Daisy, who had driven him to the airport, parked and came inside. She didn’t want to hide her presence from Greek officials, or her connection to Elias. She wanted to see him off for moral support and also bear witness in the event the government blocked him again. Coincidently, Colonel Oliver K. Marshall, military attaché to the American Embassy was there too. He later testified: “I observed him for protracted minutes arguing his way past the customs. If ever you saw a man in flight when he got by, it was Mr. Elias Demetracopoulos.”36
On the plane at last, his mind was a jumble of thoughts. “I’m now out of Greece, but what to do next? Whom to call? And when?” He had no plan.
16.Escape
ELIAS ARRIVED LATE ON THE first day of the UN Editor’s Roundtable conference, carrying a briefcase, a suitcase, and the two hundred dollars he was allowed to take out of the country. The weather was Indian-summer warm, what the Poles call zlota polska jesien (the golden Polish autumn), but Elias felt none of its spirit. Warsaw was gray, drab, and impoverished, but at least it wasn’t Athens.
The large Grand Hotel in the center of the city was newer than other buildings but fit in with the surrounding Stalinist architecture. The military was less than omnipresent, as it was in Greece, but in his first pass through the hotel lobby he thought he saw a Greek security officer. In the coming days, he spotted no fewer than three plainclothes Greek agents watching him from different vantages and talking to Polish police. They never spoke to him, but each day they locked eyes with him menacingly.
The first night he joined some friends from Cyprus, the BBC, and Italian newspapers in the busy hotel lounge. The bar was reminiscent of something in a Le Carré novel. Run by the Polish police, it offered access to prostitution rings and black-market exchanges to separate foreigners from their coveted hard currency. Elias’s mind was elsewhere.
When Demetracopoulos walked into the large conference room the second day of the program, he received a round of applause. Putting on the oversized translation headphones, he considered his next step. The sessions were a blur, the poor sound system making it difficult to follow what was said. It was good to see old friends and meet journalists from around the world who wanted his views on Greece, but Elias was careful to steer conversations away from the personal. During lunch on the last day of the conference, he walked silently past the Greek agents watching him and went to his room. It was time to act.
He didn’t want to stay in Poland. His goal was to get to the United States to assume his place in the resistance against the junta. The best stepping-stone might be London, Paris, Rome, or Copenhagen. The more he thought about it, the more he became convinced his “Danish Connection” was worth trying.
Five years earlier, Demetracopoulos had become friends with the Danish Deputy Head of Mission, Hans Severin Moeller. When Cuban stowaways were found aboard a Danish ship en route to Copenhagen from Havana via Athens, Demetracopoulos had written a story at Moeller’s request presenting fairly the Danish government’s position.1 After Moeller left, they continued to communicate. At the announcement of the 1963 royal engagement between Danish Princess Anne-Marie and Greek Prince Constantine, Demetracopoulos went to Copenhagen to cover the diplomatic angle. Moeller arranged a private interview with both the foreign minister and prime minister, during which Elias asked about the role of the royal family under Denmark’s constitutional monarchy, giving himself an opportunity to discuss candidly the meddlesome role of the Greek Palace and indirectly criticize Queen Frederika in print.
When Prime Minister Jens Otto Krag next visited Athens, he met with Demetracopoulos, telling him he appreciated his candor. The prime minister made a point of suggesting that Elias be in touch “if there is ever anything we can do for you.” Remembering this while sitting in his Warsaw hotel room with the conference nearly over, he thought, “What do I have to lose?” He called Copenhagen.
Krag’s chief of staff told him that the prime minister was in the middle of an important cabinet meeting. Elias insisted: “The matter cannot wait. Please interrupt him now. It’s important that the cabinet meeting is taking place right now because what I’m calling about will probably need cabinet approval.” The aide interrupted the meeting, and the PM came to the phone. Elias reminded him of their meeting and said, “I’m in Warsaw. Papadopoulos has confiscated my passport. I want to go to America, and I’m having difficulty because I don’t have a visa or a legal Greek passport.”
