IT EXPLAINED THAT the dispute arose after the Times published an article using statements attributed to CIA officials. It then proceeded to repeat all the original smears, followed by the recent CIA statement that there were “no hard facts in the record” to support them.41
It was better than nothing, and the Times even spelled his name correctly, but it was still a backhanded retraction and a great disappointment.42 Remaining unapologetic, Times assistant managing editor Craig Whitney said: “The source of the retraction is the CIA, not the New York Times…[The September 1983 story] is a routine article of little significance except to the man who claims his reputation has been harmed.”43 Others, however, celebrated Elias’s vindication, including a major profile in the Washington Post that noted how for Demetracopoulos “there are no tasks. Only missions,” and that it was “characteristic of Demetracopoulos to wage a battle to clear his name long after most people have forgotten the incident.”44
The following spring, Jack Anderson claimed to have assembled the missing pieces of the “jigsaw puzzle” explaining the motive behind the CIA’s use of Binder to smear Elias. From sources other than Elias, Anderson said he had found evidence confirming that the CIA, fearful that Inouye’s Senate Intelligence investigation would expose the 1968 CIA-KYP-Pappas-Nixon money scandal, arranged to blacken Demetracopoulos’s reputation by leaking false information to Binder.45
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ELIAS HAD ALSO received a qualified exoneration from the State Department. His congressional allies, particularly McGovern and Holum, had doggedly tried to identify those responsible for the malicious October 1971 blind memorandum used by the Nixon Administration to punish Elias for his report critical of Tom Pappas. They got no further than identifying the State Department personnel who drafted and circulated the original document. In 1981, after Speaker Albert’s 1977 retirement, Joe Spear of Jack Anderson’s office identified the instigator as Leonard Greenup, the retired Athens USIS official whom Elias had sharply criticized in 1960. Greenup had access to both Albert and officials at State’s Greek Desk and apparently had never forgiven Elias for giving his USIS supervisors a bad performance review.
A year later, Senator McGovern’s ceaseless efforts to get State to clear Elias’s reputation, including threats to open a new congressional investigation, succeeded. Upon receiving a CIA request for updated biographic data on Elias P. Demetracopoulos, “AKA: Dimitrakopoulos,” State’s official reply of July 29, 1982, was simply a bold stamp of approval that read: “NO DEROGATORY INFORMATION.”
When Elias got a copy of the document, he assumed they really meant no legitimate derogatory information, and immediately decided to test his new status by applying for a State Department press pass. The request didn’t sit well with the head of State Department’s security, Robert B. Bannerman, who prepared a memorandum for his legal department rehearsing the familiar State and CIA complaints about Demetracopoulos. Despite Bannerman’s remonstrance, the legal department replied that “a careful review of the file reflects no disqualifying information which could serve as a basis for a successful denial of a press pass.” State Security allowed the application “reluctantly.”46
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THE WASHINGTON POST profile had called the “vindication” after Demetracopoulos’s six-year struggle “a fitting epilogue to the career of one of Washington’s more enigmatic figures.”47 But Elias was not ready to depart the stage. He’d won against the State Department and CIA. But he had not yet won his battle with the FBI.
Since 1975, Elias had been trying to access his complete FBI files, beginning with the earliest reports of snooping in 1951, but kept running into slow responses and widespread denials. Some of the records eventually released on appeal included never-corroborated wild rumors and erroneous allegations that were then shared with other US government agencies and departments. Elias pressed on despite the loss of a 1978 federal civil suit against the Bureau and a failed effort in early 1982 to gain access to withheld records by going through Michigan Congressman John Conyers, a member of the Judiciary Committee and the Freedom of Information Act oversight subcommittee.48 In late 1982 he persuaded Congressman Rosenthal to use his House Subcommittee on Commerce, Consumer, and Monetary Affairs to hold hearings and demand some unclassified answers as to when, how, and by what authority the FBI had gained access to Demetracopoulos’s financial records.49
The FBI admitted that it had also investigated a different Elias Demetracopoulos who did have Communist affiliations and that this report was erroneously included in the reports it passed on to other federal agencies. It also acknowledged having shared his tax records and unlawfully accessed his bank accounts. According to FBI director William Webster, Elias had been investigated during six periods: June 23, 1964, to November 23, 1964; December 8, 1964, to June 16, 1965; May 4, 1966, to July 15, 1966; November 9, 1967, to October 2, 1969; August 25, 1971, to March 14, 1973; and February 19, 1974, to October 24, 1974.50 Webster was silent on surveillance during the 1950s and the years of the Kennedy Administration, save for admitting that Pierre Salinger had made a “direct” White House demand for action in 1961. Also excluded were unrecorded activities such as break-ins, apparently euphemistically disguised (in its files) as “confidential informants.” It was unclear how many of these name-redacted informants in Elias’s files reflected surreptitious entries to his residence.
