Almost four years later, on August 19, 1954, Elias received a Commemorative Medal of the National Resistance 1941–45 from the Greek Under-Secretary of the Army for “outstanding services.” The citation said: “Mr. Demetracopoulos was the most trustworthy link between the ‘National Organization for the Resurrection of the Nation’ and Ivanoff [sic]…and was sentenced to death for the sabotages he had performed, including at the Zappeion radio station, and for having kept weapons and a secret radio transmitter at his home.” It described his bodily injuries and lasting scars from being tortured. And on October 15, 1954, the Greek Ministry of National Defense awarded Elias the Golden Cross of the Royal Order of George I “for his national activity during the enemy occupation.”
In coming years, the validity of each of these awards and the heroism they acknowledged would be denied by enemies attempting to destroy his reputation.8
Meanwhile, Demetracopoulos was doing everything he could to burnish that reputation. Seizing on the recent outbreak of the Korean War as a news hook, he sought outlets beyond Kathimerini to showcase his reporting. He successfully pitched stories to Pathfinder News Magazine, a right-wing publication that also published articles by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover; to the weekly magazine Thisavros, and to the short-lived English language journal Greece. He became Mediterranean correspondent for the North American Newspaper Alliance, also known as NANA, a worldwide syndicate that employed an eclectic group of writers including Ernest Hemingway, Ian Fleming, and Lucianne Goldberg over its nearly 60-year existence. To expand his network, he volunteered as press director for the Greek-American Cultural Institute and informally helped promote programs of the American-Hellenic Chamber of Commerce. Most significantly, in late 1951 he became a political contributor to Makedonia/Thessaloniki, a popular liberal morning-evening newspaper in northern Greece and one of the oldest publications in the country.
—
JOHN EMIL PEURIFOY arrived in Athens on September 15, 1950, to take over the position of ambassador from Henry Grady.9 Matinee-idol attractive, jaunty, and “good ol’ boy” informal, the five-foot-nine Peurifoy had launched his political career in 1935 by utilizing a patronage appointment as elevator operator in the House of Representatives. Three years later, he climbed the State Department ladder, where his rapport with individual members of Congress helped advance the Foggy Bottom agenda with legislators generally hostile to State Department personnel. “Smilin’ Jack” came from wealthy South Carolina bluebloods and had set his sights on being president or a US senator. In eight years, he advanced from clerk to under-secretary of state.
A zealous anti-Communist in charge of security at the State Department, Peurifoy helped stoke the national paranoia about “the enemy within,” exposing homosexual “perverts” and other serious “shady” security risks.10 In March 1950, he abetted Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Congressional witch hunt by telling the Senate Appropriations Committee that, because of his loyalty-checking vigilance, at least ninety-one “undesirable” individuals in the State Department had either resigned or been dismissed from their jobs during the previous three years. In September he took over the Greek ambassadorship with a mandate larger than simple diplomacy.
Initially, after the Greek Civil War, the United States and NATO held the view that Greece had limited international strategic value. The Korean War, which turned the Cold War quite hot, changed that strategic thinking. Washington came to believe that Soviet expansion from the Balkans posed an imminent threat. Peurifoy was tasked to be point man in the transformation of Greece into a front-line bulwark against the worldwide Communist menace. To that end, he advocated for Greeks to change their electoral system to effect a center-right government and threatened aid cuts if they refused. The idealistic democratic rhetoric of Truman’s speech would have to take a back seat.11
Lacking any background in Greek affairs, Peurifoy repeatedly clashed with both American economic-aid administrators and the US military mission. Colleagues agreed that, in Greece, Peurifoy had “no political sense at all.”12 He was much more comfortable working in lockstep with, if not under the tutelage of, CIA Chief of Station Thomas Karamessines, an old hand in Greece for nearly a decade before the new ambassador’s arrival.
Born in 1917, Thomas Hercules Karamessines had worked as a prosecutor for New York District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey and during World War II was assigned to OSS and SSU in Greece. Karamessines joined the CIA at its creation in 1947 and became its second station chief in Athens. From his fifth-floor office in the pink stone Tamion Building’s downtown headquarters, he focused on enemies both within and outside Greece’s borders.