Jens Otto Krag had a visceral antipathy to the Greek dictatorship, a distaste that aligned with Danish public opinion.2 Without hesitation, he told Elias: “Give me the name of the hotel you are staying in and the telephone number. I will call you back…and don’t leave the hotel until you hear from me.” As Elias recalled, “He didn’t say what he was going to do. One hour passes. Nothing. Then two hours. It was the longest wait in my life. I was getting extremely nervous. About three or maybe four hours went by. Then, late in the afternoon, there was a knock on my door. ‘Who’s there?’ I asked. From outside a voice replied, ‘The Ambassador of Denmark. I’ve come to take you.’ ”
The Danish Embassy in Warsaw was tiny and had responsibility for all of Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria. Its new ambassador, Svend Sandager Jeppesen, had arrived only four months earlier. But Elias was fortunate. Sandager Jeppesen was a battle-tested diplomat, a large man with a strong personality who knew how “to act quickly and decisively without being hamstrung by bureaucratic considerations.”3 Elias opened the door, and the Ambassador continued: “I have personnel with me. We will go as a convoy from the Danish Embassy, including the political consul and other attachés. The secret service of Poland will not dare arrest you if you’re protected by the Danish government. And the Greek government has no authority here.”
They positioned Elias, briefcase, and suitcase in the middle of a seven-person cluster, with the imposing ambassador in the lead. Together they walked him through the hotel lobby full of departing delegates and seated him in the protocol-honored right rear of the ambassador’s car. Danish flags fluttering, the black Mercedes took off, followed by two Volvos: the embassy’s white one and a red one driven by the consul. No one stopped them.
Traffic at dusk was relatively light, and for the next twenty to thirty minutes Elias glanced out the window, looking for signs that they’d been followed. They drove down Krucza Street, turned and passed the monstrous Palace of Culture, then turned again near the headquarters of the Warsaw Pact and its military guards. Elias thought fleetingly of Greece. Near their destination, they turned from a broad avenue onto what seemed like a country lane, paved with cobblestones. This led to the ramshackle terminal building at the small Warsaw airport. The ambassador’s driver carried Demetracopoulos’s luggage inside.
Polish border control was usually a time-consuming affair, as border guards meticulously tried to block any unauthorized Polish citizen from leaving the country. The presence of the Danish diplomats sped things up, but the process still took time. The Danish group had provided his ticket, and stayed with him in the nearly empty terminal, watching carefully during the hour or two before the Scandinavian Airlines flight was to depart. Greek government agents responsible for making sure he returned to Athens were nowhere to be seen. Elias arranged to settle his hotel bill, profusely thanked the ambassador and his diplomatic convoy, climbed the passenger staircase to the aircraft, and took his seat.
Everything about the escape had been carefully arranged.4 At the Copenhagen airport late that evening he was met by Hans Moeller, then Chief of Protocol of the Foreign Ministry. Moeller took his tired Greek guest to his house in Frederiksberg. Elias exhaled a great sigh of relief, thinking, “A new life is now beginning, because I am really free.”
But the next day, as he strolled with his friend in a nearby neighborhood, he reflected on the kaleidoscope of autumn colors on the leafy branches that had looked so drab the night before. They reminded Elias how first impressions could be misleading. His challenges would be complex; the next steps not simple. He had never asked for assistance from Ambassador Talbot in Athens as he felt sure that Talbot would not have helped him. Still, he couldn’t imagine that the freedom-loving United States would turn away a self-exiled political refugee trying to escape an oppressive regime. His initial plan was to attend a World Bank meeting in Rio de Janeiro as an invited guest whose expenses would be covered, then proceed to the annual International Monetary Fund–World Bank meetings in Washington. For that he would need both Brazilian and US visas.
Brazil, ruled by a military dictatorship since 1964, quickly approved his visa. When he applied to the American Embassy in Copenhagen, however, the response was not helpful. The junta, furious that Elias had eluded its grasp in Warsaw and now fearful that he would use the United States as a stage from which to attack it, had implored the American Embassy in Athens to prevent his landing on American soil.
To comply with the junta’s request, Ambassador Talbot threw gasoline on the anti-Elias sentiments already smoldering on the Greek Desk at Foggy Bottom. On September 19 Talbot sent a telegram to the State Department restating KYP’s forceful opposition to Elias’s leaving Greece, discouraging the issuance of a visa, and recommending that the Department consult the CIA for data on Demetracopoulos.5 This was an open invitation to cherry-pick from all the spurious material in his growing dossier. In Washington, the chief of the Greek Desk at the State Department was Daniel Brewster, who, according to columnist Robert Novak, “had tangled with Elias over the years and seemed to enjoy disparaging him.” Further, noted Novak, Brewster was “an unabashed friend of the [Greek] colonels”6 As Brewster would admit years later, the CIA “loved to send in material;…it was not vetted, it came back to Washington raw.”7 This meant that all the years of unsubstantiated rumors and outright lies in Elias’s files could be weaponized without any quality control.
