What Happens to Old Terrorists?

July 31 -- Douglas MacArthur, the legendary American military man, once famously proclaimed, "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away."

But as the war on terror plods on, and the hunt for Osama bin Laden proceeds fruitlessly, there are many more terrorists who have never been caught. So what happens to them?

That's a question Greek authorities believe they are answering these days, after they began capturing suspected key members of a radical leftist group that eluded them for almost three decades.

In the past month, Greek police have arrested more than a dozen suspected members of November 17, a terrorist group accused of killing 23 people, including several foreign diplomats, since it hit the international stage with the 1975 slaying of a CIA chief in Athens.

Among the authorities' biggest captures is Alexandros Giotopoulos, who police consider the mastermind of the organization. Giotopoulos, 58, was captured earlier this month on the remote Aegean island where he lived and worked at a job translating French texts.

Another one of Giotopoulos' alleged accomplices, Theologos Psaradelis, 55, was a retired printer. And yet another, 50-year-old Nikos Papanastasiou, ran a very public souvenir shop in central Athens.

Other suspected members include a bus driver, an elementary school teacher, a beekeeper and a telephone operator.

Living Out the Lie

It is widely held that November 17 operated with impunity for so long because of incompetence or disinterest among the Greek law enforcement community. In an ABCNEWS article from 2000, Cristina Welch, the widow of the CIA chief who was November 17's first victim, accused the Greeks of having an attitude of "'Let's not talk about it. Let's put it under the rug.'"

However, terrorists around the world have managed to "fade away" in much the same way that November 17 did.

For example, it took U.S. authorities almost a quarter-century to catch up with Kathleen Soliah, a radical wanted for bombing police cars in Los Angeles in 1975, because she had fashioned a new identity for herself as a model suburban housewife. Earlier this year, the 55-year-old mother of three was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.