In October 1983, Elias’s longtime ally Congressman Don Edwards intervened with Webster, asking him to have the FBI review its own files and provide Elias “a statement such as the CIA gave him.”51 The FBI, however, was more obdurate than the CIA. On December 7, 1983, Webster replied that the Bureau never provides subjects of their investigations statements regarding guilt or innocence and to do so would establish a bad precedent.52
In his youth, Edwards had been an FBI agent in California, and he knew well the Bureau’s internal procedures, limitations, and flexibilities. After extensive discussions with Elias and his lawyer summarizing the record of bogus claims, Edwards wrote to Webster, systematically detailing instances when the FBI had conducted requested investigations of Elias “for the benefit of the CIA” and the State Department. He then provided a history of FBI replies that it had found “no information” to support any charges, and that in 1973, for the third time since 1964, the FBI had concluded that their investigations should be “closed for good.” In conclusion, Edwards asked the Bureau to review his narrative and the documents on which it was based, and “confirm to me, in writing, that my description accurately reflects the contents of the FBI’s files respecting Mr. Demetracopoulos and its investigations on him.”53
Webster did a full analysis of the statements contained in Edwards’s letter and amplified the record with nine pages of information reinforcing Edwards’s contention. He concluded: “I hope that the remarks set forth above and the attached analysis will assist you.”54 Edwards replied to “Judge Webster” on April 30:
I believe that we can close this matter on the basis of the FBI’s review of its own records which you attached to your letter—which plainly confirms the substance of my summary. Your summary of the FBI’s file on Mr. Demetracopoulos shows that almost ten years of diligent investigation, conducted under the prodding of the CIA and State Department, resulted in a complete vindication of Mr. Demetracopoulos and the repeated conclusion that not a shred of evidence existed either of conduct even remotely approaching violation of any law, or supporting allegations of activities inimical to U.S. national security.
It was finally over. In his letter to Elias, Edwards called the FBI findings a complete victory. Elias released documents to the press saying: “This vindicates me from all the accusations thrown at me…I am happy that after all this effort the truth comes out.”55
The Associated Press announced: “FBI concedes ten-year probe found nothing on Greek journalist.” Jack Anderson wrote that on the twelfth anniversary of Watergate, “the FBI has finally cleared the Greek journalist of spurious charges.”56 Elias thanked Edwards for championing his cause and praised the Freedom of Information Act.57 After more than twenty years of harassment, loss of employment, and tens of thousands of dollars spent to clear his name, he had won. “This has been a life-and-death struggle for me,” he told a reporter. “It’s not only a question of my honour. It’s a matter of not letting the sons of bitches destroy my professional career. They thought because I had a long Greek name that I wouldn’t fight back, but I did.”58 Once more he remembered the pledge he had made to himself in Averof Prison in 1943. He thought his parents would be proud. Philotimo, his way.
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ELIAS FOUGHT TENACIOUSLY but, afterward, with some notable exceptions, he tended not to nurture grudges. He lost track of Tom Pappas after the tycoon was fêted at the 1980 Republican National Convention in Detroit and paid little attention to stories during the 1980s reporting that Pappas was in retirement or unavailable to comment.
He knew nothing about Pappas’s disruptive outburst on a flight from Palm Beach not long after the 1980 convention, and a diagnosis of rapid-onset Alzheimer’s. Instead of living in comfortable retirement in Palm Beach, as the cover story had it, Pappas lived most of his remaining eight years alone in a Hellenic chronic-care nursing facility in suburban Canton, Massachusetts. His only regular visitor was Charles, the son Pappas had treated so shabbily. None of the big-name Republicans who benefitted from his fundraising attended his largely family funeral at the Greek Cathedral in Boston in 1988. A former Pappas employee claimed that the only politician he saw at the ceremony was John McCormack, but in 1988 McCormack had already been dead eight years. When Elias first heard of Pappas’s death, his only comment was to say “Life goes on” and “I’m a survivor.” Told the details of Pappas’s last years, decades later, he commented that it was a sad story, but that he did not want to revisit those wars.