On September 23, 1967, the telegram to Elias in Copenhagen formally denying his visa application arrived. Hans Moeller commiserated with his friend and told him he could stay with him indefinitely. But Elias did not want to take advantage of his friend’s hospitality, and his meager exit money was mostly gone. Whatever his affection for Copenhagen and the Danes, he knew he could be more effective opposing the Greek dictatorship from Washington than from anywhere else in the world.
Preparing to win or go down fighting, he took a yellow legal pad and made a three-page handwritten list of names. The next day he began systematically calling and sending telegrams, seeking help through his more than a decade and a half of American friendships. At first, he did not announce that the State Department had already rejected his application. Typical was the telegram he sent to archconservative Mississippi congressman Mendel Rivers, who had appreciated Elias’s staunch defense of Admiral Arleigh Burke.8
Urgently request your assistance obtaining immediately entry visa. Greek regime confiscated regular passport with valid US visa for attending United Nations Editors Roundtable. Ask State Department. Advise accordingly. Thanks. Elias Demetracopoulos. Political Editor Athens Daily Post.
The same message was sent to all shades of Democrats and Republicans, including Speaker of the House John McCormack; liberal New York congressman Emanuel Celler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, responsible for immigration matters; and Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond, who had changed from Democrat to staunch Republican.
Telegrams went to businessmen, Wall Street money managers, and representatives of the Federal Reserve and the World Bank, who had invited him to their meetings. He sent other cables and made calls to admirals and generals, friends in the press (including Robert Novak, who had recently met him in Athens), and Frances Howard Humphrey, the younger sister of Vice President Hubert Humphrey, whom Elias had hosted on her trips to Greece. Also included, of course, was Louise Gore.
Return telegrams and telephone calls conveyed offers of help and requests for more clarification, spurring Elias to provide additional details and background. Responses divided roughly into three groups: those who expressed concern and made generalized offers of help; those who offered to help on specifics of his appeal; and those who reported on their efforts to target soft spots susceptible to political pressure. California industrialist, philanthropist, and Democratic Party fundraiser Nat Dumont cabled: “Have contacted Assistant Secretary of State familiar with your situation. Governor Brown extremely helpful among others.”9
Eliot Janeway’s son, Michael, told Elias that his father had received Elias’s message while travelling in France, had shown the Demetracopoulos cable to Charles “Chip” Bohlen, the American Ambassador in Paris, and warned Bohlen of the “repercussions” that would follow if the decision were not reversed.10 Another message indicated that Janeway had also spoken to Vice President Humphrey on Elias’s behalf. Eliot Janeway later said that he had also talked directly with President Johnson.
Emanuel Celler helped to fine-tune Elias’s non-immigrant visa application. He cabled Elias on September 26 to say: “State Department requires proof you are bona fide non-immigrant. Do you intend return after visit?”11 Elias’s reply: “Intend return Europe after this visit. Can go either Denmark or Germany. Intend to go Denmark where already officially admitted. Since 1951 have visited USA nine times. Although married once to American citizen never tried to obtain US citizenship or residence. Plan return to Greece where my professional, family and economic interests are as soon as it would be safe. Thanks.”
Robert Brimberg, head of an eponymous Wall Street brokerage firm, had been hosted by Elias in Athens the year before while accompanying Indiana senator Vance Hartke, telegrammed: “Hartke is working hard on it” and asking on September 27: “Do you need any money?”12
The collective pressures worked. Elias believed that, aside from Janeway, his most persuasive advocates were Chairman Celler and former California Governor Pat Brown, two men who knew the President well and could speak his language effectively, regardless of the Demetracopoulos file or who sat on the Greek Desk. President Johnson told Secretary of State Rusk to lift the barrier and let Demetracopoulos in.
