Even if O’Brien harbored a fear that exposing the 1968 Greek money transfer could open the Democrats up to charges of foreign-money payments coming to them from the likes of the Shah of Iran and Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos, it shouldn’t have chilled him. Big-ticket foreign donors traditionally gave to the Republicans in equal or greater amounts, and 1968 was no exception.67 To be sure, the threat of mutually assured destruction had led to a bipartisan tradition of not disclosing illegal foreign contributions. However, circumstances around this one-sided Greek money transfer presented extraordinary political potential.
It is plausible that O’Brien thought the allegations were too complicated and came too late in the campaign. Experience may have taught him that voters would probably dismiss the charges as an unfair last-minute smear and, even if thousands were swayed, it would not move any votes in the Electoral College. If this were the case, he could have said so directly to Elias, but he failed to do so in either of their two meetings.
A second possible reason for O’Brien’s lack of initiative is that he wanted the information for his own purposes. The 1968 Demetracopoulos file on Nixon-Pappas was still in Larry O’Brien’s possession, unused, at the time of the 1972 Watergate break-in. But, according to Napolitan, the file on Pappas and the Greek junta money was not kept in the office because O’Brien removed the 1968 Demetracopoulos information to his private residence. This action might imply that, like Johnson’s withholding disclosure of the incriminating Paris Peace Talks sabotage as insurance against Nixon, the information could have been more valuable to him personally than politically. Did O’Brien believe that Demetracopoulos’s information would be more useful in a Nixon Administration than in a Humphrey one? Unlikely: the thought that O’Brien might be willing to sacrifice his candidate in order to serve his own future private interests seems outrageously conspiratorial.
A third theory, that O’Brien discounted the message because of the messenger, seems most likely and logical. Elias did not know O’Brien personally when he walked into the Watergate, but O’Brien may have remembered Elias then, or had his memory refreshed shortly thereafter. As a member of the White House staff, O’Brien would have been well aware of the fallout from Demetracopoulos’s 1961 Arleigh Burke interview. O’Brien, Kenny O’Donnell, and Pierre Salinger were all close, and O’Brien may have talked to one or both after the first meeting. Healy believed that his tip from O’Donnell came from O’Brien. If O’Brien was not at first aware of Elias’s infamous intelligence dossier, he would definitely have heard about it after talking to Salinger. Did O’Brien think that Demetracopoulos might be laying a trap for the Humphrey campaign? If O’Brien were in touch with Salinger about this, as he was with him and O’Donnell about other campaign matters, he would clearly feel that Demetracopoulos should not be trusted. It is probably no coincidence that on Tuesday, October 22, three days after his first meeting with O’Brien, Elias received a call from Nancy Jackson, his Los Angeles friend who sent him the 1966 letter telling him how Salinger had tried to smear him by claiming Demetracopoulos worked for the “other side.” This time, she told Elias, Salinger had called her to say her friend [Elias] was “causing trouble again…telling lies.” Maybe it was better, as O’Brien told Napolitan, just to gather Elias’s information and file it away.
In Camelot’s Court, Robert Dallek pointed out that O’Brien’s “affinity for negative thinking” and “impulse to emphasize impediments” had initially made President Kennedy reluctant to appoint him White House liaison with Congress.68 Jim King, for decades a celebrated advance man of Kennedy and other Democratic campaigns, knew O’Brien and his father from the 1950s when they operated a Springfield tavern serving and organizing working-class Irish Democrats. King concurred with the description of O’Brien’s proclivity for negative thinking. He surmised that, even in 1968, “the McCarthy that would strike deepest fears into O’Brien’s Irish Catholic heart was not Gene but Joe.” O’Brien came of age in the era of Joe McCarthy witch hunts and still believed that it was a political third rail to deal with anyone tainted with so much as a suspicion of Communist connections. The disinformation campaign against Elias had been anything but subtle. The problem O’Brien had with Demetracopoulos was not his message, but the messenger himself. Blowback from years of inflammatory anti-Elias attacks fanned by Kennedy insiders may well have cost Humphrey the election and given the country Richard Nixon.
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DEEMING HIS FORAY into the presidential campaign a wasteful distraction, Demetracopoulos refocused on Greece even before Americans voted. He renewed his criticism of September’s sham plebiscite and attacked American plans to resume partial shipments of heavy military equipment to Greece. Meanwhile George Papandreou, who had fallen critically ill, died on November 1—the day after the O’Brien press release. His November 3 funeral in Athens attracted some 300,000 demonstrators. Chanting anti-regime slogans, they turned the private service into a paean for democracy. Arrests followed. Heavy sentences were imposed on some, and Alekos Panagoulis was sentenced to death for his earlier assassination attempt on George Papadopoulos. The junta decided never again to let such a crowd gather in Athens. By year’s end, with opposition in disarray and tolerance of the dictatorship rising, the junta had “little cause for anxiety either at home or abroad.”
