The two of them looked at the arc of life from dramatically different perspectives. Elias wanted to explore new worlds, meet new people, and throw himself into his work. He was developing a tougher skin. Celia, no longer working, wanted to get away from the prying eyes, go home to Connecticut and her family, and return to her Roman Catholic roots, which she greatly missed.
They separated in October 1953, having lived together as husband and wife for only fifteen months. Celia wrote to Elias that she preferred to live among simple people at home to the “stupid pretentiousness of diplomatic life.”33 Elias might be able to function, even flourish, in a complex and intrusive world of secrets, deceptions, and white lies, she said, but she could no longer do so. Early the next spring, they halfheartedly discussed a reconciliation when Elias came to Washington with Defense Minister Kanellopoulos. The Washington Post’s “For and About Women” page featured a photo of Celia taken at a diplomatic reception with the caption: “Mrs. Demetracopoulos will visit relatives in Connecticut while her husband tours the United States installations with the [Greek] Defense Minister’s party. They return to Athens this month.”34 However, Elias returned without her.
The parting was amicable. Elias stayed in Greece. Celia took charge of getting a Florida divorce, in the 1950s a preferred East Coast venue for uncomplicated marriage dissolutions.35 Desertion was the stated grounds, with a Palm Beach newspaper gossiping incorrectly that Elias had left his wife because the pace of life in America was “too fast” for him.36 The marriage may have ended, but their close relationship continued. Fully engaged on several fronts, Elias reasoned that he was better off single.
8.Persona Non Grata
AMBASSADOR PEURIFOY HAD LITTLE SUCCESS dealing with the Greek Palace. From the moment of his arrival, the King and Queen made it clear that his efforts to influence Greek politics would go more smoothly if they were invited to Washington for a state visit. Giving in to such a request would have undermined Peurifoy’s plans to restrict their Majesties’ self-indulgent spending, and it did not happen during his tenure. Queen Frederika called State Department officials “fairies”1 and much preferred dealing with the CIA, with whom she was developing warm relations—especially Allen Dulles, who counted her among his high-profile sexual conquests.2
Elias detected the friction and reported in early 1953 that the ambassador would be leaving his post.3 The embassy issued strong denials, but, because the charge was made by Elias, decided to make its own inquiries, and discovered that his intelligence was correct: Frederika had indeed pressured the CIA, and Peurifoy’s tenure would be cut short, if not as early as Elias had reported. In July 1953, Peurifoy left Greece for Guatemala, where he would play a role in the overthrow of the democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz, and later go on to Thailand, where he would die in an automobile accident. Queen Frederika and King Paul left for their desired visit to the US several months after Peurifoy’s departure. CIA Station Chief Karamessines also left Athens for Rome and other important positions, though unfortunately Elias’s connection with him would endure.
In Athens, Peurifoy and Karamessines had achieved their short-term missions. They had pressured the Greek parliament into restructuring the country’s electoral system from proportional representation to weighted majority rule, paving the way for a clear conservative victory in the 1951 election, and insuring a decade of conservative governments.4 They had seen to it that Greece was equipped with a domestic military and political structure tailored to serve America’s security interests—as well as an intelligence agency, the KYP, created and funded by the CIA, that had a focus on internal espionage. Greece had become a loyal, if gelded, part of NATO, and an important Cold War listening post for the Balkans and the Middle East. They also had sown the seeds of later public discontent and fostered the dependent mindset of a clientist state. This was their lasting legacy.
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MANY GREEKS BREATHED a sigh of relief at the departure of Peurifoy and Karamessines. Demetracopoulos’s widely imposed persona non grata label at the American Embassy appeared to have been effectively removed. Embassy staff, however, continued to be split in their assessments of him, with some reports calling his newsgathering activities “shenanigans.”5
He was becoming a player on a larger stage. In addition to visits to the United States, he travelled around the world twice, participated in international conferences, fact-finding missions, and NATO briefings, always pushing to get exclusive interviews. The newspapers he wrote for preferred, where possible, that others pick up his travel expenses, and the costs of his trips were often underwritten by the host governments or sponsoring organizations. The US flew him to Beirut, Amman, and several European cities to cover events and write stories about the US military.6 He remained defiantly independent from his sponsors, believing that if he couldn’t take their junkets and still write as he saw fit, well then, he didn’t belong in the business.
