[31 August 2022] In late July, Nikos Androulakis, leader of Greece’s center-left PASOK opposition party, who is also a serving member of the European Parliament, revealed someone had tried to bug his mobile telephone in 2021. A few days later, the director of Greece’s National Intelligence Service (EYP), Panagiotis Kontoleon, told a parliamentary committee that the EYP had bugged a telephone belonging to Greek journalist Thanasis Koukakis, who works for CNN Greece. From then on, developments cascaded at a fast pace, as the Greek government, headed by center-right Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, acknowledged that the EYP had wiretapped Androulakis’s telephone. Kontoleon was sacked, and Prime Minister Mitsotakis has spent the last month insisting that he had no idea that EYP had spied on journalists and politicians. Meanwhile, the Greek Parliament has voted to initiate a formal investigation into the affair, which will last a month.
It also brings to mind a recent article, published in the latest issue of the Journal of European and American Intelligence Studies, titled “Greek Intelligence Service (NIS-EYP): New Wine, Old Bottles”. Co-authored by EIA Director Dr. John Nomikos and Anthony Ioannidis, of the Athens University of Economics and Business, the article outlines the present-day challenges faced by the EYP. The authors summarize the recent evolution of the organization, focusing especially on the periodic reforms that have shaped its current institutional form. They argue, however, that these reforms have led to chronic imbalances in the EYP, which must be corrected if the agency is to break away from its over-bureaucratization, its endemic factionalism and —ultimately— its inability to provide timely and actionable intelligence support to civilian decision-makers. Clearly, their wise words were not heeded by the Greek government, which now finds itself in grave peril due to the chronic inefficiencies and neglect of this most critical component of national security. [EIA]