During this early period of the Cold War, Russians and Americans gleefully trumpeted tales of individuals defecting to their side for apparently ideological reasons. The embassy had specifically urged Celia to cultivate Yugoslavs and Poles in connection to her work with the cultural program and was aware that Celia had dated officers assigned to the Polish Embassy. Annabelle, meanwhile, fell hard for Konstantin Lapschin, a baritone at the Moscow Operetta Theater well-known for having courted many unattached young foreign women in Moscow, while also secretly working for the police responsible for internal political control.
On the night of January 25, 1948, Annabelle confided to Celia that she was not only deeply in love with Lapschin but was pregnant and had secretly married him. She said she was planning to resign and defect. Alarmed, Celia urged her to see the ambassador immediately and disclose everything. She recommended that Annabelle ask to be transferred back to the States. But the next day Annabelle did nothing, and an emotionally upset Celia left her post in the afternoon to go ice-skating alone. Distracted, she fell and broke her arm and wrist. The damage was so serious that she was told she would have to go to Stuttgart for treatment and might be away for a couple of weeks. Before leaving, Celia extracted a promise, unfulfilled, that her roommate would have a frank discussion with Ambassador Smith.
After Annabelle resigned, people at the embassy, notably Smith, treated the episode largely as the blind infatuation of a pretty thirty-three-year-old woman with an alluring singer, not a calculated political defection.3 But the tone changed after Annabelle started delivering anti-American speeches, the KGB used her name as “author” of a book-length diatribe, and the European press publicized an unflattering portrait of US diplomats in Moscow.4
Annabelle Bucar’s defection being the second in a year, Bedell Smith ordered a full investigation. Others at the embassy, acutely embarrassed by the fallout, lacked Smith’s patience and objectivity and decided to make Celia the scapegoat. She lost her high-level security clearance and was assigned to stateside duties with the Office of International Education pending completion of investigations by multiple federal agencies including the State Department, CIA, and House Committee on Un-American Activities. Simultaneously, the FBI investigated her “character, reputation and loyalty.” J. Edgar Hoover became involved. Interrogations went on for much of the year.
In a SECRET June document, the State Department’s Personnel Security Branch reported “she spoke willingly and freely on all matters on which she was questioned and gave the impression of candor and veracity,” adding that she revealed “several interesting items” [redacted] that were not known to Ambassador Smith at the time of Bucar’s disclosure and resignation, all of which could cast the matter, including Celia’s reactions, in a different light.5 Referring to her as “an important witness” instead of a target, the security investigators confidentially admitted “that the Department’s handling of Miss Was has been, in certain respects, unfortunate,” and expressed “the very real possibility that she may seek outside counsel pending final resolution of her implications, if any, in the [Bucar] matter.”6
The misfired loyalty investigation raised internal red flags. “If Miss Was should seek outside assistance on one or more of these matters,” wrote Chief of State Department Security Donald L. Nicholson to Under-Secretary of State John Peurifoy, before his Athens posting, “I believe considerable embarrassment could result to the Department.” He asked Peurifoy, who would later confront both Elias and Celia in a different setting, to “spare an hour to hear her story” and persuade her of “the Department’s sincere desire and intention to resolve her problems fairly.”7 There is no record of Peurifoy’s having done so.
On October 4, 1948, the investigation bizarrely concluded that Celia was “an attractive person” who could again be “a valuable employee of the foreign service,” but because of her temperamental “Slavic ‘soul,’ which is bound to be trying to her superiors […] she should never again be assigned to a post inside the Slavic orbit of the Soviet Union.”8 Celia was shaken by her Moscow experience and its aftermath but put up an unflappable professional front. When she was offered a position with USIS in Athens in 1950, she took it.9 Elias was not put off by Celia’s story. Rather, he admired that she was not a pushover.
