After reviewing nearly 200 cases, Wren portrayed gleeful torturers beating their victims to unconsciousness, jamming urine-soaked rags into their mouths and detergent into their throats, forcing them to lick up their own vomit, smashing their heads into walls, poking eyeballs, sticking hot peppers into their mouths, noses, and eyes, slugging testicles with iron bars, then shoving the bars into rectums, and tearing skin or violating women with broomsticks. Family members were sometimes beaten in front of those being interrogated. Doctors risked having their telephone service cut if they treated victims. Questioning America’s role in all this, Wren warned that American aid had become identified with the tortures, provoking anti-Americanism among “once loyal friends.” “The reckoning,” he wrote, “has yet to come.”20
Two days after publication of the LOOK article, Elias was interviewed on the syndicated Washington television program Panorama. The hosts wanted a debate, but the Greek Embassy declined to send anyone, so Elias presented the coup’s origins and the horrors revealed in the LOOK article unchallenged.21 Asked about his politics, Elias described himself “as a man with liberal views who favored conservative approaches” and as not belonging to any political party. He dodged singling out the CIA for blame, talking instead about a widespread belief in Europe that the United States was “involved” in Greece “by commission or omission.” “It would be a good thing all around,” he recommended, for the Nixon Administration to support a congressional investigation of US policies and activities in Greece over “the last few years.”22
Listening to testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Demetracopoulos smirked at Under-Secretary of State Joseph Sisco’s use of the phrase “our need for friends in the region” as a rationale for sending military aid to the junta, and laughed audibly when Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Rodger Davies predicted the junta would fully implement its new constitution “by [the] end of [the] year.”23 He fed reporters information on the lack of combat readiness of Greek armed forces and conferred regularly with USCDG leaders Congressmen Edwards and Fraser, who tried hard to get the administration to develop a new agenda toward Greece, only to be faced by Nixon officials pushing ahead in a different direction.
While Britain and France debated internally on how best to take a moral stand without adversely affecting their commercial interests, other European nations, especially those from Scandinavia, were much more forceful in their opposition to the junta. The Council of Europe, founded in the aftermath of World War II and dedicated to the protection of fundamental freedoms, became the crucible for member states to decide whether they had the stomach to delegitimize one of their own for mishandling its “internal affairs.”24
For the USCDG and other American-led groups opposed to the junta, the highest priority was blocking Greek demands to restore full military aid, partly suspended after the April 1967 coup. The arms restriction dealt only with major military items not yet in the weapons pipeline, like aircraft, naval vessels, missiles, and tanks. Though important symbolically, the list of banned items did not include small arms, ammunition, communications equipment, or trucks, all of which could be used against citizens of a police state.25 Demetracopoulos believed that the administration would use the pretext of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia the previous summer to mount a powerful counteroffensive. As early as October 1968, the United States announced that, in response to Soviet moves, it was resuming delivery of some heavy arms. It was clear that US military aid would soon return at least to pre-1967 levels. By February 1969, F-104 Starfighters, HU-16 maritime patrol aircraft, and self-propelled artillery had started to arrive. Elias assumed that Colonel Gaddafi’s overthrow of the Libyan monarchy in September, with the attendant expulsion of the American Air Force base and the British naval station at Tobruk, would provide a further US rationale for accepting the situation in Greece. Delegitimizing the Greek dictatorship in the eyes of the world would not be easily or speedily achieved.
The only anti-junta option thought to be possibly acceptable to the Americans was the “Karamanlis solution,” some compromise government led by the conservative former prime minister. But Karamanlis had been publicly silent and privately ambiguous. On October 1, 1969, the first anniversary of the new constitution, Karamanlis made his strongest attack yet on the junta. Calling the regime a “tyrannical and illegitimate institution,” he charged, “they had never intended…to restore democracy…” By their blunders, he said, they had caused the disintegration of the armed forces, undermined the economic future of the country, and isolated Greece politically and morally. Now they were resorting to “terrorization of the Greek people and deception of international public opinion.”26 He offered himself to convince government leaders that their downfall was inevitable, either peacefully or by being overthrown. Then he followed up with a private letter to the retired chief of the general staff that “could have been read as an invitation to a military counter revolution.”27 The New York Times editorialized that it was a “moment of truth for Nixon’s State Department; time “to face up to the fact that their policy in Greece is bankrupt.”28
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FOR NEARLY TWO years, Bob Brimberg had been patiently waiting for Elias’s immigration problems to be cleared up so Elias could travel abroad to help enhance the firm’s presence in Europe. In early September, Demetracopoulos was finally told that he was eligible for permanent residence as the recipient of a Sixth Preference immigrant visa, but had to leave the county to have it processed. On the morning of September 23, 1969, with his immigration attorney at his side, he flew to the American Embassy in Montreal and returned that afternoon, landing first in New York, where he was readmitted to the United States by INS. Less than a week later, as he was preparing to leave for Europe for the first time since his 1967 escape, his lawyer took precautionary steps to make sure that he could get back into the US.
