National Security Service (Greece)
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The National Security Service or YPEA (
Ministry of Public Order
.
YPEA was the agency responsible for keeping dossiers on the political beliefs of Greek citizens, and as such it was widely feared and despised among the general population. It was founded in 1958, after the left-wing
Metaxas dictatorship
.
Throughout its existence, the agency was staffed by
Regime of the Colonels (1967–74), the service was headed first by Lt. General Spyridon Vellianitis, and then by Major General Georgios Thomopoulos. With the restoration of democracy in 1974, the service was renamed and placed under General Pantelis Kalamakis, a royalist arrested by the military junta, and then under Lt. General Dimitrios Kapelaris. After the socialist PASOK of Andreas Papandreou became the government in 1981, it installed Lt. General Anastasios Bouras, another officer who had resisted the junta, as the service's director. In 1984, as part of a wide-ranging reform of the police and security services, the PASOK government completely dissolved and liquidated YPEA as an organization, with duties passing onto the Hellenic Police
's Directorate of State Security.