S1E10 Blind Spot

THE BLURB: John's assignment in Athens comes to a head when an assassination attempt on him goes awry with tragic results. But that merely compounds the situation at home when John learns - from his 6 year old son - that his wife's been cheating on him. SHOW NOTES For more great podcasts like Dead Drop, please visit https://costardandtouchstone.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasia pro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  This podcast, it's a Coster and Touchstone production.

• 0:46John Kiriakou?

  Hi, I'm John Kuriope. 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. 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,

• 1:29John Kiriakou?

  some with each other, some against each other, but invariably against us. I was a counterterrorism kid in a terrorism candy store. 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.

• 2:10John Kiriakou?

  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.

• 2:39John Kiriakou?

  We got a cable from the White House in late 1999 saying that the president was coming to Greece. He was gonna go to Greece, Turkey, and Bulgaria. We had not had a presidential visit in Greece since 1957, so this was a very big deal. When a president announces a visit to the country in which you're posted, everybody drops everything. And it doesn't matter how important you are, or how important you think you are, you have to pitch in and work this presidential visit. The American ambassador to Greece at the time was Nicholas Burns.

• 3:20John Kiriakou?

  Burns went on to be ambassador to NATO, ambassador to China, he's kind of a big deal at the State Department. He also saw himself at the time as a potential candidate for governor of Massachusetts, which never came to pass. What Burns did, to his great credit, was he put all the job in a hat. And just to keep things democratic, we took turns just picking our jobs out of the hat. Now, a job might be to meet the president and his party at the airport and to escort them to the hotel. It might be to be in charge of all the party's luggage. It might be to make sure that the reporting cables get back to the State Department and to the National Security Council. Everybody had a job.

• 4:02John Kiriakou?

  And as I said, it didn't matter if you were the deputy chief of mission, or if you were a CIA officer, or if you were the agricultural attache, everybody had to pitch in. Well, when it came my turn to pick a job out of the hat, I could not have been any more lucky. I reach into the hat, I pull out the little slip of paper, and my job was to be the note taker in the president's meeting with the prime minister, the foreign minister, and the defense minister, in the presidential suite at the Intercontinental Hotel. No better job existed. When Ambassador Burns received the cable saying that the president was planning to come to Greece,

• 4:45John Kiriakou?

  he said, "The embassy welcomes the president's visit to Greece. The only thing we ask is, please, please, don't come on the 17th of November." And we get a cable back saying, "The president will arrive in Athens on the 17th of November." Well, usually, there's a crowd of 100,000 people throwing coins and paint at the embassy on that day. The Greeks, God bless them, were really good about it. They shut down the entire city. There's a scene in the film "The Devil's Advocate", where Keanu Reeves is on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan,

• 5:28John Kiriakou?

  and there's not a single human being out on the street. That was Athens on the 17th of November, 1999. There were snipers on the roofs of most of the buildings around the embassy, snipers on the roofs of the hotels around the Intercontinental Hotel. It was like something out of the Twilight Zone. The cost had to be absolutely enormous. But again, this was the first visit of an American president since 1957. Now, the Greek people, the Greek media, were not happy about this at all. For two weeks before he even arrived in Athens, the media were having a field day.

• 6:08John Kiriakou?

  They never called him Bill Clinton, or President Clinton, or the American president. They made up a word, "O planetarhis", it means "The Planet Ruler". "The Planet Ruler Clinton is coming. The Planet Ruler Clinton is coming to tell us how to run our lives. The Planet Ruler Clinton is gonna do this, or do that." This all came out of the seven-year nightmare of the junta from 1967 to 1974. So we were prepared for the worst. We were prepared for 17 November to blow up half the city. We were prepared for popular revolutionary struggle to blow up half the members of the

• 6:50John Kiriakou?

  police force. But the Greeks took this very, very seriously. On the 17th of November, I put on my best suit again. I strapped on a shoulder holster, which I never wore, because I never carried a gun with a suit. I was wearing jeans every day. I put my 9mm in the shoulder holster, and because it was warmer than normal that day, I didn't even think about it, but I put my jacket over my car seat. So I drive all the way downtown, through the roadblock, and finally I'm stopped about a half a block from the embassy. A policeman comes to my car. I rolled down my window and I said to him in Greek, "I work for the American Embassy." I handed him my diplomatic identification card and I showed him my embassy

• 7:35John Kiriakou?

  badge. I said, "I'm here to work on the president's visit." He turns around and he says to his captain, "He's wearing a gun." And I thought, "Oh my God, I'm wearing my gun!" And I took my jacket off. I heard the captain say, "If he's wearing a gun, he has business at the embassy. Let him through." And so they just let me through. The embassy had arranged a bus to take everybody who needed to be at the hotel, Secret Service and the rest of us who had business there. They took us to the Intercontinental Hotel. Now, the Secret Service gave me a special badge that had a big letter "A" on it. So it said, "President Clinton's Visit to Greece, November 17th and 18th, 1999." It had a big letter

• 8:20John Kiriakou?

