At 41, he had slowed down little. He subscribed to the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, news magazines, and business publications, and read them. He ordered European and American anti-junta journals and newsletters and, from Athens, censored newspapers. To make sure he hadn’t missed anything, he’d hired Press Intelligence, Inc. to mail him thick packages of national news clippings related to Greece and anything mentioning him. These were all scattered and stacked high on the floor or on his couch, table, and chairs, organized according to a system only he could decipher. To would-be burglars and spies, it appeared that someone had already ransacked the place. He would live like that for decades.
The Greek exile continued assiduously to keep the different parts of his life separate. To meet all his various responsibilities, self-defined and imposed by others, Elias projected a public persona of passionate advocacy, business efficiency, charming sociability, and fearlessness. He slept little, but in the predawn quiet of his bedroom, he stewed over upsetting family issues in Athens and uncertainty about his father’s welfare. He had not communicated with his cousin Spyros Handrinos since just after the coup, when Spyros’s fearful wife kicked Elias out of the house. In the years since Elias’s escape, his cousin, like many other small-property owners, angled to cash in on the building boom by tearing down small ancestral homes and putting up concrete multi-family residences.
Handrinos owned his parents’ place on Dafnomili Street, which was next door to that of Panagiotis Demetracopoulos. He wanted to package the two parcels together and make a real-estate killing, removing Elias’s aging, infirm, and legally blind father from his home of nearly fifty years. He also tried, apparently in collusion with local officials, to deceive Elias over the size and value of the Demetracopoulos parcel. Handrinos never contacted Elias directly, but for a year he used Elias’s business representative and Persa as middlemen, sending architectural plans and real-estate contracts.7
Further punishing the father for the political sins of the son, the government increased already unfair taxes on the Demetracopoulos property. Mysteriously, Elias’s father also received a dramatically enlarged insurance bill. Attorneys were reluctant to file for abatements, fearing they too would be targeted. Elias responded by ignoring Handrinos’s requests, objecting to proposals, and telling his father to refuse any negotiation. This tumult upset the old man. He started to close himself off from others, refusing even the visits of friends. The oppression of the dictatorship had become personal.
Then, in early 1970, Elias heard that Spyros Handrinos had been arrested for embezzlement and would be going to jail. His wife turned to relatives to shamelessly pressure Elias, telling him that he needed to help pay back the embezzled money in order to preserve the family’s honor. Reflecting on this period years later, Persa said that Elias’s family treated him outrageously and selfishly, totally unsympathetic to the pressures he was under. At one time, Elias had risked his life to save his cousin and uncle. This time, inaction seemed a just response. But Elias continued to worry about his father.
None of his Washington world knew anything of this.
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THE INTERNATIONAL OPPOSITION was in disarray. Karamanlis was smarting because his public statement the year before had been ignored or dismissed as premature. The King was still licking his wounds from his treatment at Eisenhower’s funeral at the end of March 1969, when Nixon had warmly received Colonel Stylianos Pattakos, but fobbed Constantine off to others.8 Andreas Papandreou was operating in his own orbit as he moved from ADA progressive to champion of Third World liberation.9
Elias had mixed feelings about the involvement of celebrities in anti-junta activities. Some, like composer Mikis Theodorakis, he regarded as illiberal Communists with an ulterior political agenda. Others, like Melina Mercouri, he thought well-meaning, but politically unsophisticated and potentially risky if let loose in unscripted interviews. Still, their star quality attracted publicity that could never have been achieved by ordinary activists. Melina Mercouri: I Was Born Greek, a television documentary blending Melina’s vivacious “Zorba-like dancing” and melodramatic acting with her international crusade to rally support for her beleaguered homeland, was a huge success.10 In a simulated interrogation, she admitted her sense of shame at having failed to resist the German occupation, and now urged others to avoid such feelings by joining the resistance. After the broadcast, Corporation for Public Broadcasting president Bill Duke wrote: “Elias, if only you looked like Melina—see what could be done!”11
Meanwhile in Athens, Democratic Defense had plateaued. Comprised mostly of Greek academics and Center Union intellectuals who’d studied abroad, it began by producing anti-junta propaganda and “talking” refrigerators—exploding devices designed to blast leaflets out and not hurt anyone—then turned to planting real bombs targeting major businesses supportive of the junta.12 After some DD members were caught and put on trial in March, their protests petered out at home, although as exiles scattered abroad they continued to be resources for sympathetic European publications.