O’Brien may have used the Demetracopoulos information fecklessly, but it was still potentially damaging. During the presidential transition, John Mitchell discussed Demetracopoulos’s Pappas disclosure privately with J. Edgar Hoover.69 Afterward, the Attorney-General designate told Louise Gore that her Greek friend was worse than a troublemaker and that it would be better if she stayed away from him. This would not be a one-time warning. As Watergate historian Stanley Kutler later observed, the matter of Pappas’s 1968 Greek money transfer, the Greek Connection, “caused the most anxiety for the longest period of time for the Nixon Administration, and the agencies that served it.”70
19.Fighting the Dictatorship
FOR ELIAS, 1969 DAWNED MUCH as the previous year had ended. He monitored the situation in Greece, exchanged messages with exiles in Europe, prepared a revised list of congressional opponents and targets in the new administration, attended holiday parties, returned to Capitol Hill to push his anti-junta agenda, extended his Wall Street business networks, and consulted with his attorneys regarding the best way to secure legal permanent-resident status. Although federal agencies repeatedly tried to make an illegal-foreign-agent deportation case against him, the FBI steadfastly reported that its “established sources” could not confirm any Soviet contact since his 1967 arrival, and US senators wrote to the INS director urging swift approval of his immigration petition, praising Elias’s strong moral character.1
That January, Nixon and his chief foreign-policy advisor Henry Kissinger assumed office with grand plans. They wanted to take bold and dramatic steps to transform US relations with China and the Soviet Union. But, notwithstanding their intellectual recognition of a multipolar, interconnected world, their attitudes toward much of the globe were frozen in Cold War stereotypes. Developing and “intermediate” countries were largely regarded as pawns on a global chessboard, significant only insofar as they served the larger geopolitical agenda. Despite Greece’s self-important view of its standing among nations, it was consigned to the lesser category.2
Kissinger began his tenure trying to prevent any leaks that he did not himself orchestrate, privately denigrating Secretary of State William P. Rogers as unqualified and serving as an interlocutor between the State Department and the President on foreign-policy issues raised by key supporters. Nixon assured Tom Pappas of his continued role as “unofficial middleman” between the White House and the junta.3
United States Ambassador Talbot had resigned his post effective at the end of the Johnson Administration, rather than wait until his replacement was named, but other officials at the embassy described the situation in Greece as being better than before the 1967 coup. While characterizing the new government as cartoonishly anti-intellectual, prone to making foolish pronouncements, and generally inept at public relations, they dismissed as “socialist agitation” signs of international opposition, noting that the “economic oligarchy” (including by name Aristotle Onassis) had “unmistakably cast its lot” with the regime and that serious internal opposition was nonexistent. They looked forward to a Nixon Administration “less inclined to badger the [Greek government].” Its message was to “keep our ‘cool,’ ” be realistic, and delink military aid from “internal political performance,” adding that “there’s not very much that the liberal minority in Congress can do about it other than make noise.”4
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FRIENDS SAID THAT Elias worked six hours a day for Brimberg and fourteen hours a day toward the overthrow of the Greek dictatorship. Demetracopoulos’s paying job involved gathering useful investor intelligence on legislative and regulatory developments, making client presentations, and identifying, inviting, and escorting notables who would be draws for Brimberg’s business luncheons.
Elias’s evenings were spent at political and diplomatic receptions and dinners, where he would be one of the first to arrive. For the first hour or two, he fulfilled Brimberg-related tasks. Then, for the remainder of the evening, he’d switch gears, becoming an unabashed advocate for a free Greece. He was usually the last to leave. Sipping his preferred ginger ale or Coca-Cola instead of alcoholic beverages meant he could make his case while stone-cold sober and remember the information he’d gathered without taking notes. Then, before going to bed, he would use the five- to seven-hour time differences to brief and get reports from his European sources. He usually slept no more than four hours a night.
Elias needed to demonstrate to Brimberg his value as a serious player at the intersection of business and politics. He also liked doing favors for friends like Elmer Staude, who had organized a large Los Angeles dinner in his honor after his 1967 escape. President of the Brunswig Drug Company, a growing West Coast pharmaceutical enterprise eager to merge with the East Coast firm of Bergen Drug, Staude wanted antitrust approval and high-level networking. So, on February 26, Elias hosted a posh reception and dinner for Staude at which the guest list included a Brimberg & Co. partner, Democratic and Republican senators, Treasury Under-Secretary Paul Volcker, officials from the World Bank and State Department, business leaders, journalists, former CIA Athens station chief John Richardson, and a variety of diplomats from missions not including Greece. Staude, Brimberg, and Elias deemed the event a great success.5
It was not considered a success, however, by CIA director Richard Helms, Deputy Director Tom Karamessines, and their intelligence colleagues who, after reviewing the VIP guest list, reported in exasperation that “Demetracopoulos is flying high around town.”6 The CIA memorandum recommended that senators who sounded “like the straight Demetracopoulos” be given “a low-key warning about [him]…[and] the embarrassment he might create for anyone becoming involved with him.” To that end, Karamessines authorized the preparation of a report to recycle past false claims and generate fresh calumnies about Elias. Their pursuit was relentless.