Greece had had its own state security services since the 1920s, most recently the Central Intelligence and Investigation Service, created in 1949. Claiming that Greece needed a more sophisticated operation, Karamessines helped the Greek Government create an independent structure tasked with safeguarding “national security, the security of military forces, and public security.” The Central Intelligence Service (KYP) was effectively the CIA, FBI, NSC, Defense and State departments’ intelligence services, all rolled into one.13
Karamessines was more reserved than Al Ulmer, his CIA station chief predecessor, who had boasted: “We were in charge. We ran things. We were seen as kings” and exulted: “we did what we wanted…God we had fun!”14 A CIA colleague later wrote about Karamessines that “[t]here was no flamboyance in him, and he shunned publicity.”15 When Elias first approached Karamessines at a diplomatic reception, he saw a dour, dark-haired man with a prominent nose and dark-framed glasses. He came away from the encounter “not greatly impressed.” He recalled Karamessines as “a smart cookie,” but “not a man whose opinion I would ask for, because I knew he would never give me a straight reply.” Karamessines probably regarded Demetracopoulos with similar disdain. For him, the press was an asset to be manipulated or a nuisance to be avoided.
The new ambassador, Peurifoy, viewed Elias’s journalistic independence as a direct affront to his mission. Particularly offensive was Demetracopoulos’s eagerness to report stories that raised questions of malfeasance in the implementation of US aid programs. While Elias was grateful for the American involvement, and believed the reconstruction support had saved his country from some form of East European Communism, he wasn’t going to let his appreciation deter him from reporting stories of wrongdoing. He was eager to publish scoops like American investigators finding “huge supplies of food aid rotting in warehouses at a time when 75 percent of Greek children were suffering from malnutrition.”16 And he readily shared the critical assessments of others, such as American columnist Joe Alsop, who wrote that “Most Greek politicians had no higher ambition than to taste the profitable delights of a free economy at American expense.”17
Peurifoy had much bigger issues to deal with than thwarting Elias Demetracopoulos, including transforming American economic aid marked for reconstruction into a program of security-related support, and restructuring the Greek parliamentary system in a way that would help Papagos and his conservative Greek Rally party win elections. Nevertheless, Elias’s reporting became a persistent nuisance, and both the ambassador and the CIA Station Chief complained repeatedly. In phone calls and in person they protested to editor Chourmouzios, and publisher Vlachos that Elias was being “too aggressive and that his articles were embarrassing the United States.” The paper’s management, they maintained, had a professional responsibility to rein in Elias. A lesser publication would have complied. However, as Demetracopoulos recalled: “Mr. Vlachos and Mr. Chourmouzios backed me fully and refused to limit my reporting.”
American officials and press colleagues began referring snidely to twenty-two-year-old Demetracopoulos as “the Scooper.” However, when Elias heard the nickname, he crowed with delight; he was proud to wear it as his personal brand.
In mid-1951, the paper, pleased with Elias’s stories about American activities in Greece, approved his first visit to the United States. His assignment: to conduct a series of interviews with high-level US officials. For months he wrote letters arranging appointments and providing supportive letters of introduction. He was aided in his efforts by American military officials such as Major General Reuben Jenkins, chief of the Joint US Military Aid Group, who referred to Elias as “a friend” who “has always presented our efforts to the reading public in a most favorable light.”18 Brigadier General Leigh Wade, the USAF air attaché in Athens, wrote to the Pentagon asking that assistance be extended to one whose “war record is most outstanding.”19
Before leaving for the United States, Elias visited former prime minister George Papandreou at his modest whitewashed villa in Kastri. He wanted the statesman’s views of the people he planned to meet. After luncheon, they continued their discussion in the garden, during which Papandreou expressed his deep desire that his son Andreas return home and get involved in Greek politics. He explained that Andreas had left for the United States during the Metaxas dictatorship in 1939 and had built a successful university career there as an economics professor. The former prime minister had not seen his son in all the years since, save for one brief reunion in Washington, the year before, which had not gone well.
When it was time to leave, the older man bent down by the doorway and picked a sweet-smelling fresh sprig from a dark-green basil plant. He gently pressed it into Elias’s palm. “When you see my son, Andreas,” Papandreou said, tears rolling silently down his cheeks, “please give this to him and tell him this is coming from his father.” Elias, knowing the significance of basilikos in Greek religious celebrations, was greatly touched by the gesture.