It was a bleak time. Oral histories later revealed some dissenting voices at both the American Embassy and the State Department, but they had little effect.13 In mid-January, Elias had been invited to give a talk after a screening of the movie Z, a fictionalized version of the 1963 assassination of activist Grigoris Lamprakis and the contorted investigation that followed. The movie’s epilogue portrayed an ascendant dictatorship under which all hopes of eventual justice were dashed. Whereas American audiences had been applying the movie’s universal message of not trusting the official version of events to such US experiences as My Lai, the Bay of Pigs, and the Kennedy assassinations, Elias kept his spotlight on Greece, telling the largely student crowd to transform their feelings into action, learn the facts about Greece today, then contact congressmen, especially those who still vocally supported the junta.14
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ON THE THIRD anniversary of the dictatorship, Athenian streets and highways were lined with signs proclaiming: “Long Live the 21 of April,” “Long Live the Army,” and “Long Live the National Government.”15 Some oblivious visitors had difficulty distinguishing life there from that in the country’s democratic neighbors. An amended press code lifted strict “preventive” press censorship, substituting instead an insidious form of self-censorship. Papers were free to publish factual accounts so long as neither the subject matter nor related commentary were deemed derogatory. The junta also used its power to inflict economic punishment on publications that strayed, selectively applying newsprint taxes, restricting provincial circulation, withholding government advertising, and conducting random inspections for alleged irregularities. The regime had forced Ethnos to take a multi-million-drachma loan from the National Bank and install a government nominee to oversee operations. When the historically liberal paper decided to test the limits of censorship, the government called in its loan, forcing Ethnos into bankruptcy.16
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IN THE UNITED States, center-right opponents of the junta bemoaned how “counterproductive” decentralized efforts had been and tried to assemble a new group of “prominent citizens and middle of the road personalities.” Led by exiled General Orestis Vidalis, close to the King, and including at one point the brother of Nixon aide Daniel Patrick Moynihan, it met with US officials and struggled to create a magazine, Common Heritage, and a radio program in Greek and English.17
On the left, the principal organization was the US Committee for Democracy in Greece (USCDG). It was largely driven by House staffers Jim Pyrros and LaVerne Conway and given credibility by the sustained commitment of Congressmen Edwards and Fraser. The group’s principal anti-junta work was House-centered, whereas Demetracopoulos took the lead in educating and pressuring the Senate. During the junta years, USCDG members were often encouraged by outsiders to become better organized, but that “suggestion got nowhere, and properly so,” concluded Pyrros. “It was not practical, not wise, and probably not possible to form one group, headed by one person…Better to have…the junta…receiving incoming fire from all sides than to waste time in a futile effort to speak with one voice.”18
Elias was his own boss. He was indefatigable and omnivorous in his relations. He was in regular contact with Pyrros, Vidalis, exiles in Europe, and opposition leaders at home. He stayed in touch with former Greek government decision-makers and “all anti-Communist elements” concerned with the Greek problem.19 “It can be fairly said that nobody worked harder in the anti-junta cause,” wrote Pyrros in his memoir. “Demetracopoulos was committed, tireless and knowledgeable, which attributes outbalanced a seemingly chronic need to see his name in the newspapers.”20
Reporters who used Elias’s information knew he was a one-sided advocate, with a “single purpose…[to bring] down the dictatorship.” “He’s not objective,” said Bob Novak, “but his data is meticulously accurate. I find him a triple-A source.”21 Les Whitten echoed the praise, noting that many of Jack Anderson’s columns “have been jewels because of Elias’ industry.”22 And Sy Hersh, who found he could “take to the bank” the “pure gold” Elias gave him, criticized his colleagues, including at the New York Times, for making “a big mistake not listening to him more carefully.”23
It was clear by early 1970 that the Nixon Administration would remove limits on military equipment deliveries to the colonels. Prior to preparing a Senate briefing, Elias met with his sometime adversaries at State, Joseph Sisco and Alfred Vigderman. Instead of asking questions, he sternly lectured them. After enumerating the many ways the Pentagon had eluded the embargo by listing “new” military equipment as “old,” undervaluing it, and shipping it to the colonels as “surplus,” he faulted American military officers for “providing fulsome praise” that was “then published as evidence of American love and support.”24
Shortly after third anniversary celebrations had concluded in Athens, the US arms-ban deception became clear. Using information Elias had assembled with the help of congressional staffers, he told the Christian Science Monitor that the value of current military aid was nearly double what Congress had approved.25
Senator Fulbright used the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Security Arrangements to excoriate the surplus heavy arms ploy and other misbehavior.26 The subcommittee approved an amendment to the 1971 Military Sales Act to prevent all future US military aid to Greece unless later authorized. Elias worked intensively on this issue, providing background materials, lobbying reluctant and opposed senators, and writing talking points and floor speeches for supporters.27 He called on friends to assist, getting the out-of-state family of his then–principal girlfriend to lobby their senators in Missouri and Kansas and asking Celia to write to her Connecticut senators.28 Even if they lost on the vote, he reckoned, news coverage of the debate could be helpful.