  "A" in the center. I learned later "A" meant "Armed." So I go to the room where the meeting is going to take place about a half an hour early. The Secret Service agent who's in charge of the room sees that I have an "A" badge. "So you're armed?" I said, "Yes." "Are you FBI?" I said, "I'm CIA." He said, "Any chance I can get you to give me your gun?" You know, on any other day, I'd be happy to give you my gun, but because everybody's armed, I don't want to lose control of my gun with so many different people around. I think I'm going to respectfully tell you no. Okay, I do respect that. How about, just while the president's in the room, you put the gun in the room safe? Ah, that I'll do. About five minutes before the president was due to come into the room,

• 9:06John Kiriakou?

  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 pre-ordered 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, we had it there. I said to the prime minister,

• 9:42John Kiriakou?

  "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. Clinton says to the prime minister, "Would you like something to eat?" The 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..." "No, thank you, thank you, Mr. President."

• 10:27John Kiriakou?

  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?" 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're Greek." And I said, "I kind of am, but not really, but I'm 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 notepad. This is the most important meeting I've been in in my life since the day of the Iraqi

• 11:11John Kiriakou?

  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. 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.

• 11:53John Kiriakou?

  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. 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.

• 12:31John Kiriakou?

  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. 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.

• 13:15John Kiriakou?

  They finished 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 lulls in the conversation. So she walks up to us and she's just standing there. It's the four of us with Chelsea, she's just standing there looking at him. But he hates silence.

• 13:57John Kiriakou?

  So he says, "Boy, we sure had a good time at the Parthenon this morning, didn't we, Hill?" No response. Silence again. So he repeats himself. "Boy, we sure had a good time at the Parthenon this morning, didn't we, Hill?" She says, "Jesus Christ, Bill, it rained all day. I'll be in the room." And she walks between us and goes into a room a little farther down the hall. 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. We go down to the basement where there is a room with 500 screaming women

• 14:41John Kiriakou?

  from the Greece-US Women's Business Women's Association Society, something, I don't remember, screaming, and he just basked in it. I am... And he gave a speech that almost made me start to cry. A whole set of chance circumstances... 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, "O Planetarhis", "The Planet Ruler", and every single time, on every single network, when they would say his name,

• 15:26John Kiriakou?

  "O Planetarhis, Bill Clinton", they would cut to a clip of him saying, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky", and then thirty seconds later, they would say, "Well, O Planetarhis is coming here to tell us how to run our economy", "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky", to the point where you would hear that twenty times over the course of a single news program, on every channel! They did it just to show contempt and disrespect. 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.

• 16:08John Kiriakou?

  He apologized, and he asked for the forgiveness of all Greeks for the subversion of their democracy. People just, like, 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", "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

• 16:53John Kiriakou?

  at the beginning of the Democratic primaries to winning the nomination. I later became friendly with the US Ambassador to Luxembourg, Clay Constantino. He was one of four Finance Committee chairmen for the Clinton campaign. He told me the most fascinating story. I told him this story about Clinton's visit to Athens, and he said, "Oh, I can do you one better". Clay said that when the Lewinsky story broke...

• 17:20John Kiriakou?

  He called Al Gore. He said to Gore, "The president has to resign. We still have time for him to resign. You become president and there's enough time to build a campaign and then you win reelection. But he's gotta go. He can't survive this Lewinsky scandal." Gore asked him, "Have you spoken to the other campaign officers, the senior officers?" He said, "We're unanimous. He has to resign." He said, "We reserved a small conference room at the Willard Hotel, which is across the street from the White House, and we want to tell the president that we want to meet there. We won't tell him why, but we're going to be united in our insistence that he resign." Gore said, "Okay, I'm with you." They schedule a meeting with the president. He goes over to the Willard Hotel.

• 18:02John Kiriakou?

