The noise that disturbed the stillness of that spring night four years ago above the Pentagon was something like a loud buzzing. The camp guards could not identify him, but immediately alerted the duty officer to the strange noise. The latter ordered the searchlights to be turned on, and then everyone saw the small remote-controlled flying drone.
BY DIONYSIS THANASOULIAS
SOURCE:FIRST THEME
The chopper flew in circles over the Pentagon until the floodlights came on. Its operator, whoever it was, removed it immediately and, despite the mobilization of the EYP and the security authorities, the search for it in the night proved fruitless. Executives of the National Intelligence Service of the counterintelligence division who were involved in the case at the time, were quite concerned.
It was not only the flying helicopter that had troubled them in those days. After the discovery of a "suspicious" transmitter in Parnitha, which was "harassing" flights of Greek fighter aircraft, another hit had occurred. It was the arrest of a German citizen in Kos, who systematically photographed outposts and camps on the island.
The particular gentleman, who lived permanently on the island for the last two years, had the coordinates of camps and public services recorded in his house, while binoculars, binoculars, camera memory cards and video camera cassettes were found. He is not the first and certainly will not be the last agent operating on Greek soil, probably recruited by MIT, Turkey's secret intelligence service. For decades, the undeclared war of foreign agents in our country continues with unabated intensity and with episodes that are rarely known.
Gust, John and Bill from Carpatho!
Three of them left their mark, one less and the other more, since they served at different periods of time at the CIA station in the US embassy in Athens and had Greek roots. The first was the great Gast Avrakotos who, during the junta, proposed to the colonels to assassinate Andreas Papandreou, who had been arrested. “Clean it, the seat. If you don't and you let him go, he's going to give you trouble" was Gast's exhortation to the coup plotters, which did not materialize.
The second was John Kyriakou, who dealt extensively with terrorism and 17N and the third was the famous William Basil, or as he became more widely known, "Bill from Carpathos". He was essentially the one who starred in the eavesdropping scandal, when the Americans used "shadow" payphones to monitor the conversations of dozens of officials of the Karamanlis government, as well as the prime minister himself. Before him, two other "colleagues" of his had been arrested in a van on Mithymnis Street in Kypseli, on November 16, 1993.
They were both CIA agents who had set up a surveillance ring on suspects involved in 17N, while wigs, cameras, wireless and sleeping mattresses were found inside the van. Mike Baker and Charles Fuddis are taken to the police station, the former giving a fake name and the latter saying the obvious:"I'm Charles Fuddis, Second Secretary at the American Embassy and don't you dare touch us or there will be diplomatic episode".
After a few hours and negotiations at the diplomatic level, the two Americans are released and depart on the first available flight to Jamaica, while the van was returned to the US embassy, without being checked by the Greek authorities. These were not as discreet as the famous Valerie Plame, who also passed through Athens, before becoming famous in the case that shocked the US, when the Bush administration revealed her name while she was an active CIA agent.
Plaim recruited several Greeks and, as she also wrote in her book, among them was a well-known Greek politician, whose name she did not reveal.
Behind her diplomatic status in Athens, she was a striking blonde woman, who was walking around the most trendy shops of Kolonaki, looking for "sources" and prospective informants.
The Turkish "diplomat" and the Mossad in Athens
Eight years ago, the protagonists of another episode were two Czech nationals, who were arrested in Lemnos by the local security authorities for photographing military installations on the island. Both claimed to be employees of a video game company, collecting images for the game 'Arma III'. And if these arrests have become known, there are many other incidents that remain unknown in this dance of spies on Greek soil.
Their protagonists, MIT, CIA and Israeli Mossad agents in top secret operations, which at some point were revealed through books and reports. The case of the Turkish agent Yalcin Ataman, who was operating in Athens posing as a diplomat, is one of the most characteristic. Although the KYP team at the time had identified him from the first moment and had him under close surveillance, he was so defiant that his surveillance ended in a fight with a Greek agent. No weapons were fired, but punches were thrown outside a building in a district of Athens and Ataman was found in a pit of lime!
In contrast to her, the Israeli Mossad in the early 70s were looking for a very specific person in Athens. Of course, they never admitted that a group of their agents blew up Zaid Moutsatsi in the "Aristides" hotel in the center of Athens. The latter was a PLO operative and one of 12 Palestinians the Mossad held responsible for the massacre at the Munich Olympics. His execution was part of the reprisals ordered by Prime Minister Golda Meir for the murder of the 11 athletes of their Olympic team, by members of the "Black September" organization, who invaded the Olympic Village.
But Moutsatsi was guarded by KGB agents, who accompanied him on all his movements in Athens. The Israelis waited for him one night, having rigged his room with explosives, but when those failed, an agent climbed into the room and blew it up, throwing two grenades inside. We as a country simply found ourselves that night an intermediate link in one of their many routes of revenge across Europe...
SOURCE:FIRST SUBJECT