The amendment provided a momentary diversion from major public attention on the war in Southeast Asia. When it came up for a Senate vote, there was an hour’s debate, but it was overshadowed by the Cooper-Church Amendment fight to cut off support for US activities in Cambodia. Elias listened in the Senate press gallery, with two press releases ready, one for either outcome. The Administration had lobbied hard, threatening both Democrats and Republicans with fierce negative campaigns against them in the November elections if they failed to vote against the amendment. The final vote on June 29 was relatively close. Fifty senators rejected the amendment. Forty-two supported it. The New York Times editorialized that Nixon would be making a serious mistake to interpret the “narrow rejection” of the arms ban as a green light for unchecked restoration of military aid, and Elias’s press statement tried to put the best face on the defeat.29
News from Greece was confusing. The junta had failed to make the substantive reform changes promised, was unpopular both at home and abroad, and was said to be in “disarray,” “divided,” and suffering from “stagnation and inertia.”30 Nevertheless, its leaders appeared firmly in control. To those who hoped the colonels would cede their powers voluntarily, Demetracopoulos could be scathing. People might laugh at the colonels for their unsophisticated behavior and small village origins, he observed, but they displayed the cunning savvy of peasants skilled at taking advantage of city-slickers.31 He suspected that, after the embargo was lifted and American attention turned to basing its fleet in Greece, the junta would again try to drive a hard bargain to sustain its power.
After the death of Foreign Minister Pipinelis in July 1970, Papadopoulos added that role to his portfolio that already included prime minister and defense minister. The power grab animated long-simmering junta rivalries and jealousies that spilled into public view. Whenever Papadopoulos’s statements hinted at liberalization, the hard-liners, who were the majority, became upset, but their criticism was contradictory, blaming him simultaneously for weakening the dictatorship and seeking to maintain it forever. When Papadopoulos surprised his colleagues by threatening to resign, the internal crisis was settled relatively quickly in his favor. Papadopoulos knew he needed to court international public opinion, especially from the Americans, but without alienating other junta leaders. So, when he talked about reforming the government, he allayed his confederates’ concerns by indicating that his words to the world were merely “cosmetic.” Revising his earlier pledge to hold elections, he cryptically said: “Elections are not a theme of the present moment but of the immediate future.” Junta supporters may have twisted logic explaining what this meant, but Greek exiles were not distracted by talk. Watching Papadopoulos feint left and right, making gestures toward both Washington and even the Soviet bloc, Elias concluded that for now the prime minister only wanted to stay in power.32
Luckily for the Greek leader, statements from Ambassador Tasca, Secretary of State Rogers, and businessmen from NATO countries lusting after big contracts made clear that “allied officials” were “easily satisfied.”33 On June 3, 1970, Tom Pappas hosted a widely publicized Athens dinner for Nixon’s younger brother Donald in celebration of an in-flight-catering deal for his employer Marriott Corporation with Onassis’s Olympic Airways. Donald sat next to Interior Minister Pattakos, with Onassis and Tasca seated nearby.34
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SEVERAL HOURS AFTER midnight on September 19, 1970, in Genoa’s Matteotti Square, a twenty-two-year old Greek student named Kostas Georgakis committed suicide by self-immolation.35 His motive: to protest against the dictatorship in his homeland. Two months earlier, Georgakis had given an anonymous interview to a local magazine, disclosing that the regime had infiltrated the Greek student movement in Italy and had discovered his identity and his association with Andreas Papandreou’s PAK. The junta had then cancelled his military exemption, harshly pressured his parents in Corfu, and blocked his family’s financial stipend.
Georgakis hoped that by dousing himself with gasoline and setting himself ablaze he could shock the West into action against the Greek regime. But, unlike the monks in Vietnam, or Czech self-immolators who sought to protest the demoralization of their country the year before, Georgakis took his stand alone, in the middle of the night, with no organization behind him, and virtually no one to witness or photograph the event. Street cleaners at a nearby palazzo, attracted by the flash of light and the smell of burning flesh, tried to save him. He ran away shouting: “Down with tyrants,” and “Long live Greece.”
Melina Mercouri led a banner-waving, anti-junta funeral procession in Italy. Andreas sent PAK representatives to speak at a press conference. The colonels, who directed their secret police to monitor activities, made sure that Georgakis’s remains were not returned home until January, well after the tourist season.