  He walks in and the first thing he says is, "I have let you down, friends." And he starts to cry. And Clay said that one of the finance directors behind him shouts, "We love you, Bill." And he says, "I love you." And Clay said, "Five minutes later, they're all crying. They're chanting, 'Clinton, Clinton.'" I said, "Clay, come on, he had to have set that up." He said, "Of course he did. Somebody leaked it to him that we were going to demand his resignation." But he knew that Clinton magic would win us over again. And it did. He knew how to work a room better than anybody else.

• 18:44Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Adam Grant from Ted's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasia pro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.

• 19:17Speaker 03

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• 19:52Speaker 04

  I'm David Swanson, and I invite you to check out my new podcast, "Just the Photographer", about the 40 years I've spent as a photojournalist, shooting everything from war zones to natural disasters to red carpets, and everything in between. While my photos can tell you what it looked like standing in those dangerous places, taking news photos, they can't tell you what it felt like. That's what this podcast is here to do. Here are some clips from the first episode to give you a taste. I wish I could unsee some of the terrible things I've seen. The very worst things that human beings can do to each other. In 1992, Bosnia was going on, and I thought that would be the first time I'd attempt a war. I can't remember which book it was,

• 20:37Speaker 04

  but there was a quote that "war is a crucible of emotion", the best and the worst. If you're gonna be a photographer, a photojournalist, why would you not want to go to a place like that? I was on that bridge the next day. I can honestly say that was one of the most nerve-wracking times of my life. Tracer bullets, which I think are every third or fourth shot, so that means there were four times as many bullets in the air, started flying left and right. A guy named Deuce, but his real name is Charles, laid on my back, on my backpack, and used my backpack as a platform for his weapon.

• 21:12Speaker 05

  So they told me, "You have to leave. We have a big screwdriver." And he said, "I'm gonna put that screwdriver in your chest."

• 21:23Speaker 04

  As dangerous as it was, Muthaz and I laughed our heads off. There's a certain romance to it.

• 21:33Speaker 04

  For me, making art requires duress, and I don't know why. Or maybe I do know, and this podcast is my way of figuring it out. Either way, I hope you'll join me on this journey as I tell you what it was like standing in dangerous places and witnessing them with my camera. New episodes start dropping Fridays, starting August 1st. Subscribe to stay in the loop. That's Just the Photographer with David Swanson. Stories my photos can't tell you.

• 22:04John Kiriakou?

  My station chief pulled me aside near the end of my tour, and he said to me, this was probably the single greatest compliment anybody ever gave me at the CIA. He said, I've been a CIA officer for 25 years. I've been in the senior intelligence service for six years. I made nine recruitments in those 25 years, and I remember every single one of them. He said, you've been here two years, and you've made five recruitments, and not an easy little safe house keeper among them. I recruited badasses, dangerous killers, communist militants, bona fide terrorists. I treated them with respect, and I think that's what the hook was.

• 22:47John Kiriakou?

  I wasn't trying to bully them, badger them, frighten them. I spoke to them with respect, and I was able to convince them that they were wrong, and I was right. I made a name for myself at the CIA over the years as always being the good cop. 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 Defence Attache arrived in Athens.

• 23:30John Kiriakou?

  Brigadier General Stephen Saunders. I liked Steve a lot. 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 Defence. He was the British Defence Attache. 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 neighbours. Three or four weeks after he arrived, my car arrived from Germany.

• 24:12John Kiriakou?

  The agency had purchased a brand-new BMW 540 that was fully armourered with Level 4 armour, so this thing would stop anything. The windows were three inches thick, and they were acrylic, lucite, 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. 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.

• 24:56John Kiriakou?

  And so I went to the dinner party, the American Defence Attache, Steve went, and the French Defence Attache. 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. 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 and 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.

• 25:37John Kiriakou?

  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. 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 mile off of the main thoroughfare called Kyphisias Boulevard. When you got close to the embassy, it changed names to Vasilisios Sophia's Queen Sophia Boulevard. There are concrete Jersey Bears, 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,

• 26:18John Kiriakou?

  and you just go 10 miles straight down the mountain to the front door of the embassy. So I said, "Damn it, I have to, I have to get on Kyphisias." I get on Kyphisias, 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. 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

• 27:03John Kiriakou?

  to blow your brains out while you're fidgeting with a radio." So I turn on the radio, and I'm listening to the station, and the Greek announcer says, "Avoid Kyphisias Boulevard. There is a traffic incident at Philothae." Philothae was the halfway point between where I lived in Kyphisias and the embassy in Athens. And I said, "Damn it, 5 miles of this traffic? I'm inching down the mountain." A half an hour later, he comes back on the radio and he says, "Avoid KPCS Boulevard. There was a criminal incident at Philophae." And I remember thinking to myself, "Criminal incident? I've never heard that before."

