her husband’s killing. She ran into the house and called the U.S. embassy.[4]
Cable traffic and initial response
The embassy’s first cable to CIA headquarters was a flash — a precedence indicator high enough to require waking the entire agency leadership regardless of hour and to require the director to brief the President. The next-higher precedence is critic. The contents of the cable were a single sentence:
Chief Welch shot and killed in front of home in Psychiko.[5]
Headquarters initially responded with the assessment that the assassination “had to be the Russians.” This was inconsistent with a standing operational understanding between the CIA and Soviet intelligence services that neither would kill the other’s personnel. The next morning, of their own volition, Soviet representatives approached the U.S. and stated explicitly that they had had nothing to do with the killing and would assist the investigation in any way they could.[6]
The killing of Welch remained unsolved for the duration of 17 November’s operational life. The group as a whole was not identified or rolled up until 2002. See Revolutionary Organization 17 November.
The neglected witness
On the night of the assassination, a man was walking his dog in the vicinity of the Welch residence and witnessed the assassins’ getaway car. He was the defense attaché of a country considered an adversary by both the United States and Greece, and consequently was never interviewed by Greek or American investigators at the time.[7]
In 1998 or 1999, twenty-three or twenty-four years after the killing, John Kiriakou — then working the 17 November case at the U.S. embassy in Athens — reviewed the original cable traffic and identified the unnamed defense attaché as a potential witness who had never been canvassed. Kiriakou located the man, by then retired and in his eighties, by sending name traces and inquiries to allied services, the FBI, and foreign governments.[8]
The CIA chief of station in the country where the witness lived initially declined to participate, citing lack of interest or funding in a twenty-five-year-old case; he authorized Kiriakou to travel and conduct the meeting only on the condition that Kiriakou’s home station pay all costs.[9]
Kiriakou flew in during heavy winter weather, trudging through snow above his knees to the witness’s apartment. The witness was not at home; his wife — who also spoke broken Greek from years living in Greece — directed Kiriakou to the bank where her husband worked nights as a security guard. Kiriakou located the bank, knocked, and was met at the door by “an 80-year-old man in an ill-fitting night watchman’s uniform.”[10][11]
Kiriakou introduced himself using his real name and stated, “I’m John Kiriakou from the CIA and I’m here to change your life.” The witness replied:
The witness became Kiriakou’s first formal recruitment as a CIA case officer. Real-name approach was deemed appropriate because the witness was elderly, in poor circumstances, and considered to pose no threat.[13] The witness habitually insisted that operational meetings begin with a drink, refused to discuss business beforehand, and on at least one occasion took Kiriakou to a lodge in his mountainous hometown for dinner, where he ordered wild boar steak.[14]
Legacy
Welch’s killing was the inaugural operation of 17 November. The .45 caliber pistol used would be used in every subsequent 17 November murder for the next twenty-seven years and became known to U.S. and Greek intelligence as The Welch .45.[1]