Meeting clients and associates, Elias stayed with Brimberg at the poshest European hotels and dined at the finest restaurants. When travelling alone, he worked both to develop a network of sources and business prospects for his employer and coordinate anti-junta strategies with leading Greek exiles in Europe. Friends of Elias, from the diplomatic corps to Governor Pat Brown, had written effusive letters to embassies and business executives asking for full courtesies. Elias was intent on gathering intelligence on European economies not fully captured in published reports. He met with OECD officials and research firms conducting proprietary research. Brimberg wanted to assess the direction of the British pound and the interplay of fluctuating exchange rates of other currencies. A typical telegram Elias sent to New York from Brussels reads, “Belgian Franc strongly pressed STOP…Dealers here expect…Franc to backwash on Dutch guilder.”29
When his official work was done, he was free to crisscross the same towns with a different agenda. Using his Brimberg expense account, he scheduled back-to-back meetings with other Greek exiles and strategized the best way to free their homeland from the dictatorship. His first appointment was with Karamanlis at his apartment in the historic Marais district of Paris. Any bad blood between them was put aside, and their conversation focused largely on the implications of the former prime minister’s recent statements. Karamanlis described exchanges he had had with former leaders of the center and right, and the two discussed the recent cutback by Litton Industries in their Greek investments, other looming economic issues, and Tom Pappas. Elias contributed carefully selective perspectives gleaned from his center-left contacts.
Karamanlis was extremely upset by the reaction in Greece to his statement. That Papadopoulos and Makarezos would accuse him of encouraging “terroristic activity” was expected, but silence from others at home—except for Mavros and Kanellopoulos, who had responded positively—was a great disappointment.30 With the exception of a retired general, no one in the military spoke out. Only one newspaper, Vradyni, “was bold enough” to express support. Afterward, Elias telephoned Andreas Papandreou to keep him informed and solicit his views.
Elias visited Jules Dassin and Melina Mercouri in their Left Bank flat and urged them to mobilize a network of international celebrities. He travelled later to meet with the self-exiled King in Rome, German officials in Bonn, and Paul Henri Spaak, architect of the European Union and former socialist prime minister of Belgium, outside Brussels. In London, he met with Eleni Vlachou and other Greek exiles, including Melina’s brother, Spyros Mercouris, active in the opposition group Democratic Defense. He also spent a couple of days lobbying UK Parliament members, updating Liberal and Labour junta opponents, and pitching Conservatives identified as persuadable.
At all hours he met with journalists, including old friends from the London bureaus of the New York Times, Washington Post, and Christian Science Monitor. He was especially pleased that the Greek Desk of the BBC World Service served as an information-exchange clearinghouse, setting up meetings, including with an intelligence officer from the State Department. Elias was so focused on Greece that he gave possible news scoops (such as Soviet submarine activities off Sicily during NATO exercises) to colleagues without asking for public credit.
His whirlwind trip was not all work. Demetracopoulos made time to have dinners with Louise Gore in Paris, where she was just finishing her first session as the new American ambassador to UNESCO. He took great pleasure responding to her request to provide her with lists of books that would help her grow into her role as a diplomat. She worried about Elias. She knew personally some of those in the US who were after him and could only imagine what forces were at play on the Greek side. After Louise returned to Washington, Elias met Persa Metaxas, who flew from Athens to join him briefly. Afterward, in other cities, he visited some of the attractive eligible ladies recommended to him by women friends in Washington and identified sponsors to help Deena Clark in her NBC negotiations for a European television syndication deal.31 Before leaving, he purchased bottles of perfume to take back as gifts.