Sometimes Demetracopoulos would be decorated by foreign governments for his past reporting or simply to curry favorable coverage. King Leopold made him an “Officer of the Order of the Crown of Belgium.” Lebanon made him an officer of the Order of Cedar. And the United Arab Republic first made him an officer of the Order of the Republic and on a later trip elevated him to Commander. Even after their divorce, he would often send Celia picture postcards from his travels, noting his achievements and expressing affection.
Definitely not camera-shy, Elias would often get his picture taken with his news subjects and frequently appeared in published photos with assorted high-ranking Greek, British, and American officials. Such exposure enhanced his celebrity and refueled gossip about his connections. In confidential dispatches from Athens, Paris, Rome, Tokyo, and Washington, US intelligence agencies aggressively monitored Elias’s travels, filing and sharing often uncorroborated and incorrect information. Although he made repeated trips to Europe and the Middle East, often with Greek elected politicians, he steadfastly refused all opportunities to visit the Soviet Union, either alone or in a group. This behavior puzzled the American Embassy and invited dark speculation.7
When his contacts with US diplomats were hindered, Elias nurtured his military connections, both Greek and American. In 1953, he met and formed an enduring friendship with General William W. “Buffalo Bill” Quinn, who came to Greece for a two-year tour as part of the Joint Military Aid Group. Quinn became a trusted source. In turn, Elias occasionally floated trial balloons on behalf of the American general. After his separation from Celia, he frequently relaxed in the Quinns’ home enjoying Bette Quinn’s southern cooking.
The following year he befriended Admiral Arleigh Burke when the World War II hero took over command of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, the major operational component of US Naval Forces in Europe. At a time when NATO and US military planners were privately disparaging the usefulness and future of the Greek Navy, Elias conducted a series of interviews for Kathimerini in which he succeeded in getting perhaps the three most important NATO commanders—Admiral and First Sea Lord Mountbatten, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Arthur Radford, and Chief of US Naval Operations Admiral William Carney—to go on record about the importance of Greek naval forces in a world of constant Soviet threats. Further, he wrote an essay about the strategic importance of the Greek navy, especially in the event of an atomic war, and the need for reinforcing the fleet with new vessels. Greek navy officials were so pleased with the articles that they reproduced the series as a bilingual book titled The Royal Hellenic Navy in the Defense of Greece and distributed copies in a successful lobbying campaign for greater NATO and US support.8 This coverage earned Elias better access to an expanding circle of military sources.
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WHEN DEMETRACOPOULOS SOUGHT to return to the United States in 1954, the State Department found no legitimate reason to deny him a visa but warned agencies that during his visit he might circumvent public-information officers in search of exclusive interviews. He was difficult to pigeonhole. His US intelligence dossier claimed he was aligned with both the liberal views of former prime minister George Papandreou and the conservative ones of Defense Minister Kanellopoulos. He was identified not only as a member of Kanellopoulos’s delegation, covering the visit, but as the keeper of the minister’s Washington schedule.
Relying on dogged persistence and his little black book of names and inside telephone numbers, Elias landed several high-profile interviews. After Army Chief of Staff General Matthew Ridgway responded to his written interview questions, Demetracopoulos extended their interview by accompanying the general and Kanellopoulos to the airport for the defense minister’s departure and returned with Ridgway to the Pentagon. Army intelligence reported: “subject…is an aggressive newsman who specializes in contacts with top officials and takes advantage of opportunities to meet and chat with them.”9 However, he was not successful in getting an interview with Richard Nixon. Elias arranged a photo opportunity with a short exchange of pleasantries, but the Vice President declined to respond to his list of questions about Western preparedness in dealing with the Soviet Union after the Korean cease-fire.10
The CIA was particularly concerned that Demetracopoulos might try to interview CIA director Allen Dulles or make suggestions regarding American policy for Greece. It noted that the newsman was still “definitely persona non grata” with USIS, claiming he had created the impression in newspaper and political circles that “he is practically a covert employee of CIA.” It recommended “caution and skepticism in anything concerning him.” But, it added: “The fact is, however, that he is a good news man, has excellent contacts, particularly in military circles, and is associated with perhaps the best newspaper in Greece.”11
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CYPRUS HAS BEEN described poetically as the “beautiful sun-kissed birthplace of Aphrodite” and strategically as the “crossroads of conquerors for millennia.” According to American diplomats, “No report from Cyprus is ever cheerful.”12 Its unresolved political status was a reoccurring theme of the 1950s for its residents, Greece, Britain, and Turkey. Over 80 percent Greek, less than 20 percent Turk, but only forty miles from the southwestern coast of Turkey, the island had for centuries been part of the Ottoman Empire, and its enosis or union with Greece part of the irredentist “Megali Idea.”