—
ELIAS MADE HIS first transatlantic crossing in July 1951 on the aging steamship Nea Hellas.20 The fifteen-day voyage from Piraeus to New York included stops in Malta, Naples, Genoa, Lisbon, and Halifax. Nea Hellas wasn’t one of the new glamorous four-stack luxury liners, but for generations of Europeans, particularly Greeks, it was a “ship of dreams.” War refugees used it to escape Hitler; economic emigrants to find better lives. During the war it was a troop ship, convoying thousands of American and British soldiers and airmen who, crowded on board, affectionately nicknamed it “Nelly Wallace.”
The trip was quite comfortable, with good food and entertainment. Looking out at glorious sunsets and sailing on calm midsummer seas, young Demetracopoulos imagined himself an explorer setting out to discover the “New World.” He thought of his father and imagined the lesser conditions of that passage and the sensations Panagiotis might have experienced getting off another boat more than three decades earlier. Arriving in New York was a spectacular experience, the city’s skyline providing a backdrop to the Statue of Liberty in unfiltered sunlight. Elias was struck by the size of Manhattan’s skyscrapers, the bustling crowds, the ceaseless cacophony of the streets. After spending several days in New York, largely playing tourist, he took a train to his meetings in D.C.
Elias’s most memorable first impression of the nation’s capital was the sweltering, oppressively humid and breezeless Washington summer, which drove people indoors or out of town. It was much more uncomfortable than Athens in August. Compared to New York, Washington felt remarkably quiet, if not abandoned.
He tried to contact Andreas Papandreou to give him the gift of basil and deliver his father’s message. But Andreas was in Nevada, establishing residency so he could get a quick divorce from his wife, Christina, and marry Margaret Chant.21 Discarding the sprig, Elias wondered what might cause a son not to visit his father in their homeland for more than a decade.
The young reporter set himself up at the old National Hotel on I Street and went about his business. He had more than twenty-four letters of introduction to high-ranking officials, and those who hadn’t left town were willing to schedule meetings on short notice. Among his interviews were the secretaries of the Air Force, Navy, and Commerce and senior officials in the Departments of State and Defense. They in turn recommended others to meet and invited him to diplomatic events and parties.
He also met President Harry S. Truman and Vice President Alben W. Barkley. As his photograph was being taken shaking hands with the President at a Mayflower Hotel reception, he thought back to the scene in 1947 in the living room of his Athens home, as his family listened to the fateful radio announcement of the Truman Doctrine.
—
AFTER ONE OF his scheduled meetings at the Pentagon, Elias’s interviewee was apparently so impressed by the young reporter’s sophisticated assessment of strategic issues that he requested Elias meet another official to exchange views about the situation in Greece and the Balkans. Eager to expand his network of sources, the young journalist accepted. According to a contemporaneous “SECRET” document prepared by the Covert Action Staff of the CIA’s clandestine Directorate of Operations:
Dimitrakopoulos [sic] provided intelligence information on Greek military, political and refugee matters to US Army intelligence officers in the Pentagon. His information was considered to be of value and the general impression of the Army interviewers was that Dimitrakopoulos was a man of excellent education background, well able to interrelate the political and military situation, that he showed remarkable aptitude in his appreciation of the general Balkan strategic picture and that he appeared to be a potentially valuable source for the Army Attaché in Athens…Upon conclusion of their interrogation of Dimitrakopoulos the Army representative turned him over to their Requirements Branch for further exploitation by the Western Branch and ONI. The Defense Department then introduced Dimitrakopoulos to a CIA official in Washington in order to evaluate the recommendations Dimitrakopoulos had put forth.22
Later, at a diplomatic reception, John Zimmerman, an American intelligence official, approached Demetracopoulos and asked to meet with him privately. Within days, Zimmerman invited him to lunch at the New Baghdad Restaurant and afterward asked if he’d be interested in working for the CIA. Zimmerman told Elias that his career and income would benefit. He offered him a part-time job with the CIA starting at an outrageously high $17,000-per-year salary (about $164,000 today). This would have been an exponential boost to his earnings as a journalist. Of course, the offer may have been nothing more than tantalizing bait.
Elias would be asked, Zimmerman explained, to do things for which being a journalist was a good cover: intelligence-sharing from his activities at home and abroad; supplying names of sources; relaying gossip and rumors that could prove useful. If he agreed to work for the CIA, he would be contacted by a member of the American community in Greece, a US businessman who was also a covert CIA agent.