In a letter to his father, Georgakis asked for forgiveness. “Kiss our land for me,” he wrote. “After three years of violence I cannot suffer any longer…I write to you in Italian so that I can raise the interest of everyone for our problem. Long Live Democracy…Our land which gave birth to Freedom will annihilate tyranny…”36 Elias viewed Georgakis’s death as a tragic example of the profound pain inflicted by the dictatorship, though he thought it unlikely to awaken those not already sympathetic.37
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DEMETRACOPOULOS WAS PUSHING for a House investigation of the Pentagon’s providing Greece with twice as much weaponry as approved by Congress when the junta announced on September 13, 1970, that the issue of full restoration of all US military aid was “considered settled.”38 Nine days later, Washington made it official: $56 million in tanks, planes, artillery, and military services would go to Greece over two years. Nixon liked the strategy of hiding controversial decisions “under the mantle of the Middle Eastern crisis.”39 A failed assassination attempt on Jordanian King Hussein and several Palestinian hijackings, which prompted the US to move its Sixth Fleet into the region to protect American interests, provided a convenient cover. The State Department proclaimed Greece’s importance to NATO’s eastern Mediterranean flank. In response to critics of the resumption of aid, State Department officials wrapped themselves around junta statements that conditions were being established to “restore normal democratic life” and that they had “taken steps to resume constitutional government by the end of this year.”40
Demetracopoulos was at once cynical and optimistic. He had predicted the return to full arms shipments since the plebiscite in 1968. It’s not the end, he told friends, but time to redouble our efforts. Besides lobbying Congress, he pressed new lines of attack by publicizing Greece’s economic woes. Learning from sources at the International Monetary Fund of confidential reports about Greece’s heavy short-term borrowing, he tipped off fellow journalists about the junta’s efforts to stave off a balance-of-payments crisis. And when the Greek consulate in New York tried to use a World Bank loan for propaganda purposes, Elias turned a routine transaction into an international embarrassment by pressuring the bank to criticize the regime for playing politics with the payment.41
But his most ingenious move was to use the alleged importance of Greece to NATO security against itself by questioning the safety of its management of nuclear weapons.42 The US had never publicly acknowledged that it had placed nuclear missiles on Greek soil. Elias had known about the weapons decisions since the 1950s, though he had never published his January 12, 1961 interview with Army Secretary General Wilbur Brucker confirming the fact. In one of his private conversations with Senator Fulbright in his hideaway Senate office, Elias shared a story heard from reliable sources that at the time of the 1967 coup, the junta had ordered Greek troops with a personal allegiance only to the colonels to surround two US nuclear missile sites. They had portrayed the move as part of “Operation Prometheus,” a NATO contingency plan designed to protect the arms from possible Communist treachery. The real reason, Elias maintained, was not to safeguard the weapons from Communists, but to pressure the US not to interfere with the takeover. When the Americans stood by silently without objection, the troops withdrew.
Fulbright wanted to consider publicly the risks of US-supplied weapons falling into the wrong hands as part of his Foreign Relations hearings on US security commitments, but he was frustrated by State and Pentagon redactions of testimony transcripts and an order to witnesses not to discuss the nuclear weapons issue even in executive session. Fulbright complained to reporters that he did not know why they were still trying to keep it secret, since he was “sure the other side knows.”43
Demetracopoulos made his move, sharing with a wire-service reporter the transcript of his 1961 interview confirming the presence of nuclear warheads in Greece and other European locations.44 He issued a press statement quoting Senator Stuart Symington, the subcommittee chairman, as expressing “deep concern…over the security of…warheads stationed in Greece.” Then he followed up by disclosing publicly “reliable reports” that in 1967 officials at the US Embassy were fearful that “the relatively few American military men stationed at the sites of nuclear warheads could probably be overwhelmed by Greek troops without firing a shot if they moved swiftly enough.” Reporters jumped on the story and confirmed it. UPI sent an article worldwide describing “H-Bomb Blackmail in the Greek Coup.”45
The reports provided anti-junta senators with a new angle. On the eve of the NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels, Senator Vance Hartke of Indiana declared that the “disclosures…reveal a direct threat to all members of the Atlantic Alliance and justifies” efforts to halt all US military aid to Greece.46 It had already been expected that northern European members would try to inject political repression in Greece onto the NATO agenda. This enlarged the debate, though it did not immediately affect NATO policy or result in any official chastisement of Greece.
Elias’s behavior continued to outrage officials, still trying to nail him on something from the CIA’s growing dossier.47 The Greek Desk at State served as a clipping service for the Athens embassy, documenting the exploits of the peripatetic exile, while American embassies elsewhere in Europe shared rumors of Elias’s alleged anti-American activities, including a journalistic career that they characterized as hostile to NATO since 1947—two years before NATO was created, and while Elias was a teenager in a TB sanitarium.
Meanwhile, from Athens Elias heard uncorroborated reports that the minister of the interior had recently stripped him of his Greek citizenship because of his “anti-national activity.” He’d been expecting this news for some time and planning to treat it as a badge of honor if it happened.48 Still, it gave him a strange and hollow feeling.
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