On September 28, five days after his official denial, Elias was granted a non-immigrant visitor’s visa. On October 1, 1967, he took a flight to Hamburg and then on to New York. In Hamburg, he met with Marion Schlitter von Cramm, Oskar and Daisy’s daughter, who was brokenhearted after a recent divorce. Elias consoled her and told her to call or write him any time. He arrived in the United States, well-groomed and well-dressed, toting leather briefcase and suitcase. He had $67 in his pocket.
It was clear that Demetracopoulos could no longer work as political editor for any of his Greek publications, which would be reluctant to print any stories he might send them. Furthermore, it was highly unrealistic that non-Greek publications would want to hire a Greece-focused correspondent with seriously curtailed access to sources at home. He had an ongoing relationship with the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA) listed on his visa application, but per-article-pay from them could not provide a sustainable income. Without any means of support beyond the kindness of friends, he needed to find steady work, and quickly.
Of all of his friends during this time who had helped in large and small ways, Eliot Janeway opened the most doors. Understanding the magnitude of the problems facing Elias and all their subtle complexities, Janeway suggested how to turn Wall Street broker Bob Brimberg’s generalized offer of help into a real job. On his first full day of self-exile in America, Elias sat down with Janeway and Brimberg in the latter’s Lower Manhattan office to discuss how they could help one another. Bob Brimberg headed a small and aggressive firm that was constantly seeking a competitive advantage over its larger competitors. Nicknamed “Scarsdale Fats” for his hometown and Falstaffian build, Brimberg was the “corned beef and pickles Perle Mesta of Wall Street.”13 He had developed a reputation for hosting popular informal luncheons for representatives of big investment institutions like Fidelity, Wellington, Keystone, and Chemical Bank. These gatherings included “no-nonsense,” off-the-record discussions of what the companies were buying and selling. At other times Brimberg would invite guests to speak on relevant topics or provide executive briefings for his clients.
Brimberg needed an internationally savvy advisor who could provide his investment clients sophisticated economic and political briefings on developments abroad. He also wanted a well-connected Washington representative who could attract marquee names to give speeches at his popular events. In Elias, he found both.
Elias knew he could do the job and do it well, but he also knew he hadn’t come all this way just to make money. His priority was to connect with anti-junta interests in America and do everything possible to rid his country of its dictatorship. Understanding this, Brimberg offered an arrangement whereby Elias would be tasked to organize certain client events in New York and Washington and attend once-a-week meetings in New York. The rest of the time Elias would be on his own. It would be full-time pay for less than full-time work. And the firm would cover his “business development” expenses. Elias immediately agreed. Both men knew that before Elias could do any serious work, he would have to establish himself anew and get into a routine. So Brimberg started him out with a generous bonus. For the first month, he had no specific responsibilities, just get settled and make plans.
Elias left for Washington several days later. He decided to make his base of operations the Fairfax Hotel because of its prime location and ambience, its Jockey Club restaurant that could serve as his private club office, the friendly responsiveness of the staff, and the feeling that, of all the places he’d lived recently, especially with Louise Gore nearby, it felt like home. Louise was delighted to welcome him, this time as a long-term tenant.
Despite his jump in salary, Elias carefully watched his personal expenses. He chose to live in one of the smallest, shabbiest residential apartments in the building, and resisted repainting and remodeling offers in order to avoid rent increases. Instead, he poured much of his new income into long-distance telephone calls, photocopying documents, and other expenses that advanced his anti-junta activities.
As he settled himself into the fifth-floor unit, listening to the muffled noises of yet another city on the street below, Elias saw his life as renewed. Instead of being exhausted, he was energized. He reflected on the concept of friendship and the lessons he had learned, or had reinforced, during the past eventful month. Friendships formed at a time of crisis, he observed, are deeper and more enduring than those deriving from shared ideology or commitment to a particular cause. “I have very conservative people who came to help even though they knew that I was liberal. There were liberals who refused to help because they felt that I was going to cause them trouble. It was the same experience I had in the Arleigh Burke thing. You often never know who your real friends are until a crisis comes.”
One of the downsides of living at the Fairfax, with all its celebrity tenants and prime location, was that he already knew his phones would be tapped, as they had been in the past. Indeed, within days, as records later released under FOIA would show, the FBI acted on orders to put Elias under “extensive surveillance.”
17.Exiled in America
