John Kiriakou
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
They said that the successful candidate will have either Greek or Arabic language fluency.
As it turned out, I was the only person in the CIA that was fluent in both Greek and Arabic.
And so I got the job.
It was just about then that communist Arab terrorism went away.
It just, the PFLP and the DFLP and Abu Didal, they don't exist anymore.
These were old men.
They retired.
They moved to Damascus and they lived happily ever after.
The Greeks were out killing people all the time.
They killed the British defense attache when I was there.
They had previously killed the American CIA station chief, two American defense attaches, the Turkish ambassador, the Turkish deputy ambassador, the Greek
Minister of Finance, the Minister of Communications, the head of the Central Bank.
This was a terrible, terrible group.
Wow.
And so my job was to work with the Greek National Intelligence Service and the Greek National Police to try to infiltrate these two groups and to destroy them from the inside.
And what happened?
We stirred up a hornet's nest.
And they murdered my next door neighbor, the British defense attache, Stephen Saunders.
I liked Stephen very much.
Stephen had a huge personality.