At least 1,385 secret U.S. documents that concern Greece are expected to ‘leak’ from WikiLeaks in the coming days. 49 of the messages sent by the U.S. Embassy in Athens between July 2006 and February 2010 are about military nuclear applications.
The most recent message dated February 25, 2010, which contains the codes of Syria and Iran next to the code of Greece, has been sent just two days after Washington officially expressed its concern regarding Kuwait and Iran's nuclear program. Another three messages that contain the code of military nuclear applications (MNUC) have been sent over the past year.
WikiLeaks avails 1313 messages written by the U.S. Embassy in Athens and another 72 from the Consulate in Thessaloniki. The first of them has been written on July 16, 1985 and its code corresponds to the terrorism category. The topics addressed in the majority of the messages sent in the last 25 years are related with the foreign policy of Greece as well as with intergovernmental affairs. In particular, the Embassy has sent 945 messages with the PREL code, which corresponds to the international relations of Greece, and 638 with the PGOV code referring to issues related to the Greek governments.
U.S. diplomats have written about terrorism in 157 of the messages and 50 messages with the "terrorist" code PTER have been sent only in 2009, most of them (ten in number) in February 2009. In this month the group Sect of Revolutionaries attacked the police station in the Athens suburb of Korydallos and ALTER TV. Furthermore, a car full of explosives was found near a bank branch in the suburb of Kifisiya in Athens and it didn’t blow up only because of wrong connections. This act has been committed to the group Revolutionary Struggle.
Nine messages on terrorism have been sent from Athens in December 2008 when the 15 years old Alexis Grigoropoulos was killed by a policeman and impressive protests shook the Greek capital for days. Other seven messages have been written in February this year when there were no terrorist acts, only a 21-year-old boy was caught for participating in the organization Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei.
Dozens of messages concerning different military issues have been sent over the past five years. Their codes show that 89 of them describe military actions, 37 - military assistance and arms sales and 139 - checking for weapons and issues related to disarmament. 2007 could be called a "year of national security" as the U.S. Embassy has issued then ten messages with the PINS code. The most recent of them dated January 29, 2009 and December 16, 2009 are about terrorism, international relations, intergovernmental affairs and economic aid. The code for national security and the code for common security are marked on them.
42 messages have the PINR (Intelligence) code which corresponds to intelligence. They also refer to issues such as economy, terrorism, even scientific matters of biology and medicine. 80 messages from early 2005 to early 2010 mention topics related to energy. Five of them written in January, February and May 2006 contain the name of the company Gazprom and 13 of them contain data for oil and natural gas. One of the messages is dated April 04, 2008 and it is most likely associated with the signature of the then Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis for participation in the construction of South Stream gas pipeline a day earlier. Three of these ‘energy’ messages, written in the past and this year, also mention Russia, Bulgaria (in two messages), Turkey, Iran, Italy and Azerbaijan.
The most common code after that of international relations, intergovernmental and economic issues is the code PHUM, which corresponds to human rights. Over 200 messages with such content have been written by the U.S. Embassy in Athens and another 36 by the Consulate in Thessaloniki during the last five years. 41 messages describe issues related to refugees.
A telegram labeled BAKOYANNIS has been sent by the U.S. Embassy on February 2, 2006 – a day after the visit of then Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis and Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis in Berlin, where they had a working dinner with Chancellor Angela Merkel. This is the only diplomatic message that contains a code and a name. Dora Bakoyannis had just assumed her new post at the time and it was widely reported in the German press with articles in major newspapers. Meanwhile, the scandal with the phone tapping of the Prime Minister and other members of the government was raging in Greece which booked the headlines for weeks.