While Elias was away, his enemies in Washington were busy. Jack Caulfield had spent more than a decade at the New York City Police Department’s Bureau of Special Service and Investigations, providing security for visiting public figures such as Fidel Castro, Nikita Khrushchev, and Richard Nixon and investigating groups including the American Nazi Party and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. In 1968 he went to work as chief of security for the Nixon campaign staff, and in April 1969 he was hired by the White House with the special assignment of creating an in-house unit to gather sensitive information and investigate political opponents. He set up a 24/7 surveillance of Edward Kennedy, initiated illegal wiretaps on the press, and recruited his friend from the New York police, Tony Ulascewitz—who was later arrested and convicted for his role in the Watergate break-in—to help with the surveillance.
On October 3, 1969, Caulfield sent a confidential memo to White House counsel John Ehrlichman titled “Greek Inquiry.”32 Several days later, Agnew foreign-policy advisor Kent Crane, who had been involved the year before in the secret Anna Chennault Vietnam communications, prepared a confidential memorandum for State Department internal security asking for material on Demetracopoulos “both in the US and abroad.”33 Al Vigderman at the Greek Desk, one of Elias’s harshest critics, replied that he would provide only an “oral briefing,” nothing in writing.34 As investigators focused on Demetracopoulos’s criticism of Tom Pappas, State, INS, and CIA continued to build their phony case against Elias, making sure that congressmen, White House staffers, and political operatives got the most damning information that they could supply. However, the FBI, which would have been on the front lines in bringing an actual case against Elias, recommended closing the investigation without taking any action.35
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AMIDST ALL OF this, Elias turned to Celia for a serious conversation. In recent years, they’d exchanged postcards and letters but spent little time together. Recently she’d visited Washington “with mixed emotions” but “not wanting to interfere with his life.”36 She was pleased that he was doing well and had so many friends, but worried about his developing ulcers and the attacks on him. He scheduled a time to talk after she’d returned home. She waited by the phone, but he got busy and never called. When they finally connected, the two spoke frankly about their past and enduring ties. She invited him to come to Connecticut, to see her and her nieces, who remembered him fondly. He declined.
Afterward, Celia told him that when she left in 1954 she loved him, but felt they needed to separate. “I suppose the greatest surprise to me during the past years has been the fact that you never did marry one of the shipowner’s daughters you were always talking about,” she said. She later wrote that after years of not dating, she had met a man she really liked, who had proposed to her, but that she’d ended the relationship. “One of the reasons for my refusal,” she explained “was that I felt that I had an obligation to you. God alone knows how I come by this quixotic notion—but there it is. If you had remarried then I would no longer have felt concern about your welfare.”37
Celia ended the letter with “God bless you and good-bye. Best wishes.” It was not the end between them. Elias fleetingly imagined what might have been, but quickly turned to the business at hand.
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ELIAS NEVER FORGAVE US ambassador Phillips Talbot for mishandling the 1967 coup but thought well of his decision to resign his post at the end of the Johnson Administration.38 The gap in official American representation and the selection of a successor were both opportunities. Working with friends in the Senate, Elias aimed to delay the new appointment as long as possible as a way of symbolizing American reservations about the dictatorship. He also wanted an ambassador strong enough to withhold gestures that could be construed as an embrace of Greek leadership. Many in the Greek-American community wanted Nixon to select one of their own, but there was no consensus choice. The State Department preferred a more traditional career diplomat, such as Henry Tasca, then ambassador to Morocco. Nixon had been acquainted with Tasca since 1947, and never forgot having been entertained royally by him while on a visit to North Africa during his post-1962 wilderness years. However, an impediment to Tasca’s nomination arose that would prove ironic: Tasca’s post-doctoral training at the London School of Economics and work as economics advisor to Democratic grandee W. Averill Harriman on NATO matters had branded him as a “liberal” and prompted many Republicans to question his candidacy.39
Demetracopoulos’s choice was retired Lieutenant General William W. “Buffalo Bill” Quinn, his buddy from early-1950s Greece and a leader in the transformation of the OSS into the CIA. At the time, Quinn was the vice president of the Aerospace Group of the Martin Marietta Corporation. Elias socialized frequently with Quinn and his wife in Washington. And Quinn’s daughter Sally, the future wife of Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, had asked Elias for help in finding her suitable employment. Early in the year, General Quinn gave Elias a package of materials and approval to test the waters.
