In fact, Markezinis’s days were numbered. His fate had been sealed in August 1973 when Ioannidis and senior generals in the army reacted negatively, not to the abolition of the monarchy, but to the move by Papadopoulos to assume supreme power. Dismissing from office all members of the original junta, save for Ioannidis, and creating a civilian government with merely a vague promise of free elections was too much for the regime hardliners. Starting in August, Ioannidis began plotting a coup against the recently declared “president” of Greece.11
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ONCE THE JULY 1973 Watergate investigation uncovered the White House secret taping system, demands to release the tapes escalated. Talk of impeachment became louder. Nixon demonstrated a facile willingness to abandon loyalists to try to save his presidency, but seemed remarkably protective toward Tom Pappas, no longer treating the tycoon merely as his political piggy-bank. Worried about the potential criminal liability of his benefactor, Nixon asked Buzhardt to “tell me about Pappas. I don’t want him to get hurt…[T]hat loveable guy, Tom Pappas…it’s clear…that Pappas was raising money for Mitchell. Now that wouldn’t make him guilty, would it?”12
In a March conversation, Nixon and Dean had discussed elements of the cover-up, ascertaining who’d talked to Pappas about what and when. Looking for a million dollars in cash as hush money for the burglars was proving to be “a very difficult problem.” After Mitchell had talked to Pappas, Dean called him and asked: “Did you talk to the Greek?” And he said, “Uh. Yes, I have.” Dean asked: “Is the Greek bearing gifts?” Mitchell, with his wife Martha sitting nearby, replied: “Well, I want to call you tomorrow on that.”13
Nixon’s interest in Pappas telling the right story if questioned by investigators is shown clearly in the May 23 and June 6 recordings of the President’s conversations with his secretary Rose Mary Woods:
PRESIDENT NIXON: Good old Tom Pappas,…He came up to see me on March 7,…about the ambassador to Greece, that…he wanted to keep [Henry] Tasca there. We did not discuss Watergate at that point. It’s very important that he remembers that…
PRESIDENT NIXON: I’m not asking him to lie…but…I thanked him for all his fundraising activities, you know.
ROSE MARY WOODS: Well, he worked over there almost alone…
NIXON: Things are very much in his interests, and it’s very much in ours…I’m piecing this together now14…Mitchell got Pappas into the act, you know, to help them raise money. Mitchell needed Pappas.15
IT’S NOT CLEAR to what extent Nixon was thinking only of 1972, or also remembering the 1968 Mitchell-Pappas fundraising relationship. When a Pappas friend, visiting him in his CREEP office in Washington in 1972, asked what he was doing in the campaign, the tycoon moved his right index finger to his lips, then mimed stuffing money into his vest pockets. Pappas also privately boasted of playing a similar role in 1968.
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SCATTERED GREEK STUDENT protests that started in February 1973 re-emerged at different times during that year but were promptly suppressed. Tasca dismissed the student actions as a seasonal “dissidence sparked by academic and intra-professional woes.”16 Not so easy to dismiss was the follow-up to violent clashes with police at a large demonstration on November 4 commemorating the fifth anniversary of George Papandreou’s funeral. On November 14, the day after the trial of arrestees, Polytechnic Institute students went on strike, staged a sit-in, and created a makeshift radio station to broadcast their messages. Increasingly large crowds, running into the thousands, gathered in and around the Polytechnic courtyard, stretching for blocks. As a three-day siege began, the regime at first held back.17
What began as a focused criticism of education restrictions soon morphed into a generalized protest against the dictatorship and for the restoration of democracy. Hand-painted banners and signs demanded “Bread, Education, Freedom,” “Today Fascism dies,” and “1-1-4,” a reference to the last article of the 1952 Constitution, abrogated by the Colonels. Article 114 said the “safeguarding of the Constitution is entrusted to the patriotism of the Hellenes”—that the ultimate source of power and authority lay in the hands of the people. This had been the cry in 1965 after the King forced out George Papandreou.
During the day, sympathizers came with bread and other provisions. Curiosity-seekers came too. By nightfall the Polytechnic was packed. The surrounding crowds shouted anti-junta and anti-American slogans. Parodying the junta’s ubiquitous motto: “Greece for Christian Greeks,” demonstrators chanted: “Greece for tortured Greeks” and “Greece for Imprisoned Greeks.”