• 27:43John Kiriakou?

  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 KPCS Boulevard. There was a terrorist attack in Philophae." 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 Y B H. 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

• 28:27John Kiriakou?

  that began with Y H B. Mine was Y H B 1442. My wife was Y H B 1367. I still remember. And I looked and that license plate is Y B H. 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 Y B H. They don't have diplomatic plates either." And Stephen drives a white Rover. 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?

• 29:09John Kiriakou?

  I'm stuck in traffic on KPCS, but I think Stephen Saunders was just assassinated." He said, "What? What are you seeing?" I told him about the car and the Y H B and the Y B H. 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. I'm gonna 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."

• 29:52John Kiriakou?

  Two 17 November assassins drove right up alongside of him. One of them shot him. With a rifle carrying an anti-tank round, an armor-piercing round. We learned years later that first shot threw Steven'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 Steven out of the car,

• 30:36John Kiriakou?

  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.

• 30:58Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasiapro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.

• 31:32Speaker 03

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• 32:05John Kiriakou?

  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, this is CIA. 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 was so incredibly courageous that I still think about it all these years later.

• 32:50John Kiriakou?

  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 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."

• 33:35John Kiriakou?

  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. 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 16th, 2000, I went into the office like a normal day and my boss ran into my office and said, "Did you see the manifesto?" I said, "What manifesto?"

• 34:20John Kiriakou?

  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 mention you." "Me? That's not possible." He said, "Look," and he hands me the manifesto. "There's a line in there, it says, 'Ilameton Megalocatascopos.'" "We saw the big spy." "But he was in an armored car, 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?"

• 35:05John Kiriakou?

  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. And they said, 'Only a CIA man would drive an armored car with American embassy license plates.'" The ironies were tripping over each other. Seventeen November found me because I lived next door to Steven, who had first attracted their attention. Realizing who I was and what I was, Seventeen November planned to assassinate me, even bringing an anti-tank round to attack my car.

• 35:48John Kiriakou?

  Murderous as Seventeen November was, they weren't stupid. 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: Steven. 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." 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."

• 36:33John Kiriakou?

  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.

• 36:48John Kiriakou?

  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, 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.

• 37:28John Kiriakou?

  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, 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.

• 38:12John Kiriakou?

  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." 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 cellphone, every five minutes. I just wouldn't pick up the phone. I didn't even want to hear her voice.

• 38:55John Kiriakou?

  Finally, the secretary came in and she said, "Your wife is on the phone and she's crying." Yeah, she should be crying. 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 want to 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. I get in the car. I speed up to the intersection. And the cars are both mangled. They're totaled.

• 39:40John Kiriakou?

  The guy is standing there with his wife, Greek guy. And I went up to him and I said, "Disto di aloe, jimego." I said, "What the hell happened here?" And he's angry, agitated, and animated, and he says to me, "Ienekasu butanaime." "Your wife, she's a whore." "My wife is a whore?" I beat him 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

• 40:22John Kiriakou?

  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 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. So he said, "What happened?"

• 41:07John Kiriakou?

  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 Nekas Subutana. 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?" "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 want to press charges against this guy."

• 41:51John Kiriakou?

  "He can't press charges against me because I have diplomatic immunity." "But I don't want to 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. 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.

• 42:35John Kiriakou?

  Like I said, my focus was elsewhere. Since I was happy and no one else appeared unhappy, 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 Heos. 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 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.

• 43:20John Kiriakou?

  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 want to 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 and he doesn't care how late it is. And I said, he's going to expel me. My career is never going to recover from this. He's going to 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.

• 44:04John Kiriakou?

  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 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.

• 44:45John Kiriakou?

  I must have 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 have started leafing through every single newspaper. Nobody had picked it up. I thought for sure that this guy would have called his newspaper of choice on the left, on the right, in the center, who knew? And he never did.

• 45:28John Kiriakou?

  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'd 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 to be owned by my mom's cousin. She said, "Let's go in. I want to get some earrings for Joanne." I said, "No, don't do that, Mom." "Why?" she says. I took a deep breath. "Mom..."

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• 47:08John Kiriakou?

  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. But it wasn't going to 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.

• 47:52John Kiriakou?

  But no permanent harm. I was hardly the first CIA officer to have his cover blown 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.

• 48:28John Kiriakou?

  In the next episode of What Makes This Spy Tick, 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. Costart and Touchstone Productions produces the podcast, and John Kiriakou, Alan Katz, and Nick Mechanic are its executive producers.