Their relationship became serious quickly. While she was away for three months in the States, her twenty-two-year-old suitor wrote: “I behave like women never existed. I finally discovered I don’t feel passion for you but love—real love. I want you as my wife and think that you will be happy doing that.” When Elias visited her in New Britain, Connecticut, during his summer 1951 trip, she accepted his marriage proposal.
They discussed getting married in two different religious ceremonies, no later than Christmastime 1951, because, as he explained to her, according to Greek superstition, it is unlucky to marry in a leap year. They talked about their future together, uniting her quiet composure and his “emotional” Greek spirit. As she told him years later, the trait that endeared him to her most was not his forceful public persona, but his less-visible “tenderhearted generosity,” captured best in his solicitude toward children with TB and his insisting that poor fishermen join them for dinner at seaside restaurants. Neither of the two thought through the wisdom and implications of their decision. He was just starting out, eager to engage with the world at warp speed. She was tired, wounded, and in many ways wanted to move back home to Connecticut. She frequently took extended stateside assignments for the State Department, and their courtship proceeded, largely by long distance.
—
THE FRUITS OF Elias’s United States trip, published in Kathimerini as a series of page-one stories, elicited a cascade of responses. His interview with US Navy Secretary Dan Kimball was his first bylined piece.10 He gushed to Celia, who had stayed behind in the USA, that he had received “a great reception” at the paper and from the King, Field Marshal Papagos, and Prime Minister Venizelos. “Think that I have got in my office about 500 letters!!!! from readers of Kathimerini—congratulating, complaining, and requesting favors from President Truman through me as if I was a personal friend of him!!!”11
With Greeks viewing those appearing to be close to the omnipotent Americans as having special powers, Elias “assiduously cultivated” the image of a man with access to the highest levels.12 He embellished details of his Washington trip, exaggerating the public encounters with President Truman and Vice President Barkley into full-fledged private meetings. And he didn’t correct those who would fabulize his exploits, turning simple hyperbole into outrageous whoppers.
Peurifoy and Karamessines were not pleased with Elias’s high-level access and newfound celebrity. Soon after the articles appeared, Major General Petros Nikolopoulos, head of the Central Intelligence and Investigation Service, the Greek intelligence precursor to the KYP, called Elias and said he had been told by both Peurifoy and Karamessines that the Washington interviews were “fabricated.”
“That’s a lie,” Elias responded indignantly. Outraged, he arranged to meet Nikolopoulos the next morning in the General’s office. One after another, he showed Nikolopoulos the signed transcripts of his interviews and matched them to the articles. In each, Elias proved to Nikolopoulos the accuracy of the published versions.
The director of Greek intelligence apologized for having been set up. Alas, he was dependent on CIA support and US funding and could not, he said, publicly denounce Elias’s critics. Without any third-party pushback on the journalist’s behalf, Peurifoy and Karamessines stepped up their attacks. Contradicting the award ceremony the year before, they put the word out that Elias’s war record was fabricated. Other American officials in Greece echoed the idea that Elias was an impostor. The American Embassy expanded its disinformation campaign by falsely charging that “the presentation of this award was disputed by other Greek members of the OAG,” and a later CIA report elaborated that the presentation had been “disrupted.” No evidence to support these bogus charges was ever provided.
Elias was outraged by the attacks on his personal character and war record. Embassy officials also hindered his daily newsgathering. Appointments for embassy and other agency interviews were scheduled, rescheduled, then cancelled. Other interviews couldn’t even be scheduled.
Impetuously, the twenty-two-year-old decided to fight back. Taking a page from stories he had heard about Peurifoy’s “Big Lie” McCarthyite smear tactics when in Washington, he rumored that four US officials in Athens were known to be accepting bribes and engaging in other financial irregularities. Then, in response to the ambassador’s continued personal attacks, he poured gas on the flames, prodding Peurifoy’s preoccupation with “pinkos and queers.” Some of the corrupt officials, Elias alleged, were also Communist-connected homosexuals.13 And “they appear to have someone in Washington powerful enough to keep them on the job,” he added darkly “in the case of [one], unusually and suspiciously beyond the normal length of a foreign service duty tour.”