Elias had, however, no forgiveness for those who had directly destroyed Greek democracy, especially the ones connected with the torture of Spyros Moustaklis. He was also pleased to learn that disclosures concerning John Connally’s dirty-tricks campaign against him in 1972 had helped prevent his becoming Gerald Ford’s running mate in 1976 and hurt the Texan’s presidential candidacy in 1980.59 And he decried as “shameful” Hillary Clinton’s public admiration of Henry Kissinger, whom he held responsible for exacerbating the Cyprus debacle and for sitting by when others talked about having Elias exterminated. Referring to the Watergate gang, he said: “Nixon resigned, Mitchell, Dean and others went to jail. Meanwhile, Kissinger makes millions of dollars at his consulting firm. He has never paid any price, financially, legally or morally.”60
29.Later Years
THE GORES SOLD THE FAIRFAX Hotel in late 1977, prompting Elias to move to a nearby apartment building the following year. He continued to use the Jockey Club for meetings. Sitting by himself, near the large windows in the high-ceilinged living room of his second-floor apartment on 21st Street, NW, surrounded by stacks of newspapers, government reports, books, photocopies, and notebooks, he would click on his small black boombox and play cassette tapes of rembetiko—urban Greek folk music, songs of love and joy and sorrow, plucked out on bouzoukis and guitars. Greek singers Fleuri Dandonaki, who had used her popularity as a platform for Greek democracy, and Nana Mouskouri remained his favorite performers.
The 1980s were relatively good years for Elias. After he was cleared from decades of charges that he was a nefarious agent of some evil power, his consulting business flourished. His base salary jumped to well over $100,000. “People who once shunned me called me for advice,” he recalled. He was a regular at briefings for financial and insurance firm executives in New York, Boston, and Hartford. His specialty was providing insights and prognostications, drawn from his private network, on the potential impact of world political and economic events on markets and investment portfolios. In addition to Fidelity and The Hartford, Citibank became an important client. Two-term Federal Reserve chairman Arthur Burns was one of his better confidential resources.
Making good money, he tried paying back Deena Clark in full. He had earlier stopped resisting Louise Gore’s desire to repaint and refurbish his Fairfax apartment, which also entailed a long-postponed rent increase. Elias also tried to reimburse Louise for his Jockey Club tab discounts, insisting he didn’t want to owe anybody money.
Remembering his World War II days, when mistaken trust could lead to death, he continued to compartmentalize his life masterfully and remained strict about confidential information, taking to his death the identities of many sources. Even friends of long standing knew little about his past or his personal relationships. Those who claimed they did often didn’t. Renowned Greek journalist Mario Modiano, who talked frequently with Elias for almost seventy years and treasured their closeness, said late in his life: “We operated in different worlds. I knew…not to probe” about his life or ask about his sources.
Cliff Hackett worked with Elias on Greek causes before Congress and interacted with him for over forty years yet knew little about his activities as a Wall Street consultant, his girlfriends other than Persa, or his Georgetown social life. From time to time, Elias would show Hackett articles describing his activities in these other worlds, but he seldom inquired about Hackett’s professional life unrelated to Greece. Nevertheless, Demetracopoulos trusted Hackett, cherished their friendship, and with no family of his own, was nourished by his involvement with Hackett’s family and the lives of his children. Theodore “Ted” Kariotis, one of Elias’s dedicated college-student assistants during the junta years, was pigeonholed in that role for life, even after receiving his PhD in economics and becoming a popular college professor. Using the honorific “Mr. Kariotis,” Elias would call him from time to time to run errands and drive him to the airport. Kariotis so admired and respected Elias that he rarely said no.
Descriptions of Elias’s unremittingly intense and humorless persona befuddled those who experienced his playful and self-deprecating wit. Speaking for many from her community, a Georgetown admirer cooed: “Oh, Elias, nobody knows the real story about you. All we know is you’re fun!” While many chronicled and critiqued his apparent lack of interest in anyone beside himself, others readily documented multiple instances of his empathy and solicitude. As Admiral Burke grew old and frail and was forgotten by many, Elias travelled frequently to his country home in Virginia to encourage and listen to his reminiscences. He was there to comfort Louise Gore after she lost her races for Maryland governor. And when sixty-four-year-old Deena Clark wanted him to accompany her as she fulfilled a childhood dream to swim the Dardanelles, he dropped everything to be with her.
“He chose carefully to whom he would reveal his soft side,” recalled Jeanne Oates Angulo, who, aside from Persa, was perhaps his closest companion in Washington during the nearly two decades that followed the junta. “He showed only certain people his humanity,…and many more his harder side,” she said. “He did that to protect himself. He had no fear, but he wanted others to fear him, and he didn’t want his soft side to show.”
The closest he had ever come to getting remarried was in the 1960s with Persa Metaxas, after her divorce. But issues at that time concerning her son prevented her from joining Elias abroad. Later, she would meet Elias in Europe, and she worked for long stretches in Washington to be close to him. They clearly loved each other, and shared activities as a couple, but he pushed her away. He explained he didn’t want to be tied down. One wonders if a man who worked incessantly, slept only four hours a night, lived alone in a cramped apartment, and never learned to drive from fear that his constant thinking about other things would make him dangerous on a roadway, could ever be domesticated.
