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Now that two friends I greatly respect, Alan Clark and Ian Gilmour, have dis- missed suggestions that Richard Gott was `a KGB agent of influence' as absurd, it might sound a bit rich if I pronounce him to have been a typical 'Red under the bed' — which I will nevertheless do.
Unlike these two great men, I have lived up close with KGB agents of influence in the Olive Republic — and have seen for myself how malicious 'Red gold' can be. Take, for example, the case of Richard Welch. He was murdered by Greek recipi- ents of Red gold 19 years ago this week, a few blocks away from where I live in the Big Olive. Richard Welch was the CIA Athens station chief, which might lead you, dear reader, to assume it was a case of spooks killing each other. Not so. Soon after the collapse of the Colonels in 1974,
the KGB began a very intensive campaign to discredit pro-Westerners in general, and Uncle Sam in particular. At the time, I was singled out as not only a CIA agent, but as a man who had sold out the country of his birth to American interests. The publisher of the Athens News led the attack. He was the one that published the home address of Richard Welch, who was duly murdered as he was saying goodbye to his children.
When I named the publisher as being on the take from the KGB, in The New York Times, of all papers, he sued me for libel and got other agents of influence to swear in court that I was on the take from the CIA. I got 18 months in the pokey, which I of course spent at Annabel's and dear old London. My forced exile turned out for the best. I got my job at The Spectator as a result, and years later my sentence was annulled after the Daily Telegraph's Athens correspondent proved beyond a doubt that the people who had sued me were on the take from the Soviets.
So far so good. What rubs me the wrong way, however, is the fact that although Sen- ator Joe McCarthy has been demonized as another Hitler even by the Conservative press, revelation after revelation show the extent of KGB infiltration of the media. Senator Joe knew what he was talking about. Here I will only use the Greek example because I'm very familiar with it. The anti-Americanism of the Greek press during the Seventies was so strident and well organised, only a useful idiot or some- one on the take from you know where would describe it as everyday, cultural anti- Americanism. It was kept alive by the daily publication of fiery editorials and political analyses 'proving' that America was the most Fascist, oppressive and imperialist power on earth. Foreign journalists who reported the excesses of the Greek press and its poisonous anti-Westernism were immediately 'exposed' as CIA agents and their characters assassinated by insinuation, half-truths, distortion of what they wrote, and out-and-out smears. I know, I got the brunt of it.
So now we are told that Richard Gott was quixotic to resign, and that he did it all for fun and adventure. Sure, and there was no forced starvation in the Ukraine. In my not so humble opinion, and despite the fact that we won the Cold War, it was people like Gott — free trips and all — that helped the evil empire stick around as long as it did. They did it for the money and the prestige it gave them to be able to yell 'Fas- cist pig' to cops handing them a speeding ticket. None of them deigned to live in the Utopias they were defending, nice places like Cuba, North Korea and East Germany, but they were quick enough to defame any- one pointing out this contradiction.
Personally, I'm happy that Gott has been exposed, especially as it was The Spectator that did it. And as far as being a CIA agent, no, I was not. My father was, and I tried to join, but I was too indiscreet when in Vietnam and after that they wouldn't touch me with a bargepole. But I did recruit a few Greeks, and did it for the love, not the moolah, so there. They never even paid for a trip to the seaside.
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