A great majority of the demonstrators were idealistic students buoyed by spontaneous camaraderie and hopes for revolutionary change in their lives, but they were not the only ones inside the buildings and on the streets. Anarchists and left-wing extremists eagerly inflamed the situation. Even more pernicious were agents of the junta, embedded to monitor activities and, as false flags, create conditions to justify a violent military intervention. They reportedly were behind some of the most incendiary chants and posted signs. Student broadcasters announced: “We totally reject these slogans as having no connection with the student movement.”18
On November 16, street barricades went up, and mass protests spread. Construction workers, entertainers, a farmers’ committee from Megara protesting land expropriation, and thousands of other workers, some carrying aloft the banners of their professional groups, joined the demonstrations. Students from universities in Salonica and Patras demonstrated their support. Euphoric protestors sang the Greek national anthem. Others sang the Cretan revolutionary song “Pote Tha Kanei Xasteria” (When will the sky be clear). The pirate radio station of the “free fighting students” proclaimed, “Down with the junta, down with Papadopoulos, Americans out, down with fascism, the junta will fall to the people.”
Street traffic had stopped. The military police, wearing ESA bands on their left arms, were remarkably quiet. One confessed to onlookers “It isn’t my fault; they put me in this job; I’m just doing my military service.” People nearby cheered him, opening a clear path. One demonstrator observed that “with just a little kindness Greeks can be won over to do almost anything.” Participants remarked how un-Greek the demonstrators were in their extraordinary politeness, saying “excuse me” as they jostled their way around. But there was a wariness as well as they looked out for “police stooges” in plainclothes. Some students stood atop the stone pillars of the Polytechnic gates twisting large sheets of shiny metal to produce blinding flashes to prevent cameras visible in upper balconies across the street from recording the identities of their compatriots.
That evening, armored cars arrived and police clashed with demonstrators. Shots were fired in street battles. Rounds of tear-gas canisters exploded, enveloping the area in a choking fog. Shooters fired from fourth-story windows in the once genteel Acropole Palace Hotel and other buildings, hitting people in the eyes, throat, legs, and stomach. One helper remembers: “The sidewalk was thick and oily with blood.” Tear gas was thrown at real ambulances carting away the wounded. Other fake “ambulances” were driven by male “nurses” wearing white smocks over their uniforms who took the wounded not to first-aid stations but to the interrogation chambers of the military police. Dead and wounded were taken to an improvised hospital/morgue at the Polytechnic and nearby apartments. A curfew was imposed. The city went black.
Between midnight and 1 a.m. on Saturday, November 17, fear-inspiring American M40 tanks rolled in, with enormous floodlights “turning the darkness into an aurora borealis,” sweeping slowly up and down, back and forth. They easily tossed aside a bus used as a barricade. Helmeted and club-wielding special forces followed on foot, bruising bodies and cracking bones on outside streets.
Efforts to negotiate a safe exit for the students inside the Polytechnic failed. Before a ten-minute grace period expired, an AMX 30 tank smashed through the main gate to which students had been clinging and didn’t stop until it reached the steps of the university’s Averof Building. Amid gunfire, some soldiers tried to help students escape, but policemen, cadets, and other troops were waiting at the exits with truncheons and idling vehicles. By 3:20 a.m. everyone was gone. A second pirate station, elsewhere in Athens, played melancholy songs of Theodorakis followed by an “utterly drained and broken” young voice announcing: “we say good-bye to you for the last time.”
Some survivors ignored the risks of tapped phones and tried to call foreign correspondents from kiosks, restaurants, and strangers’ apartments to share their eyewitness accounts. The message board at the Fairfax was filled with messages for Elias. In the following days he received mailed packages of live tape recordings from inside the Polytechnic, contemporaneous interviews, emotional handwritten letters, and a thirty-three-page personal account typed on onionskin paper. He shared their contents with friends, opposition allies, members of Congress, and trusted reporters.