Turkey, concerned about a looming Russian threat, gave Cyprus to Great Britain in 1878 to hold in trust. Later, Britain, upset with Turkish behavior during the Great War, offered Cyprus to Greece if Greece would join the fight against the Kaiser, but the Germanophile King Konstantinos passed up the opportunity. In the wake of the war, Turkey ceded its rights to Britain, and Cyprus became a crown colony. Greeks wanted to revisit the earlier offer, but overtures to unite it with the fatherland were repeatedly rebuffed by the British.
For more than three decades, one man was inextricably involved in the fate of the island. Born Michail Christodoulou Mouskos in the rural western village of Panagia in 1913 and educated in Athens and Boston, he returned in 1948, becoming Makarios III, Bishop of Cyprus. Two years later he was made archbishop and Ethnarch—the national leader of the Cypriot people. This office combined spiritual and temporal authority: Makarios was expected to be both religious ruler and the national political leader. In 1950, the charismatic Makarios organized a plebiscite on union with Greece and won the overwhelming support of Greek Cypriots. But the British, concerned about the strategic importance of the island to their Middle East oil interests, military bases, and listening posts, and not wanting to upset their Moslem subjects elsewhere, were unmoved by pleas for self-determination.
Remembering how important international backing was to Greek independence, Makarios traveled the world seeking support for the principle that Cypriots had the right to determine their own form of government. He pushed the Greek government to advocate self-determination at the United Nations. Britain, with the support of the United States, blocked the effort. Makarios, concluding that peaceful approaches alone were insufficient, quietly authorized the creation of the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters, known as EOKA, to agitate for liberation. This armed underground movement was led by a right-wing enosis-oriented fanatic, Colonel Georgios Grivas, who had formed the paramilitary group “X” during World War II and fomented White Terror during the Civil War.
EOKA detonated the first bombs on April 1, 1955. Greek Cypriots hoped such acts of sabotage would lead to a two-party negotiated resolution. Great Britain, however, used the island’s pre-existing communal divisions as a means of adding Turkey to the mix. Engaged Turkish anger, it reasoned, would protect British interests. So, in violation of the 1923 Lausanne Peace Treaty, under which Turkey had waived its rights to territories including Cyprus, Britain allowed Turkey to raise once more its claims to the island. Egged on by the British, Turks rioted against Greek interests in Ankara and Istanbul, desecrating tombs, burning Greeks alive, and destroying churches. Local police stood by.
After a cease-fire, the United Kingdom, Turkey, and Greece met in London in September 1955. The conference ended in deadlock.13 The Greeks didn’t want any solution that failed to provide enosis. The Turks opposed any solution that did. In reaction, Makarios sought support from the emerging bloc of anti-colonial, non-aligned countries. He attended the world’s first Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, enlisting as allies Nehru, Nasser, Sukarno, and other Third World leaders, raising warning flags that Greece might turn away from its commitment to the Western alliance. On his return, he encouraged passive resistance and supported strikes.
The United States found itself in a difficult political and moral position. It was on record supporting, at least rhetorically, decolonization, self-determination, human rights, democracy, and majority rule. But concerning Cyprus, it repeatedly deferred to its ally, Great Britain. Geopolitical strategic considerations held sway, including fears of inter-communal violence that could encourage Soviet intervention and conflict between two NATO members.
Once the cease-fire broke down, the British blamed Makarios. On March 9, 1956, while at the Nicosia airport en route to Athens for discussions, he was seized by police and, without trial, deported to a British facility in the Seychelles.
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READYING HIMSELF FOR a trip to the United States and Europe in 1955, Elias gathered more letters of introduction. Despite the CIA’s reporting he was persona non grata with USIS, the Athens USIS Public Affairs officer, Theodore Olson, encouraged his counterpart in Rome to help arrange a 1955 interview for him with Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce, remarking that Elias “has done us many favors and I should like to do him one in return.”14 Brigadier General William W. Quinn wrote to General Maxwell D. Taylor, Army Chief of Staff to facilitate Pentagon meetings:
Mr. Demetracopoulos has an excellent reputation and a very wide circle of acquaintances…In addition, he enjoys the full confidence and trust of the Royal Palace, the Greek Government, and the Greek National Defense Staff.
Above all, however, he has been a very close and valuable friend of the United States and has materially assisted many times our Mission with his wise and timely counsel.15
STILL ONLY IN his mid-twenties, Demetracopoulos had established himself as a serious player.