Some of Elias’s liberal friends had an immediate negative reaction to Quinn and made their opposition public.40 They assumed that as a military man he would be biased toward the colonels. Elias’s attitude was: to hell with bad optics—Quinn was the best person for the job. For months, Elias met quietly with Barry Goldwater, using the Arizona senator as the point of his spear in a lobbying campaign. They avoided any discussion of Elias’s tendentious use of the 1963 interview with Goldwater or the senator’s long friendship with Tom Pappas. Both men jokingly agreed that Pappas, a runner-up in earlier diplomatic posting sweepstakes, had so much power with the new Greek government that an ambassadorship would have been a step backward. On March 5, Goldwater met privately with the President in the living room on the second floor of the White House to make the case for Quinn and followed up by asking Tom Pappas to support Quinn as well.41 Pappas immediately agreed, adding: “Any friend of yours is a friend of mine.” However, two months later, in an Oval Office exchange about the ambassadorship, Pappas offered no endorsement of General Quinn. While Elias strategized regularly with Quinn and Goldwater, reporting success in winning the backing of US senators across the spectrum, others in Nixon’s circle pushed their own choices. John Mitchell had promised the job to a scandal-embroiled Greek-American friend in Chicago, and Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen tried to secure the appointment for a suburban Virginia neighbor and banker. In mid-August, The Chicago Tribune said the choice of ambassador to Greece had become “an Achilles heel” for the Nixon Administration. According to unnamed administration officials, “whoever is chosen by the White House will have to be first cleared by Thomas Anthony Pappas.”42 Nixon told Goldwater that Quinn was out.43 The military regime in Athens made known its anger at the delay. Elias considered every day that passed without an ambassador being appointed a small victory.
Finally, in late August, Nixon nominated Henry Tasca. Although disappointed that Quinn had lost, Demetracopoulos was pleased that delays had kept the post empty for much of the year, during which time the Council of Europe had gathered mounting evidence of human rights violations by the Greek junta and was considering a vote to expel Greece. Fulbright did not schedule a hearing on Tasca with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee until November 4. When they finally convened, Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell led hours of tough questioning, greatly displeasing the nominee.44 Although the committee approved confirming Tasca, Senate opposition loomed.
Tasca asked to meet with Demetracopoulos, who invited him for what became a more-than-three-hour dinner at the Jockey Club on November 28. It was a cordial meeting during which each man took the measure of the other. Tasca drank. Elias didn’t. At evening’s end, Elias told the nominee that, while he wasn’t his first choice, it was time to have an ambassador in place. The next night, at another black-tie dinner party at the Clarks’s, this time honoring Secretary of State William Rogers and his wife, he told the secretary of state that if he were a senator, he would vote for Tasca.45
Nevertheless Demetracopoulos, while not saying it publicly, had requested that Fulbright delay the Senate confirmation vote until after the expulsion vote at the Council of Europe. On November 18, the European Commission on Human Rights presented a scathing 1,200-page report to the Council of Europe, detailing its findings that the regime allowed torture to be used against its political opponents “as an administrative practice.”46 Commission representatives had received 941 documents and taken oral testimony from fifty-eight witnesses, investigated torture chambers, and verified five executions. Doctors had examined 213 cases of torture.
Meanwhile, Elias had enlisted a group of senators, led by New York Republican Charles E. Goodell and including Democrats Frank Moss of Utah, Quentin Burdick of North Dakota, and George McGovern of South Dakota, to hold up the nomination.47 They feared that confirmation a few days before the Council’s expulsion or suspension of Greece would be misconstrued in Europe as a gesture of support for the junta.
On December 12, in Strasbourg, as members met to consider whether to expel or suspend Greece, Foreign Minister Panagiotis Pipinelis denounced the Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Before suffering the humiliation of being kicked out, Greece resigned from the body. No vote was taken.48 Elias was pleased with the news, although later that day the US Senate voted against a Foreign Relations Committee proposal to ban full military assistance to Greece until the regime had taken “meaningful steps” toward democratization.
