Spies and Prostitutes: Memories of a Visa Officer in Post-WWII Greece
In post-World War II Greece, U.S. consular officers met all kinds of people—from suspected spies to prostitutes. Don Gelber was on his first diplomatic assignment. When a wealthy young American married a young Greek woman and sought to bring her to the United States, Geber did a routine background check — only to learn that the woman had once claimed to have seduced a U.S. cryptographic clerk. She then went on to seduce the U.S. psychiatrist brought in to evaluate her mental stability. In another case, the visa applicant claimed not to remember multiple arrests for solicitation, beginning on the day the British liberated Athens in 1944. Her U.S. husband, who was apparently once employed by the C.I.A., told the consular officer “I’m no spring chicken. How do you think we got together?”
Gelber went on to a long and fulfilling career in the foreign service. After his service as vice consul in Athens, political officer in Pakistan and Turkey, and Deputy Chief of Mission in Nigeria. He ended his foreign service career as the U.S. ambassador to Mali in 1990-93. He also worked as a political advisor to NATO at the Supreme Headquarters in Belgium from 1986 to 1990, and at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York City between 1993 and 1995.