To the outside world, he presented the sartorial elegance, courtly manners, and studied charm of an Edwardian gentleman. He could cross effortlessly from the refined salons of the city’s multi-generational first families who preferred to see their names in the social register, not the newspaper, to the festive dinners of the arrivistes, the self-promoting lobbyists and cabinet secretaries who established themselves in town with every new administration.
To Deborah Gore Dean, Louise Gore’s niece who also lived at the Fairfax during the 1970s, Elias in his black tie and tux “looked like a movie star.” To hostesses arranging dinner parties at a time when formal seating was required and ladies whose husbands were otherwise occupied needed table companions, urbane Elias was the “extra man” of choice. In its November 1976 issue, Washington Dossier voted him one of “Washington’s Ten Perfect Gentlemen,” citing his “masculine mystique” that went beyond “toothy smiles and wavy hair.” The glossy magazine’s profile praised him for his “dependability,” adding: [M]en and women alike admire Elias’s ability to keep a tightly buttoned lip…He carries more confidences than any other man in D.C.”1
Paradoxically, Elias could often monopolize conversations talking about himself and world events and somehow leave his dinner companions feeling he cared about them too. The little boy from Dafnomili Street who took little girls seriously grew up to become what one woman described as “a man’s man who really respected women.” He was a strong supporter of women’s rights and furious at any descriptions of workplace sexual abuse, and those who knew him well said he could never be mean to a woman. Relishing his bachelorhood, he genuinely loved women of all types, and was nourished by their attention.
Criticized by some men for being a “womanizer” and un chaud lapin, who jumped from bed to bed with amoral abandon and “tried every type of woman in the city,” Elias was no Don Giovanni libertine, nor a social-climbing suitor. More Casanova than Don Juan, he lived by a personal code of conduct. Women came second to work, but, when he found time, he dated omnivorously. Most were unattached and unmarried. He was discreet, engaging in illicit sexual relations only with women who knew they stood to lose more than he if their secrets went public. Many past lovers would seek to stay friends. For decades, Greek and American intelligence agents tried to pressure women in his life, particularly former girlfriends, for adverse information, but none ever betrayed him.
For all Elias’s dalliances, his deepest and most enduring relationships were with a handful of strong women who did not need Elias Demetracopoulos to feel complete, including Celia Was, Louise Gore, Deena Clark, and Persa Metaxas. Each played a different role in his life.
Jeanne Oates was another. Tall, radiantly beautiful, blond, and—quite unusual for Elias—sixteen years his junior, Jeanne Oates came into his life in 1975, after the fall of the junta. An independently successful Washington radio station general manager who was not engaged in the power-seeking political world, she was initially smitten with this refined and mysterious man. But, when she realized she was sharing him with others, she broke off the romance. He respected her decision, but the two decided they still greatly enjoyed each other’s company, so they developed a different kind of loving relationship as dearest friends.
Over the years, he opened up with Jeanne in ways he did with few others in his life. They trusted each other and relaxed together, watching public-television programs, from the McNeil-Lehrer Report to Great Performances to the New Year’s Day Vienna Philharmonic concerts. She would drive them to the country for visits with Arleigh Burke and others or to concerts and restaurants, sometimes taking along the widows of his deceased friends. Insisting on wearing a suit and tie on their weekend drives, he would sit back, look at the unfolding bucolic rolling hills, smile and, with classical music often playing on the radio, calmly hum. One of their special pleasures was driving peacefully around Washington’s beautifully lit neoclassical monuments late at night, outings that reminded Elias of freedom, democracy, and home.
Jeanne had a demanding career and often went days without seeing him. She chauffeured him whenever she could—to Deena Clark’s surprise birthday party at the Mexican Embassy, for example, picking him up later since she wasn’t invited. They went together to socialize with Christopher Hitchens, Stanley Kutler, and General Bill Quinn and their wives. She even drove him to Connecticut to visit Celia’s grave, where she saw him more emotional than ever before.
Jeanne knew he could be self-centered, demanding, agenda-driven, and taciturn, but she knew that, if she ever needed him, he’d be there for her completely. She believed his captivity during World War II had engendered a compassion for others hurt by the hard knocks of life. She told stories from his post-junta years that illustrated acts of unselfish kindness and pure philotimo. She was with him in the late 1980s after he received a diagnosis of slowly progressing Parkinson’s disease and tenderly helped him navigate the life-limiting symptoms that followed.
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