Papadopoulos blamed old-guard politicians and put some under house arrest. At noon on November 17, Chief of the Armed Forces General Dimitrios Zagorianakos announced a state of siege, the re-imposition of censorship, martial law throughout the land, and a curfew from 4 p.m. until 5 a.m. the next day. Nonetheless, smaller demonstrations, hit-and-run encounters, shootings, and killings continued for several days. Student organizations nationwide were shut down and their bank accounts confiscated.
Accurate totals of those killed and wounded were never compiled. At the time, the regime said that fourteen died, the American Embassy “unofficially” counted twenty-three, To Vima wrote forty-three, a team of doctors estimated 204, and demonstrators claimed it was more than 400. Estimates of the injured ranged from fewer than 200 to about 3,000. Many victims were afraid to get professional medical assistance, and some families of the dead were said to have buried their loved ones in ways that avoided attention. The count of arrests ranged from 2,473 to 9,000. Police injuries, none due to firearms, were fewer than twelve.19
The American Embassy’s Elizabeth Brown, political counselor and persistent Demetracopoulos critic, tried to mislead a small congressional delegation coincidentally visiting Athens, assuring them that the gunshots they were hearing were only “a small disturbance…taking place over curriculum issues.”20 In a secret telegram, Greek Foreign Minister Christos Xanthopoulos-Palamas sought to dissociate himself from another Greek diplomat who had framed the essential American “choice as between Greece and Demetracopoulos.”21 Sensitive to the opinions of their Washington benefactors, the Greek government singled out anti-American anarchists and Communists as the primary evildoers in the Polytechnic troubles. These extremists, it said, were against NATO and American involvement in Greece, including homeporting. Papadopoulos explained that martial law had been re-imposed because a “subversive plot had developed.” Tasca similarly blamed “subversive elements” for undermining the Papadopoulos reform efforts. He wrote to Kissinger that “available intelligence just prior to demonstrations” indicated strong support for the Markezinis government from the “old political world…a fact which could not fail to disturb Andreas Papandreou (and his stooge in Washington Demetracopoulos), as well as other extremist elements.” At the same time, Tasca expressed concern about widespread anti-American sentiments.22
Early in the morning of November 25, eight days after the student uprising, tanks rolled again into central Athens. Brigadier Ioannidis and coup leaders of “The Revolutionary Committee” took over the police station, closed the international airport, and cut telecommunications, A separate armored army convoy travelled to Papadopoulos’s Onassis-provided residence in Lagonisi. There, an army officer handed the Greek president a message:
At the request of the armed forces, you have submitted your resignation; so have the Vice President and the Markezinis government. You will follow further developments on television. Your credit and that of your family will be respected.23
A STUNNED PAPADOPOULOS meekly accepted the bloodless coup.
At first, there was an air of public optimism; the uprising at the Polytechnic seemed to have yielded positive results. Politicians under house arrest and those arrested around the November 17 attacks were released. Censorship was abolished. Criminal actions were commenced against some corrupt junta officials. Other popular-sounding reforms were announced. A short time later, however, it became apparent that reality was quite the opposite. The newspaper Vradyni was shut down without explanation. The weekly magazine Political Subjects was ordered closed because it had praised the students’ demands. A German television cameraman disappeared while filming the Army assault at the Polytechnic, and other journalists were harassed or arrested. Martial law was extended indefinitely; an island concentration camp was reopened. The court that was to oversee political parties and promised elections was abolished before it began work.
Those selected to lead the civilian government were essentially puppets. Behind the scenes, Brigadier Dimitrios Ioannidis, the head of the feared military police, was pulling all the strings. A military communiqué proclaimed the coup necessary to continue the revolution of 1967. Papadopoulos was accused of “straying” from the founding ideals and “pushing the country too quickly” toward parliamentary rule. Far from being on its last legs, the dictatorship in Greece had been revitalized.
The decision to overthrow Papadopoulos had been made in August; the November 25 coup date had been selected in October. The Polytechnic events were a distraction but had not upset the plotters’ timetable.24 The idealistic students and their supporters, the wounded and those who lost their lives, who had thought their actions would be a catalyst for positive change, had been collateral damage in a battle waged by forces beyond their reach.
