Richard Skeffington Welch (December 14, 1929 – December 23, 1975) was a career
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
officer. He was the Chief of Station (COS) in Athens, Greece, when he was assassinated by the
Revolutionary Organization 17 November
Revolutionary Organization 17 November ( el, Επαναστατική Οργάνωση 17 Νοέμβρη, ''Epanastatiki Organosi dekaefta Noemvri''), also known as 17N or the 17 November Group, was a Greek far-left Marxist–Leninist urban g ...
(17N). His assassination led to the passage of the
Intelligence Identities Protection Act
The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 (, ) is a United States federal law that makes it a federal crime for those with access to classified information, or those who systematically seek to identify and expose covert agents and have ...
, making it a crime to expose or identify officers working in covert roles who had not officially been acknowledged as such by the U.S. government.
Early life and CIA career
Welch, who was born in
Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since the ...
, was recruited to the
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...
in 1951 upon graduation from
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, where he studied
classics
Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...
. His first assignment as a case officer was in Athens working as a civilian employee of the
U.S. Department of the Army
The United States Department of the Army (DA) is one of the three military departments within the Department of Defense of the U.S. The Department of the Army is the federal government agency within which the United States Army (U.S.) is o ...
(1952–59). From 1960–64, he served in Cyprus, and then in Guatemala (1965–67), Guyana as COS (1967–69), Mexico (1969–72) and Peru as
chief of staff
The title chief of staff (or head of staff) identifies the leader of a complex organization such as the armed forces, institution, or body of persons and it also may identify a principal staff officer (PSO), who is the coordinator of the supporti ...
(1972–75).
He arrived in
Athens
Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...
, Greece, in July 1975, at a time when Greece had just come out of a period of dictatorship
under the country's military junta. Welch stayed in the house occupied by several of his predecessors as chief of the CIA station. The night of December 23, 1975, five men in a stolen
Simca
Simca (; Mechanical and Automotive Body Manufacturing Company) was a French automaker, founded in November 1934 by Fiat S.p.A. and directed from July 1935 to May 1963 by Italian Henri Pigozzi. Simca was affiliated with Fiat and, after Simca bough ...
automobile followed him home as he returned from a Christmas party. While two men covered his wife and driver, a third shot him dead with a .45 Colt
M1911 pistol
The M1911 (Colt 1911 or Colt Government) is a single-action, recoil-operated, semi-automatic pistol chambered for the .45 ACP cartridge. The pistol's formal U.S. military designation as of 1940 was ''Automatic Pistol, Caliber .45, M1911'' for th ...
at close range. Welch's name and address had been published in the
Athens News
''Athens News'' was an English-language newspaper published in Greece. The paper had regular sections covering aspects of Greek news such as politics, social issues, business, arts & entertainment and sports, as well as international news. Featur ...
and
Eleftherotypia
''Eleftherotypia'' ( el, Ελευθεροτυπία, lit=freedom of the press) was a daily national newspaper published in Athens, Greece.
Published since 21 July 1975, it was the first newspaper to appear after the fall of the Regime of the C ...
in November 1975. However, a communiqué sent by 17N to the French newspaper ''
Libération
''Libération'' (), popularly known as ''Libé'' (), is a daily newspaper in France, founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968. Initially positioned on the far-left of France's ...
'' in March 1976 demonstrated that the group had been watching Welch's movements since the summer of 1975.
Public exposure as a CIA agent
By 1968, Welch had been publicly identified as a CIA agent in the magazine, ''
CounterSpy''. and in a book attributed to two Soviet bloc intelligence agents, ''Who's Who in the CIA.'' Former CIA agent
Philip Agee
Philip Burnett Franklin Agee (; January 19, 1935 – January 7, 2008)Will Weissert"Ex-CIA Agent Philip Agee Dead in Cuba" Associated Press (sfgate.com), January 9, 2008. was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) case officer and writer of t ...
published two books revealing the names of more than 1,000 alleged CIA officers in Europe and Africa, resulting in the revocation of Agee's passport ''
Haig v. Agee
''Haig v. Agee'', 453 U.S. 280 (1981), was a Supreme Court of the United States, United States Supreme Court case that upheld the right of the executive branch to revoke a citizen's passport for reasons of national security and the foreign policy ...
.'' "
..he practice of naming CIA agents allegedly led directly to the 1975 assassination of CIA station chief Richard Welch in Greece."
Outraged by Agee’s actions, Congress passed the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (1982), which criminalized the disclosure of identities of CIA agents.
Legacy and aftermath
![ANCExplorer Richard Welch grave](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/ANCExplorer_Richard_Welch_grave.jpg)
By presidential order of U.S. President
Gerald Ford
Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. ( ; born Leslie Lynch King Jr.; July 14, 1913December 26, 2006) was an American politician who served as the 38th president of the United States from 1974 to 1977. He was the only president never to have been elected ...