Demetracopoulos had already experienced pressure from Peurifoy and Karamessines to get on the team. He was aware that other journalists, economics advisors, public relations agents, and businessmen worked for the CIA. Indeed, guessing who was or wasn’t working for the CIA had almost become a parlor game in Athens.
It was one thing to exchange perspectives and tidbits with intelligence sources, part of the “give a little, get a little” newsgathering ritual. But he rejected working as a paid agent for any government. Elias politely turned Zimmerman down.
Zimmerman quietly tried again several days later, at another social gathering in Takoma Park, just north of Washington. At first the twenty-two-year-old journalist began to explain the principles of his profession, including the importance of a free press, but he stopped himself. Realizing it was neither the time nor place, he simply said, “No, thank you” and moved to another cluster of guests. Though his decision made his career and reputation vulnerable to retaliatory attacks from the CIA, this would not be the agency’s last overture.
7.Celia
AT TWENTY-ONE, ELIAS DEMETRACOPOULOS WAS already a self-styled ladies’ man who dated omnivorously. He was taller than most Greeks, with brown spaniel eyes and a well-trimmed full head of black hair carefully parted and slicked down. He favored tailored two-piece dark-blue pinstripe suits, repp ties, starched white shirts, pocket squares, and wing-tipped brogues. His cleft chin and pearly white teeth stood out on his full, handsome face. Ever fearful of becoming overweight, he skipped meals to permit himself to indulge regularly in his favorite vice, chocolate. He walked erect and quickly, believing it helped him deal with intermittent back pain, a legacy of his tortures.
Elias met Celia Was in his first days covering the embassy in late summer 1950. He was charmed by her looks, impressed by her savvy, and enchanted by her cosmopolitan sophistication and international experiences. She had just returned from State Department trips to Cairo, Beirut, and New York.
Svelte and tall, with warm brown eyes, an engaging smile, well-coiffed auburn hair, and stylish outfits, Celia had rejected the frequent attentions of her male colleagues since her arrival a few months earlier. But she found young Elias fresh and charming. Celia immediately liked what she saw as his odd combination of “diplomatic snobbery [and] cynical optimism,” extroversion, and an intelligent, quiet reserve that she called “Jesuitical.”1 They started dating shortly after he started covering the embassy. Over time, he would learn the details of her dramatic past.
Celia was ten years older than Elias. She had been raised in New Britain, Connecticut, by her Polish-Austrian émigré parents, who were so economically stressed that Celia and her sister swapped dresses so it wouldn’t seem they could afford just a single outfit. Unlike most of her contemporaries seeking to get married and raise a family, Celia wanted to be independent, get a job, and experience the world. After graduating from high school second in her class, she started out with local secretarial jobs, then moved to administrative positions with Time and Life in Washington and Paris. With enthusiastic recommendations from her employers and “the ability to adapt herself to unusual conditions or environment,” Celia easily passed all security clearances and joined the US Foreign Service.2
While Elias had been scurrying around the streets of Athens as a teenage resistance fighter, Celia was working as a clerk-stenographer at the Office of War Information in Washington, and as a translator-secretary at its offices in London and Paris. When Elias was back at school, she was at the State Department. And when Elias was home battling tuberculosis, Celia, in part because of her multilingual skills (Polish, Russian, French, and English), had been transferred to Moscow as a foreign-service officer, part of the public-diplomacy section of the American Embassy.
Celia did editorial work on the State Department’s popular glossy magazine, Amerika, designed to present to Russian-speaking people beautiful photographs and positive stories of life in the United States. Ambassador Walter Bedell Smith praised her work. In fall 1947, after she clashed with her department superiors over their mistreatment of Russian nationals working at the embassy, the ambassador moved her to the consular section. Celia, unostentatiously ambitious, thought she was on the way up. Soon, however, collateral damage from the activities of another embassy staffer jeopardized her career.
Celia had invited Annabelle Bucar, a Croatian-American, from Pennsylvania to share her small two-room apartment. The pair were not especially close, but they commiserated about the local food, travel difficulties, and problems at work. Annabelle was outspoken in her criticism of what she thought was an embassy rife with anti-Soviet paranoids, doltish staff members who refused to learn the local language, and too many spies posing as diplomats. Celia regarded her roommate’s comments as overly harsh critiques, but not as evidence of disloyalty to America.
