Page "Revolutionary Organization 17 November" Paragraph 45

Other writers have also claimed, without any evidence, that 17N may have been a tool of foreign secret services.

In December 2005, Kleanthis Grivas published an article in To Proto Thema, a Greek Sunday newspaper, in which he accused " Sheepskin ", the Greek branch of Gladio, NATO's stay-behind paramilitary organization during the Cold War, of the assassination of CIA station chief Richard Welch in Athens in 1975, as well as of the assassination of Stephen Saunders in 2000.

This was denied by the US State Department, who responded that " the Greek terrorist organization ' 17 November ' was responsible for both assassinations ", and asserted that Grivas's central piece of evidence had been a document (" Westmoreland Field Manual ") which the State department, as well as a Congressional inquiry had dismissed as a Soviet forgery.

It should be noted the documents make no specific mention of Greece, November 17th, nor Welch.

The State Department also highlighted the fact that, in the case of Richard Welch, " Grivas bizarrely accuses the CIA of playing a role in the assassination of one of its own senior officials " as well as the Greek government's statements to the effect that the " stay behind " network had been dismantled in 1988.