News stories describing post-coup Greece painted a depressing picture. Editorials were overwhelmingly critical of the new leadership and political cartoons unsparingly sardonic. American students protested developments, waving signs reading: “US tanks kill Greek students” and “US out of Greece.”25 Congressman Don Edwards wrote to Kissinger urging the US to speak out for a return to representative government. Silence, he said, was viewed by the Greek people as a sign of approval, and the country’s vulnerability provided a “moment of opportunity” for a new US policy that might “prove decisive…and be morally and politically right.”26 Nixon Administration policymakers debated how to respond to the events. Some urged distancing the US or pressing the government to restore democracy. Kissinger, effectively America’s chief foreign-policy executive, overruled them.27
As he had in earlier crises, Demetracopoulos responded to the events of November by gathering intelligence, discussing strategy with opposition leaders, giving interviews and speeches, hosting lunches, and working with members of Congress to change American policy. Well before the Polytechnic confrontation and the coup, he had concluded that Karamanlis was the only person who could lead the country back to parliamentary government, though he believed that even this would require a lot of painstaking advance work. In a November 2 meeting with a State Department official, he warned that anti-American sentiments in Greece had replaced earlier anti-Communist paranoia, that the US was losing many of its longtime friends, particularly on the right, and that “someday the US will find it cannot protect its interests there.” John Day, the country officer for Greece, scoffed that Demetracopoulos “has probably been repeating this line so long that he actually believes it.”28
In and outside Greece, anti-American paranoia was growing. Many Greeks suspected that the unexpected downfall of Markezinis and Papadopoulos had been precipitated by the US. Andreas Papandreou, then in Stockholm, insisted it was “entirely a work of the United States,” and charged that Chicago-trained Adamantios Androutsopoulos, the new prime minister and former interior minister, was on the CIA’s payroll.29 Other Greeks believed that the US had turned on their previous leaders because of Greece’s neutrality during the October 1973 Yom Kippur War between Egypt and Israel.
Elias told the press that the United States had not engineered the latest coup, but “did not lift a finger” to save the ousted Papadopoulos. Publicly, he deflected Andreas’s charges, saying that whether Androutsopoulos was on the CIA’s payroll was “immaterial,” adding: “It is no secret that the new premier had a close relationship with the CIA in recent years.”30 Privately he told Andreas that whatever the truth to the Androutsopoulos connection, Papandreou’s overall analysis was simplistic and counterproductive.
Demetracopoulos claimed that the US gave up on Papadopoulos because he would not permit the use of Greek airspace by US planes for delivery of weapons to Israel, while at the same time he allowed Soviet planes to fly war material over Greece to the Arab countries.31
Elias acknowledged that the recent coup was engineered by right-wing extremists opposed to pledges of democratic reform but added that it was not a coincidence that Ioannidis first met with his co-conspirators in August, when news from Washington about Nixon and Watergate was compounded by news disclosing the Agnew criminal investigation. Agnew’s resignation in October had “kicked [another] crutch out from under Papadopoulos.”32
25.Crisis on Cyprus
DEMETRACOPOULOS HEARD THAT AT THE Athens embassy and the Greek Desk in Washington there was more dissension regarding the proper approach to take toward the new leaders. Some worried that the Ioannidis government was so weak it would soon implode. Even Tom Pappas and the shipping magnates wavered in their support for the regime. Yet, after an internal discussion about formal recognition, the US accepted the leadership change without fanfare.
Elias’s take on Ioannidis was that he was “a brutal man” and a “fanatic nationalist,” but the only incorruptible member of the original junta. However, he was surrounded by largely incompetent ministers. Despite Ioannidis’s proclaimed anti-Communism, his extreme nationalism, including designs on Cyprus, would, Elias believed, eventually place US security interests in jeopardy. He reckoned that even if Ioannidis tried to establish a government of national unity by calling for the return of Karamanlis, no such collaboration was possible. And if Ioannidis tried to hold on to power indefinitely, it might lead to yet another coup by even more ultra-nationalistic officers. In November 1973, Elias lectured John Day, the Greek Desk officer at the State Department, that the US needed to try to influence events before Ioannidis had fully consolidated his power.
After six years of battling, Elias was still cautiously optimistic that his strategy of blending realpolitik arguments with softer appeals to values, sweating organizational details, and assiduously courting international public opinion could pay off.
