ONE JOURNALIST VS. THE KGB

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100090005-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 14, 2011
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: May 30, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/14: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100090005-0
' RT t-r Mir ' M WASHINGTON TIMES
30 May 1985
One journalist
vs. the KGB
By Glenn Garvin
magine
your
surprise
if
you
picked
up a
newspaper
this
J
afternoon and discovered that it
contained a verbatim transcript
of a telephone conversation you had
with a friend a few days ago.
And then imagine that the news-
paper said your seemingly innocent
conversation about what went on at
work that day was actually con-
ducted in code, and that what you
were really talking about was
i blowing up buildings, assassinating
several dozen of your enemies, and
betraying your country to a foreign
power.
Paul Anastasi doesn't have to
imagine.
"I just couldn't believe it:' he
recalls. "It was a shocking exper-.
ience. I hope you don't ever have to
go through it. The largest-
circulation daily newspaper in
Greece ... saying I was a terror-
ist... "
For Paul Anastasi this was just the
latest chapter in a life that
increasingly resembles a novel co-
authored by Ian Fleming and Franz
Kafka. Five years ago Mr. Anastasi
wrote a book accusing the popular
lee ? newspaper h;thnos ot inan-
ciai ties tote KGB. the Soviet
secret police. Since then he has been
sentenced to tail, his phones nave
been tapped. he has been accused of
plotting mass murder, and he has
been pu ica v denounced asa
agent plotting nothing less than t e
conquest of all Europe for the United
States.
"it's been distracting," he
observes with heroic under-
statement.
Of course, Mr. Anastasi - a news-
paperman who covers Greece for
The New York Times and the London
Daily Telegraph - has given nearly
as good as he's gotten. His book
became a best seller, the men he
accused- of wiretapping him nave
been sentenced to jail; and he man-
aged to get his own prison sentence
thrown out by the Greek Supreme
Court.
Yet another chapter in this real-
life thriller is now unfolding in
Greek courtrooms. Three hearings
were held recently in cases between
Mr. Anastasi and the publisher of
Ethnos, including mutual assertions
of libel. Greece is now waiting until
after Sunday's election and a month
of court vacation for the verdicts in
these much-publicized suits.
Although Mr. Anastasi's earlier jail
sentence has been annulled by the
Supreme Court, he may still go to
prison. He swears he would rather
do that than pay a nickel in damages
if he should lose the upcoming libel
suit.
"The KGB won't get any moral or
financial help from me:" he says.
"They already have too much."
000
The funny thing is that Paul Anas-
tasi is a liberal. When Greece had a
right-wing regime, he was always in
trouble with the government.
"I was very much against the for-
mer regime:' he says. "I was called
in several times by the former press
secretary, who felt my reporting was
too leftist. They were always warn-
ing me to stop it:'
Nonetheless. he was fascinated by
the newspaper Ethnos, which began
publishing in 1981 and quickly
became the most popular newspa-
per in Greece. -
Ethnos was the country's first tab-
loid newspaper. It was one of the
first papers in Greece to use color
photos. It has a clean, modern layout,
and its sports reporting is extensive
and well-written. The Wall Street
Journal recently called it "the most
professionally produced newspaper
in Greece:'
But what interested Mr Anastasi
was the newspaper's politics, which
were unabashedly pro-Soviet and
anti-United States. According to
Ethnos (as reported in The a
U'eet Journal an from t nos cll
pings seen by this reporter). the Ber-
lin Wall was built as a de tense
againsi 7.5. aggression. Poland's
solidarity union 7 a CiA tool. The
pope is a la is gangster. The Soviet
Union is the "world's first peace
bloc." Ronald Reagan is a "paranoid
monster.' What intrigued Mr. Anas-
tasi was speculation among other
Greek publications that Ethnos was
somehow bankrolled by the Soviet
Union.
"I had heard it before, and I was
very skeptical:' he says. "I found it
very difficult to believe ... I could
never imagine at that time. that my
investigation would have turned up
so many KGB agents. and so many
documents and pictures which gave
evidence of the joint publishing ven-
ture with the Soviets:'
Mr. Anastasi amassed his evi-
dence from a Greek communist
named Yannis Yannikios, a jilted
business partner of George Bobolas,
who publishes Ethnos. Mr. Yannikios
was suing Mr. Bobolas: he claims he
was unfairly squeezed out of the
company that publishes Ethnos.
Mr. Yannikios' lawsuit was not
going well. Mr. Anastasi began meet-
ing with him and he began probing.
In all, there would be more than 40
interviews with Mr. Yannikios and
his family.
"He gradually presented me more
and more evidence:' Mr. Anastasi
says. "He would tell me something.
and I would say,'Yes, but how can you
prove it?' He'd hand me a copy of a
document. I'd say, 'This is a photo-
copy this won't do.' So out comes the
original...
"He had everything, stacks of
things. I don't think anyone will ever
get the chance again to get so many
documents, photographs and telexes
to document a KGB operation."
'The story Mr. Anastasi heard
from Mr. Yannikios went like
this:
In 1977. after suggestions from
Communist Party leaders. Mr. Yan-
nikios formed a partnerhip with Mr.
Bobolas. The next year the men pub-
lished a Greek-language version of
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia. in
cooperation with the Soviet copy-
right office.
The Soviets were so pleased with
sales of the encyclopedia - more
than 30.000 sets - that they asked
Mr. Yannikios to submit a proposal
for a daily newspaper. In 1979 he
gave them a set of plans for what
became Ethnos. But then the Soviets
decided to deal with Mr. Bobolas
alone, pushing Mr. Yannikios out of
the picture.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/14: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100090005-0