Conspiracy of Conscience

The Greek police had gone to extraordinary lengths to try to avoid arresting Lady Amalia Fleming. She is, after all, the widow of Britain's Sir Alexander Fleming, who won the 1945 Nobel Prize for his discovery of penicillin. Because of his marriage to Greek-born Amalia, the achievement is particularly honored in Greece, where nearly every village has a Fleming Street. Lady Fleming, 62, is a noted bacteriologist in her own right and a World War II heroine of the Greek resistance. Thus when the police were tipped off that she was involved in a plot to spring their most closely guarded prisoner, they tried to frighten her out of the idea. She was picked up and questioned for 14 hours about a party she had reportedly given last year for underground dissidents. Then she was released.

Lady Fleming either did not tumble to the hint or did not scare easily enough. Last week she was sentenced by a Greek military tribunal to 16 months in prison for her role in an aborted plot to free Alexandros Panaghoulis. 32, who was convicted in 1968 of trying to blow up Greek Strongman George Papadopoulos' automobile. Found guilty and sentenced to lesser terms were a lawyer friend of Panaghoulis', a prison guard and two Americans, Mrs. Athena Psychoghiou of Minneapolis, a friend of Panaghoulis' brother, and John Skelton, a Pennsylvania theology student, who received a suspended sentence and immediately left for the U.S.

Freely admitting her role in the affair, Lady Fleming told the court: "I could not bear the thought that he was being inhumanly tortured in jail." Why did she do it? Friends said she was convinced that Panaghoulis was a tyrannoktonos (in the ancient Greek sense, a man who kills a tyrant) and was therefore "the conscience of Greece" and had to be saved.

The plan was apparently hatched earlier this year when Panaghoulis became friendly with a young prison guard. Using the arcane password "eggs-Epaminondas* -puppet." the guard made contact with the lawyer friend, who in turn brought Lady Fleming into the scheme.

No Inkling. Twice the plans ran into snags. On one attempt, according to a military investigator, the driver of the escape car was to have been Athens Architect Nicholas Hadjimichalis, who has been advising Jackie Onassis on a new Skorpios villa (he was out of Greece at the time of the arrests and was not charged). On the third try, the prosecution said. Panaghoulis gave a seemingly friendly guard detailed written instructions, including advice to spike a colleague's orangeade with sleeping tablets and to collect the guns of other guards ("If any barrack-room orderly sees you taking them, say that you are playing a practical joke"). When the appointed night arrived, Lady Fleming decided it was unwise to use her own car, called Skelton and asked him to rent a car "to drive someone somewhere." Unsuspecting, Skelton obliged. After a leisurely dinner he and the lawyer dropped off Lady Fleming, picked up Mrs. Psychoghiou and drove out to the prison.

The only hitch was that the guard, who claimed to have been offered a $43,300 payoff by the conspirators, had secretly informed the military police. When the conspirators parked the rented Volkswagen outside the prison walls at 3 a.m., three military Jeeps swooped down, and out piled a score of machine-gun-brandishing soldiers who arrested them. Lady Fleming, who had in the meantime gone for a drive in the country, was picked up at 5:40 a.m., when she returned home.

Rather than keep her in prison as a continued embarrassment to the regime, some Athenians suspected the government might find it more expedient simply to deport her. Lady Fleming, who has dual Greek and British citizenship, told newsmen after she was sentenced that "I am Greek and I will stay." But there were reports that the regime might pack her on a London-bound aircraft after she has spent a while in prison and the case has faded from the headlines, then issue a decree depriving her of her Greek citizenship.

* The name of a 4th century B.C. Theban general who defeated the Spartans.

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