For nearly five months, cables were sent from Athens to Washington and back to Athens referencing an intrusive investigation into the private lives of the four individuals named by Elias. American security thought it important to make the investigation, even if the charges were false, because, as one wrote confidentially: “Mr. Demetracopoulos appears to have an imposing background and the opportunity to acquire inside information.”14 Eventually all were cleared of wrongdoing. The only common trait they had was that each had been involved in blocking Elias from getting information or interviews he wanted.
At first, Elias felt no remorse for spreading false rumors as payback. He had accepted that these men’s blocking of his news sources was part of a game that he too would have to play, only better. It was just business. The brutality and humiliations of Averof and Eginition were still fresh in his mind, and the mendacious personal attacks stoked by Peurifoy and Karamessines wounded his sense of honor. Young Demetracopoulos remembered his promise never to allow himself to be bullied. He was afraid of being thought of as someone who would not fight back.
Later, with hindsight, Elias would concede that his incendiary tactics had been counterproductive. US officials responded by concocting even more farfetched Demetracopoulos tales. Some charged that he was neither a Kathimerini employee nor the author of his American trip articles, but merely a freelance “opportunist” whose name was known only “in an adverse way.”15 Another investigation declared: “No one has ever heard of the man.”16
To Elias’s claims of having discussed issues with General Papagos, Peurifoy lied, saying that the brash young journalist had never even met him. As for Elias’s war record, his enemies tried to have it both ways. His resistance work and incarceration were said to be lies and his awards for heroism counterfeit. At the same time, other intelligence reports concluded that he was “mentally deranged…mentally impaired by the hardships of the occupation and the fact he had been imprisoned [for a long time and sentenced to death] by the Germans.”17 At the end of the year, the American Embassy concluded that Elias was “a definite mental case,” “a definite security risk” and it was pleased to report to Washington that he “is completely ‘out of circulation.’ ”18
Elias most certainly was not out of circulation. His American military contacts were still excellent, and he had good access to high-ranking Greek officials. A memorandum to the State Department, CIA, and FBI from the Department of Defense contradicted Peurifoy’s assessment. It pointedly warned that Demetracopoulos “is a personal friend of Field Marshal Alexander L. Papagos [the head of the Greek government]…and has been handled carefully and courteously, albeit guardedly, by the [US] Army Attaché, Greece.”19
Nevertheless, being cut off from State Department, embassy, and economic-development personnel had hurt Elias’s work, and by early 1952, his editor had had enough. In a letter addressed to “Mr. Ambassador,” Chourmouzios said that he “had examined carefully” Peurifoy’s remarks about Demetracopoulos’s writings made in “certain conversations we had in different occasions and I am obliged to answer you that I found them unfair.”20 In a two-page single-spaced letter, he drew Peurifoy’s attention to facts that refuted all of the ambassador’s erroneous allegations, starting with a summary of Demetracopoulos’s “outstanding” war record on behalf of the Allied cause, his patriotism, arrest, torture, and death sentence, and added that “among the reasons for [the Nazis] condemning Mr. Demetracopoulos to death were that he contributed to the escape of seven American pilots, whose planes were shot down.”
Turning to the October 4, 1950 official ceremony decorating Elias for his valor, Chourmouzios listed, name by name, US Embassy officials and staff, members of the US military mission, and Greek government officials who had been in attendance. He followed with a detailed list of names and titles of Washington officials whom Demetracopoulos had interviewed on his recent trip and added the dates and time of his meetings with President Harry S. Truman and Vice President Alben W. Barkley. Chourmouzios concluded: “For all these reasons and taking into consideration the professional abilities of Mr. Demetracopoulos as a very competent newspaperman, I am glad that I can state that Mr. E. P. Demetracopoulos has my complete respect, confidence and admiration.”21
Unmoved, the ambassador declared Demetracopoulos persona non grata at the US Embassy, and urged American officials in Greece to deny him exclusive interviews.22 Elias pushed back by joining in on an exclusive interview that visiting columnist Joe Alsop had arranged for himself with Peurifoy.23 The ambassador was not pleased but did not throw Elias out.