, Welch was buried in
Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington National Cemetery is one of two national cemeteries run by the United States Army. Nearly 400,000 people are buried in its 639 acres (259 ha) in Arlington, Virginia. There are about 30 funerals conducted on weekdays and 7 held on Sa ...
. His death helped turn the political tide back in favor of the CIA after the damning revelations by the
Church Committee
The Church Committee (formally the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) was a US Senate select committee in 1975 that investigated abuses by the Central Intelligence ...
earlier in 1975.
Welch's murder contributed to passage of the
Intelligence Identities Protection Act
The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 (, ) is a United States federal law that makes it a federal crime for those with access to classified information, or those who systematically seek to identify and expose covert agents and have ...
of 1982, making it illegal to reveal the name of an agent who has a covert relationship with an American intelligence organization.
In July 2002, a hospital employee named Pavlos Serifis (born 1956) confessed that he had participated in Welch's murder along with 17N's alleged mastermind
Alexandros D. Giotopoulos (born 1944), Pavlos's uncle Ioannis Serifis (born 1938), and a tall, blonde "Anna."
Charges for the Welch murder were not brought because the (then) 20-year
statute of limitations
A statute of limitations, known in civil law systems as a prescriptive period, is a law passed by a legislative body to set the maximum time after an event within which legal proceedings may be initiated. ("Time for commencing proceedings") In m ...
had expired. Giotopoulos was sentenced to multiple life terms in 2003 as the moral instigator of a string of assassinations, bombings, rocket attacks, and bank robberies from 1983 to 2000. Ioannis Serifis was acquitted. Pavlos Serifis was convicted of membership in a terrorist group but released on health grounds. An appeals court ruled in 2007 that the statute of limitations had expired for that crime.
Conspiracy theory
It was rumored that Welch was assassinated under the order of Aristotle Onassis because Welch acknowledged Onassis' implication in the
assassination of both John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. Onassis died on March 15, 1975, but conspiracy theorists propose that the Welch assassination plan was resumed by his daughter
Christina in December 1975.
In fiction
A fictionalized version of Welch appears as a recurring character in the
shared world
A shared universe or shared world is a fictional universe from a set of creative works where more than one writer (or other artist) independently contributes a work that can stand alone but fits into the joint development of the storyline, chara ...
anthology series ''
Heroes in Hell
''Heroes in Hell'' is a series of shared world fantasy books, within the genre Bangsian fantasy, created and edited by Janet Morris and written by her, Chris Morris, C. J. Cherryh and others. The first 12 books in the series were published b ...
'', edited by
Janet Morris
Janet Ellen Morris (born May 25, 1946) is an American author of fiction and nonfiction, best known for her fantasy and science fiction and her authorship of a non-lethal weapons concept for the U.S. military.
Background
Writing
Janet Morris be ...
. Welch works for one of
Satan
Satan,, ; grc, ὁ σατανᾶς or , ; ar, شيطانالخَنَّاس , also known as Devil in Christianity, the Devil, and sometimes also called Lucifer in Christianity, is an non-physical entity, entity in the Abrahamic religions ...
's various intelligence agencies, interacting with the likes of
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, and ...
and taking fellow agent
Tamara Bunke __NOTOC__
Tamara may refer to:
People
* Tamara (name), including a list of people with this name
* Tamara (Spanish singer) (born 1984)
* Tamara, stage name of Spanish singer Yurena (born 1969)
* Tamara, stage name of Macedonian singer Tamara Tod ...
as his lover. His death is mentioned in
Man Booker Prize
The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. ...
winner ''
A Brief History of Seven Killings
''A Brief History of Seven Killings'' is the third novel by Jamaican author Marlon James (novelist), Marlon James. It was published in 2014 by Riverhead Books. The novel spans several decades and explores the attempted assassination of Bob Marley ...
'' by
Marlon James.
See also
*
Metapolitefsi
The Metapolitefsi ( el, Μεταπολίτευση, , " regime change") was a period in modern Greek history from the fall of the Ioaniddes military junta of 1973–74 to the transition period shortly after the 1974 legislative elections.
The m ...
, the period of Greek history during which Welch was murdered.
References
Sources
Greek Assassins Arrested ''
Association of Former Intelligence Officers
The Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), formerly known as the Association of Retired Intelligence Officers is a non-profit, non-partisan advocacy organization founded in 1975 by David Atlee Phillips to counter widespread criticism o ...
'', Weekly Intelligence Notes #31-02 5 August 2002.
*
W. Thomas Smith – ''Encyclopedia of the Central Intelligence Agency''
External links
at ArlingtonCemetery.net, an unofficial website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Welch, Richard
1929 births
1975 deaths
1975 murders in Greece
People of the Central Intelligence Agency
American diplomats
American spies
Harvard College alumni
Assassinated American people
Assassinated American diplomats
Deaths by firearm in Greece
Victims of the Revolutionary Organization 17 November
American terrorism victims
Terrorism deaths in Greece
American people murdered abroad
People murdered in Greece
Burials at Arlington National Cemetery
Murdered CIA agents