This podcast, it's a Costerton Touchstone production.

Hi, I'm John Kiroli. Welcome to Dead Drop. What Makes a Spy Tick? Before we get started,

I want to say again how incredibly moved I am by your reaction to this podcast.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

You've motivated us to keep cranking them out.

To close that circle, it would be awesome if you could like, review, comment on, or share the podcast on whatever platform you're listening.

Think of it as extra motivation for us.

A few episodes back, I told you the story of William Buckley, a terrific soldier, a skilled spy, and the CIA station chief in

Beirut. In March 1984, Hezbollah kidnapped Bill, and over the course of the next year,

they tortured him repeatedly and produced

videos of that torture. In the end, when Bill had clearly gone mad and stopped being useful to them,

they executed him. But as I arrived in Athens a few years later, the shadow of another

assassinated CIA officer loomed large. At the time he was assassinated in December

1975, Richard Welch was the highest ranking CIA officer ever to be killed in the line of

duty. He was also the first CIA station chief to be murdered in a politically motivated

assassination. As I was preparing to go to Athens, everything I did, everything I learned,

I guess you could say was under the shadow of Richard Welch. Dick Welch was a major historical

figure in the CIA. By all accounts, everybody who encountered him loved him. He was not a typical

CIA officer of the 50s, 60s, and 70s.

He had a degree in ancient Greek. He got a master's degree in something like Greek mythology or

some obscure field. He loved Greece and he loved Greeks. He was in the Directorate of Operations. He had come to the

CIA from the military, served in Greece as a young man as a junior officer, loved every second of it,

...