Lurking in the background, however, was a fresh warning from the CIA’s deputy director of plans, in charge of clandestine services, to security officials at State, the Army, the Navy, Immigration, and the FBI. The deputy director maintained that: “available information indicates [Demetracopoulos] is a megalomaniac who may have suffered impairment of his mental faculties as a result of his imprisonment by the Germans during World War II for sabotage activities.”16 And the State Department’s Office of Coordination, recycling claims cooked up during Peurifoy’s tour of duty in 1951, sent to its visa unit the false news that Elias “does not work for the newspaper ‘Kathimerini’ nor is he considered a journalist. Subject is considered an individual of unstable character.”17
When Konstantinos Karamanlis became prime minister of Greece in 1955, he faced a full array of conflicting international and domestic pressures. He wanted economic integration with the Western European community and Cold War military protection but felt obliged to embrace an electorally popular enosis nationalism that pitted him against the interests of Britain, Turkey, the United States, and other NATO members who voted against Greece on Cyprus debates at the United Nations. Ideologically committed to the West, and fearing a Slav Communist—especially Bulgarian—attack from the north, he was sensitive to growing anti-Americanism and neutralist spirit at home. Indeed, Greek public opinion polling in 1956 and 1957 demonstrated strong support for pulling out of NATO, with 49.67 percent preferring that Greece adopt a policy outside the two major blocs.18 Karamanlis decided to pursue an “autonomous foreign policy.”19
In October 1956, after Elias returned from a successful trip to the US, his life at Kathimerini became harder. Aimilios Chourmouzios, his beloved editor, was seriously injured in a near-fatal automobile accident. Facing a long recovery, Chourmouzios took an extended medical leave from the newspaper. Without Chourmouzios, Elias felt the spirit of the paper was gone and his role threatened. Before his death in 1951, publisher George Vlachos had given control of the paper to his daughter Eleni. Although Elias thought he had a good relationship with her, he worried that she wanted to “take the paper in less-serious directions” in the interest of generating new revenues from a broader audience.
All newspapers in Greece had political orientations and tended to back one party or another. They also benefitted financially when their party was in power. Kathimerini was clearly identified as a conservative paper, but under Chourmouzios it had earned a reputation as sober, fair-minded, and not unduly partisan. In recent years Chourmouzios had written forceful editorials decrying “intellectual McCarthyism” and the behavior of the “Americans over here.” Elias agreed with these sentiments, but disagreed with his mentor when, after Greece’s perceived “betrayal” by Britain and the US in the UN vote on Cyprus, Chourmouzios shouted “Shame!” in a page-one column, declaring that Greece should consider leaving NATO and “fight alone.”20 At the time, Elias believed emotional Greek nationalism should not undermine the importance of American and NATO military protection.
The first sign that Elias’s career at Kathimerini might be endangered came when Eleni Vlachou installed Konstantinos Zafeiropoulos, then a political correspondent like Elias, as Chourmouzios’s temporary replacement. Elias claimed he wasn’t jealous, that he did not want the position, but regarded Zafeiropoulos as an unworthy placeholder and a political sycophant, elevated at the recommendation of recently elected Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis.
Once Chourmouzios returned, some of the old spark also came back and Elias found himself again assigned to some prominent “scoops,” particularly about Cyprus. Nevertheless, Elias sensed that the paper was increasingly being run by the Vlachou-Zafeiropoulos alliance, which was itself responding to the agenda of Karamanlis and his ERE Party. Elias challenged the paper’s direction, claiming that in overreacting to the Cyprus crisis Kathimerini was wrongheadedly moving toward a risky neutralist stance.21
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ELIAS’S RELATIONSHIP WITH his other major news outlet and its publisher grew in importance during the 1950s. Founded in 1911, Makedonia was the oldest paper in northern Greece, and publisher Ioannis Vellidis came from one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in Thessaloniki. An avowed Venizelist, Vellidis had been twice exiled as well as imprisoned during the Metaxas dictatorship. During the German occupation, he was forced to cease publishing and moved to Athens; he didn’t return until 1945. Politically, he and his paper supported center-left parties and politicians, George Papandreou in particular. Vellidis was so impressed with young Demetracopoulos’s assertive personality and breadth of contacts in the rapidly expanding and pivotal American community that he added a bonus to his reporter’s modest paycheck: a commitment, unusual for a Greek publisher, to pay Elias’s newsgathering expenses promptly. He not only kept to this commitment, but over time it grew into a generous expense account.