Regime leader Colonel Pattakos dismissed the European Council confrontation as “a mosquito on the horns of a bull.”49 More ominously, Prime Minister Papadopoulos delivered an unyielding speech three days later to an audience of about 500, including Aristotle Onassis, in what had been the parliament chamber, announcing a further delay in the implementation of the still-suspended guarantees and principles of the 1968 constitution.50
On Friday, December 19, 1969, Goodell withdrew his hold, and the Senate confirmed Henry J. Tasca as Ambassador to Greece by a 79-to-4 roll-call vote—only after a harsh debate on American policy in Greece.51 Attacking American hypocrisy, George McGovern compared the situations in Vietnam and Greece, where applying military aid to right-wing governments was not an investment in freedom, but a setback for it.52
Ted Kennedy, in the wake of Chappaquiddick, had been absent from the debate and other recent congressional anti-junta activities, but returned to fault “America’s coddling of the junta,” and its “cold and calculated indifference…to the plight of the Greek people.”53
Unlike his troubled dealings with Jack and Bobby, Elias had developed a positive relationship with the senior senator from Massachusetts and sometimes referred to him as “the good Kennedy.” Appreciative of the strong help he’d received from him and his staff in support of human rights issues in Greece, Elias wanted to help Kennedy with his reentry to public activities. He arranged a December luncheon event in Boston with Fidelity Investments, one of Brimberg’s clients, which featured Kennedy as speaker. Kennedy was gracious in his thanks. Never could Elias have imagined that a year later Kennedy would play a part in saving his life.
20.“Senator, are you telling me it’s a trap?”
US AMBASSADOR HENRY TASCA ARRIVED in Athens in early January 1970. Keeping with assurances he’d given during his confirmation, Tasca initially objected to a scheduled visit by US Apollo 12 astronauts, the second crew to land on the moon, arguing that such an appearance would undercut US efforts to encourage a return to constitutional government. Kissinger promptly overrode Tasca’s objection.1 Nixon’s final instructions to his new ambassador to Greece were to tell Papadopoulos that the US was ready to resume all normal military-aid shipments but would like some atmospheric gestures—“insofar as possible”—“toward a constitutional situation” that “would ease our problems in speeding the release of the suspended equipment.”2
At the end of March, Tasca sent Washington a whitewashing “Report on Greece.” Providing the on-the-ground justification for the administration’s already-made decision to restore full military aid, the ambassador made clear that the dictatorship was “here to stay.”3 Not only had the American arms embargo failed to positively influence the colonels’ behavior, he reported; now they were preparing to turn instead to France for weapons.
To give cover against congressional criticism, Papadopoulos had offered Nixon an unspecific promise for “normalization.” Tasca told Washington that he was “satisfied that the Greek government does indeed intend to move forward, albeit at its own often reluctant pace…to implement the constitution [of 1968].”4 Meanwhile, Papadopoulos made clear to the ambassador that there would be no linkage between Greece’s NATO role and its internal affairs. The colonels would determine if, when, and at what speed any move was taken toward constitutional change.5
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THE DIFFERENT STRANDS of Elias Demetracopoulos’s life converged in his mailbox at the Fairfax: dozens of invitations to Georgetown parties, private dinners, charity galas, and diplomatic receptions; international and federal agency reports and copies of draft documents from Senate staffs; warm acknowledgments from Republican and Democratic legislators for his year-end political contributions; letters and smuggled tape recordings from families seeking help for relatives imprisoned or missing or victims of torture; thank-you notes from Perle Mesta and Anna Chennault for his floral gifts. Also included: clippings from the Hellenic Chronicle (Boston’s Greek newspaper) from Ted Kennedy’s confidential secretary Angelique Voutselas, who was “shocked” to see what they were saying about “the Senator” and wondering if the paper is “run by the Colonels.”6
In her letters, Persa Metaxas provided affectionate concern and a steady stream of news from home. Executives from insurance companies, banks, and brokerage houses sent investment prospectuses and business information. Friends worried about his health, safety, and the situation in Greece. Female admirers, from California to Zurich, sent billets-doux, eager to have him come visit or to meet somewhere. Opposition groups and individuals sent him proposed manifestos and letters, asking for his review.