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ELIAS FELT HE did his best anti-junta work alone, nurturing a network of sympathetic congressmen and administration officials, and serving the needs of journalists looking for new and interesting copy, connecting with other groups only on an as-needed basis. To him, the anti-junta efforts outside Washington had been largely ineffective. He found that many on the left were passionate in their opposition, but in their ideological purity often failed to make common cause with moderates and conservatives who could be allies for different reasons.
Elias believed in a broad-based coalition that could animate world opinion, sustain pressure on political leaders, and guide the inchoate opposition groups emerging in Greece. He believed that no one should try to organize it rigidly, because the strong and diverse personalities would never defer to a single leader. Engaging Greek-Americans in the fight might be a worthwhile goal, but, after the hard rejection he received in 1967, he decided that dealing with them was a task best left to others.7
Sometimes graphic portrayals of what was happening in Greece followed by a soft appeal to human rights, political idealism, and the restoration of cherished democratic symbols were sufficient to win support. With others, however, especially conservatives, it was often necessary to appeal to American self-interest. Customizing his approaches and selectively invoking the names of different allies made him mysterious to some, but he believed it helped his effectiveness. Jim Pyrros, longtime legislative aide to Democratic Michigan congressman Lucien Nedzi, and a key player in the Don Fraser/Don Edwards–led United States Committee for Democracy in Greece (USCDG), had grudging respect for Elias as a “lone wolf” who outworked everyone else.8
Demetracopoulos, true to his strategy of diversifying his approaches, kept up with the different anti-junta factions but seldom joined in their activities. He believed that Karamanlis, Andreas Papandreou, the King, Eleni Vlachou, and others could be important players in different ways, but was unconvinced of the usefulness of a so-called Greek government in exile. Determined not to carry baggage from earlier relationships into this battle, he tried to work with and not publicly criticize potential allies.
Andreas Papandreou was a case in point. After he was freed from prison in a 1967 Christmas Eve amnesty, he went into exile, first to various European cities, then briefly in Sweden where he taught economics and formed his own Pan-Hellenic Liberation Movement (known by its acronym PAK). Andreas became the self-styled leading international anti-junta figure on the left, enjoying rock-star status as he travelled to college campuses and other venues promoting PAK’s agenda. In 1969, having moved to Toronto to teach at York University, Andreas wanted to visit Washington as part of a “Crusade to the American People.” With less than a month’s lead time, his wife Margaret contacted Elias asking him to take Andreas “under your wing.”9
Elias had been close to George Papandreou but had reservations about his son. They were never friends and were mutually suspicious. Yet they often had shared interests, especially their desire to oust the dictatorship. Elias never doubted Andreas’s intelligence and charisma but found him irresponsible, undisciplined, and untrustworthy. He was troubled by Andreas’s sweeping New Left rhetoric and lack of judgment. Reports that Andreas was consorting with a revised Greek Communist party still “sentimentally attached to the Soviet Union,”10 as well as perceptions of his increasing anti-Americanism, created persistent public-relations problems. Elias worried that Andreas’s repeating EAM/ELAS’s Civil War mistakes could be used by an emboldened Moscow. He was also disturbed by reports that Andreas, after founding PAK, “set about assiduously undermining other anti-junta groups,” entering alliances but then working to “discredit his supposed colleagues.”11
Nevertheless, without hesitation Elias arranged a trip, including a pseudonymous hotel registration. Painstakingly, he created a schedule that connected Andreas with influential individuals who were either actively or potentially sympathetic, avoiding settings where Andreas might say something untoward.12 An ungrateful Andreas left Washington without settling some bills, which Elias quietly paid.
Shortly thereafter, Eleni Vlachou (“Helen Vlachos” when abroad) arrived in the US. Elias, who had stayed in regular contact with his former Kathimerini publisher, now based in London, did advance work for her meetings and publicity as well. Eleni’s husband had remained in Athens. After the junta took him into custody, Eleni, a former voice of the pro-American Greek establishment, wrote Elias about having come to recognize the “new reality”:
Don’t expect the militaries and the merchants who rule America to help you back to freedom. You have to BECOME A PROBLEM…
The Americans—and the English, and the French that have power dont [sic] care, and those who care can do very little,” she added, “Journalists, politicians, diplomats, intellectuals…they say the right things but the Juntas, the fat Pentagon mother Junta or the lean Athens one, don’t take any notice.