Meanwhile, the Peurifoy diktat against Demetracopoulos caused a special problem for his USIS fiancée. Elias and Celia had accepted that getting married would make it difficult for Celia to keep working at the embassy. She first planned to resign effective the end of December 1951, but her worries about having to live on one salary caused them to postpone their wedding date and find a less-expensive place to live. They would get married the following summer in the United States, with her family, when he joined her there with plans to conduct more interviews. Submitting her resignation to the secretary of state, on June 20, 1952, she concluded: “I wish to express my gratitude for the many courtesies and kindnesses which it has been my privilege to receive while in the Foreign Service…I now leave with regret.”24
The couple had no idea just how closely they both had been surveilled by US intelligence since they started dating in the autumn of 1950—in Greece by the CIA, and in the USA by the FBI. Elias’s 1951 arrival in New York and entire stay at the St. Moritz Hotel had been monitored. From the time he met Celia in Manhattan and switched to the Henry Hudson Hotel, they were continually spied on. Their marriage by a clerk at City Hall on July 5, 1952, with Celia’s sister and brother-in-law as witnesses, was dutifully logged, and the marriage certificate scrutinized. The document noted no previous marriages for either, and that a Dr. Emanuel Kotsos was the physician certifying that neither the subject nor his prospective wife had any communicable diseases.25 The FBI then reported that Celia and “the Subject took residence in Room 1015 of that hotel and as of 7 July 1952. […] were still there.”26 On the day after their wedding, July 6, “There were no phone calls.”27 On July 7 at 5:27 p.m. the couple checked out, with a forwarding address at the Hotel National in Washington, D.C. In all, the FBI collected more than twenty-six pages of still heavily redacted surveillance reports.
Ambassador Peurifoy had learned from his Washington days how simple allegations could destroy lives. He escalated his anti-Demetracopoulos campaign, calling on the FBI to surveil Elias as a suspected Soviet or double agent. In an Orwellian touch, Peurifoy also twisted the Zimmerman meetings, in which the CIA had offered Elias a job, into a claim that Elias had been passing himself off as a paid American secret agent.28 Elias, who compartmentalized his relationships and intentionally cultivated a mysterious persona, contributed to this misapprehension. Interacting with Americans was essential to his news beat, and he intentionally fostered the image of being close to those in power. Cryptically, he told those who suspected he might be an agent that there were some things he couldn’t talk about. Of course, had he actually been an agent, he wouldn’t have drawn attention to the fact.
—
IN ADDITION TO getting married, Elias had other priorities on his agenda in the summer of 1952. The first was to report for his current papers on the American presidential campaign. In early July, the Republicans nominated General Dwight D. Eisenhower, with Senator Richard Nixon for vice president. Later that month, the Democrats picked Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson and Tennessee senator Estes Kefauver. Other than Eisenhower’s, these names meant little to Elias. What he did know was that, regardless of who won, a new administration could mean big changes in US-Greek relations. He set up appointments, conducted more interviews, and gathered new material. Wherever he went, whomever he saw, his activities were almost always closely monitored by the FBI.
Elias’s other priority was to expand his news outlets. At the recommendation of former Greek prime minister Panagiotis Kanellopoulos, he contacted James A. Linen III, the publisher of Time magazine, who set up a meeting for him in New York with John W. Boyle, the assistant chief of correspondents at Time-Life, Inc. A few days later, on August 2, 1952, Elias was appointed a correspondent for Time-Life in Greece.
On the surface, his relationship with the American news empire looked good. He was given detailed instructions regarding payments and filing procedures and urged to pitch stories to both Time and Life.29 When Elias returned to Athens, he prepared another series of stories and interviews, which were published prominently in September in Kathimerini and Makedonia, for the latter of which Elias had become political editor. The Kathimerini articles centered on his original beat: American policy toward Greece and the American community there. His writings as political editor for Makedonia were not so circumscribed.
