Sketchy investigations
N17 was now an unquestionable reality, but the question remained as to the essential existence of an organization of this nature in Greece. Speculation, rumors and scenarios
‘The colonels’ dictatorship imposed on Greece was supported by the American services which during that period had overthrown many democratically elected governments around the world’
preoccupied not only the media, but also the law enforcement authorities, which were still not convinced of the existence of a terrorist organization in the country.
We mentioned earlier that each Greek citizen had a “personal file” and, for law enforcement, there were not enough indications of the creation of a terrorist organization with political or other targets, Greeks or foreigners.
]As for the perpetrators, the various scenarios, speculations, opinions etc suggested that they were foreigners or that it was a “settling of scores” between US secret services. Police investigations were incomplete, sketchy, fragmentary, disorganized and disoriented, to say the least.
The American authorities blamed each other for publishing Welch’s name in their own magazine, CounterSpy, mentioning his whole career before his arrival in Athens.
That was followed by an article in an English publication in Athens, with a complete list of all the names and statuses of all US Embassy staff. The article was published in the Athens News in November 1975.
N17 found the target and prepared the attack within a month. After that, its presence and actions continued uninterrupted until 2002, while it is worth noting that it always took responsibility for its actions in multipage proclamations.
On the other hand, the Greek law enforcement authorities were obviously aware that similar violent political organizations had existed and been operating in European countries since the late 1960s.
Nevertheless, they did not consider the possibility of similar organizations operating in Greece without them having suspected their existence and presence, as they considered that they were in complete control of the field.