…IF Greeks want freedom, they will have to fight for it. In any way they can.13
ELIAS WAS SURPRISED by the intensity of her language, viewing it as a sign of growing outrage across the political spectrum. He hoped she would carry the spirit forward in Greek Report, the newsletter she was now publishing in London.
The August 1968 assassination attempt on Papadopoulos had led to more large-scale arrests and more people in detention or exile. Elias became an interlocutor of choice for people trapped in Greece wanting to get the word out that the rosy portrayals by the Greek Embassy in Washington were misleading. Sometimes letters and packages came addressed to his fake name, “Robert Speer,” at the Fairfax Hotel. Sometimes senders used only “Elias,” and some communications were mailed simply to “Elias Demetracopoulos, Washington D.C., USA.” The post office knew where to find him. He was most affected by pleas for help from torture victims and their families.
Elias believed that the opposition had to be relentless in its approach to Washington decision-makers. He asked sympathetic congressmen to insert his remarks and articles about him into the Congressional Record as a means of legitimizing his words and activities. He ran off hundreds of reprints with congressional letterhead to use in his lobbying packets. From retail politicking to background briefings, he proselytized constantly. He prepared articles under his own name and ghost-wrote others, appeared on talk shows, held press conferences, engaged in formal debates, and gave speeches to groups large and small. He was always competing for attention against bigger stories: Nixon’s Cambodian bombing and the resulting anti-war Moratorium, the Apollo 11 moon landing, Chappaquiddick and Woodstock in 1969. A dictatorship in Greece was no longer fresh or pressing news. Elias, however, refused to let the “Greek problem” fall under the radar.
Demetracopoulos spoke to an assortment of business groups, women’s organizations, and college assemblies, encouraging his audiences to become activists and recruiting some as volunteer researchers. On April 29, 1969, he gave a speech at George Washington University titled: “Greece: A New Vietnam?” warning that misreading signs and taking wrong actions could lead the United States into another disastrous quagmire. He asserted as demonstrably false the contention that the dictatorship would help American strategic interests. “Purging the cream of the Greek officer corps” and a “preoccupation” with internal security had instead put at risk the stability and combat capabilities of the Greek armed forces, jeopardizing Greece’s NATO responsibilities. Citing inflationary spending and declines in foreign investment, GDP, and consumer confidence, he also noted the rise of corrupt business dealings, despite junta claims of purity. Moreover, he criticized the double standard of expressing outrage at left-wing coups while condoning right-wing ones, a practice that fostered a pernicious anti-Americanism and created a fertile breeding ground for Soviet exploitation. The speech gained traction with members of Congress, who sent copies of his “pertinent warning” to Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, NSC director Henry Kissinger, and Vice President Agnew, and asked for their responses.14
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GRATIFIED BY THE favorable reaction from junta opponents on the left to the circulated copies of his GWU speech, Demetracopoulos wanted to present his argument to potential allies on the American right who might have more influence with the Nixon Administration. Senator Fulbright recommended he contact Herman Kahn, who had left his longtime position as a physicist and mathematician at the Rand Corporation to create the Hudson Institute think tank.
Kahn was a 300-pound bespectacled intellectual giant most famous for his Strangelovian views on how to win, or at least survive, a thermonuclear war.15 He asked Elias to submit a reworked version of his speech as a formal Hudson Institute paper that challenged US policy regarding Greece as weakening NATO’s southern flank and running counter to “America’s own national interests.” In his commentary on the piece, Kahn, while conceding disagreement on some issues, emphasized other points—chances of a renewed civil war and a weaker Greek military—that were “worth serious study.”16 He directed that the paper be sent to the Institute’s full mailing list.
The State Department, the Nixon White House, and the Greek Embassy were not pleased. The Greek Desk at the State Department prepared a confidential memorandum, summarizing the paper and describing Demetracopoulos snarkily as “a correspondent and public relations man who considers himself as the coordinator of anti-regime activities in the United States.” The CIA expressed surprise that Kahn would publish it.17
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TOWARD THE END of May, bombs went off in Athens at Syntagma Square and the Ministry of Finance. There were reports of more than a dozen generals involved in an attempted coup, all were arrested, and the regime cast a dragnet to round up sympathizers. Then on May 27, LOOK magazine published a damning article titled “Greece: Government by Torture.”18 Its author, senior editor Christopher S. Wren, said that until he visited Greece he had not believed torture reports. After a series of businessmen, priests, army officers, lawyers, and housewives, all former political prisoners, described their ordeals in detail and let him “see, and touch, the scars,” he concluded that “torture has taken place in Greece on victims who number into the thousands. Under a frightened, unpopular military regime, torture goes on today.”19