In early October, Elias was astounded to receive a “PERSONAL & CONFIDENTIAL” letter from John Boyle in New York, dated October 1, terminating the relationship with Time-Life. The letter stated that Boyle had “received reports…which if accurate to any degree, indicate you face great difficulty in attempting to operate as our stringer.” Boyle wrote that he had been told by “disinterested non-official sources, whom I know to be well-informed and reliable,” that “although you are a contributor to Kathemerini [sic] you are not a member of the staff.” Mr. Boyle also stated his concern that Demetracopoulos lacked direct access to key US and Greek officials “who make news.” Effective immediately, Boyle “simply” terminated his arrangement as a correspondent for Time-Life.
In his reply of October 25, Elias explained to Boyle that the information he had received was incorrect, and enclosed documentation attesting to his status as a regular member and political correspondent of the Kathimerini staff, along with ten letters of recommendation from such figures as former prime ministers George Papandreou and Panagiotis Kanellopoulos and members of the United States mission in Greece. They extolled his virtues and confirmed his access to news at the highest levels of government.30
Boyle’s letter was puzzling. Demetracopoulos had yet to submit any stories to Time-Life, and no news executive there had yet had an opportunity to evaluate his work. Less than a month later, Boyle replied, reaffirming his decision. He wrote: “I am sorry if I was misinformed about your status with Kathimerini. I appreciate the letters of endorsement which you have collected and forwarded. But they do not alter my judgment.”31
The backstory did not become clear until, on a visit to New York in 1954, Elias met John Boyle at a party given by James Linen, the man who had made the original Time connection, for Kanellopoulos, then visiting as the Greek defense minister. Boyle told Elias, in the strictest of confidence, that Henry Luce had personally ordered that he be summarily fired at the behest of CIA director Allen Dulles, after Dulles received continuing complaints from Peurifoy and Karamessines. For decades, US officials would use this “firing” from Time as evidence of Demetracopoulos’s “incompetence” and “untrustworthiness.”
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RETURNING TO GREECE in the fall of 1952, the newly married couple set up housekeeping in a four-room apartment on Vasillisis Sofias Avenue, near the Yugoslavian Embassy. Whatever intrusions each had felt individually from unremitting surveillance, as a couple the pressures increased exponentially. Celia’s resigning did not stop the embassy and CIA from watching them, reporting on their personal and social activities, and checking up on them with their friends and neighbors. The spying was not subtle, but conducted outside their apartment, when they were shopping, visiting friends, attending to medical appointments, and simply going about the city. Celia was badgered by former embassy colleagues as to when Elias was going to apply for US citizenship as her spouse. When she said he wasn’t, they speculated wildly about what mischievous agenda he had for not doing so. Simple acts of introducing people at social events or Celia’s speaking Russian with a Soviet official at a Turkish Embassy reception invited intelligence reports suggesting they were making contacts with the Soviet Union.32
Elias’s parents were warm and welcoming to Celia. The couple took some enjoyable trips together to Rome and Paris, but the incessant monitoring, whispering, innuendoes, and rumors of espionage were especially hard on Celia, who sometimes felt she was back in the pressure-cooker of Moscow. Celia suggested they move to America. Briefly, Elias seriously considered starting a new life there, perhaps as a US correspondent for a Greek newspaper or, as Celia would have preferred, changing careers entirely. As was his wont, he kept his emotions bottled up and experienced the first symptoms of what would develop several years later into a serious case of ulcers.
The couple believed that having a baby together would provide a joyful respite and could be a foundation for a strong marriage. Celia became pregnant in early 1953 and for a few months the pregnancy was the center of their attention and that of his parents. But the severe emotional strain of the outside pressures activated stress hormones, causing her to suffer a heartbreaking miscarriage.
