Book Review
The Greek Connection The Life of Elias Demetracopoulos And the Untold Story of Watergate by James H. Barron
Melville House 2020
Just as one has come to believe that the story of the Greek military dictatorship(s) from 1967 to 1974 has been fully told, a new account of that era has been put fourth that focuses on the heroic activities of journalist Elias Demetracopoulos. This is a very good book that tells a very important story and serves to remind Greeks of the way in which Greece has been mistreated by the great powers. This book is not only a fine work of history but an important contribution to the historical understanding of the nature of Greek politics and the politics and diplomacy of the American foreign policy establishment.
The release of this book comes at a time when political extremism veers toward the left wing of the political spectrum. This book is an important reminder of the time in both Greece and America when extremism veered toward the right wing. The story of Mr. Demetracopoulos is told and it is a very heroic one.
Elias Demetracopoulos was a boy in Nazi occupied Greece who resisted the Germans and was imprisoned. He became a very successful and prominent journalist in Greece who clashed with several American ambassadors. This was the period in history when the American government interfered in Greek internal affairs (and still does to a certain extent).
Elias Demetracopoulos established contacts not only in Greece but in the United States in which he took refuge following the imposition of the military dictatorship on Greece in April 1967. What is truly amazing is the slander that was directed against this moderate opponent of the Papadopoulos dictatorship. This journalist was moderate in his politics and was opposed to communism as well as the neo-fascism of the Colonels.
In America he established contacts with many prominent journalists, politicians, and military officials. Many of these individuals were staunch conservatives. This included the late Robert Novak and the late Rowland Evans. This biography of Elias Dematracopoulos is an affirmation that the Coup of 1967 was not about preventing the imposition of communist totalitarianism on Greece, but on eradicating the sovereignty and independence of Greece and eradicating Greek democracy.
This book recounts what has been previously documented regarding dictator George Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos was a Nazi collaborator during the Second World War who served in the security battalions under the collaborationist government. Furthermore, as a working journalist in Athens Dematracopoulos infuriated Greek Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis for revealing that America had installed nuclear weapons in Greece.
Dematracopoulos informed the Greek people about nuclear weapons in their country and the prospective consequences in the event of a confrontation with the Soviet Union in which Greece would have played a prominent offensive role and would have served as a prime target for Moscow. This revelation was a serious wake up call considering present day efforts of American officials in Athens such as Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt to promote conflict between Greece and present day Russia. Many things in the relationship between Greece and the United States have changed for the better and some things have not changed.
The most significant change from the era recounted in the book is that democracy in Greece has been for most part irreversible. There are two events in the past decade or so in which Greek democracy has been challenged. The first incident occurred in 2008 when the Government of Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis (the nephew and namesake of the aforementioned Prime Minister) came under pressure to resign in the aftermath of an effort to establish an oil pipeline agreement with Russia and Bulgaria. Incidents such as these along with the collusion of the Simitis government in 1999 which surrendered Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan to the Turks indicate that the restoration of Greek sovereignty in the post dictatorship era has not been one hundred percent successful.
A second challenge to Greek democracy came from the rise of Golden Dawn in the elections of 2012. The legacy of the Greek dictatorship can be judged by its present day sympathizers. Only Golden Dawn expresses admiration for the Papadopoulos regime. Golden Dawn is a Neo-Nazi organization that promotes holocaust denial, anti semitism and other forms of racism, and neo paganism.
In the past two years, Greece has overcome both right wing extremism (Golden Dawn) and left wing extremism (the Marxist Syriza Party). The downfall of Syriza and the complete collapse of Golden Dawn bode well for the future of Greece. Liberal democracy appears to have recovered nicely under the leadership of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
The book recounts many troubling facts regarding the Greek dictatorship. For example, many Greek Americans supported the regime. The Nixon administration comes off as as especially vile in its disregard for the sadistic torture and brutality against political dissidents in Greece. There was a prominent Greek American who served as a supporter of both the dictatorship and the Nixon administration who comes off very poorly.
Theories abound that there was a Greek connection to Watergate. The Watergate break in may have been because the Colonels contributed $500,000 dollars to the Nixon campaign in 1968. Elias Demetracopoulos had sent evidence of this to the chairman of the Democratic Party and it is speculated this is what the Watergate burglars were looking for. The cash that the Colonels contributed to the Nixon campaign may very well have been from American aid from taxpayers which would have consisted of American taxpayers cash being used for partisan political purposes in funding the campaign of Richard Nixon.
Elias Demetracopoulos worked tirelessly against the Colonels as well as against the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department which not only slandered him but threatened to have him deported back to Athens. When the Greek journalist’s father was on his death bed, Demetracopoulos reached out to his political friends in Washington for help in obtaining safe passage for him to visit his father. He was warned by Senator Edward Kennedy to reject any offers of safe passage as such an offer would be a trick by the Colonels to lure him to Athens.
Mention is made of Henry Kissinger. This book very effectively conveys to the reader why Greeks absolutely loathe this former Secretary of State. Kissinger is a horrible human being and every new revelation regarding Greece and Cyprus at this time only reaffirms what a monster this man really is. Elias Dematracopoulos was friends with the late Christopher Hitchens. No one has ever done as much to expose Kissinger as Hitchens who publicly denounced him as a “war criminal” and called for him to be put on trial.
Mention is made of the events in Cyprus during the summer of 1974 and the role of Kissinger in the attempted ouster of President Makarios of Cyprus and the subsequent Turkish invasions. There is interesting information on how the Greek American community came together in 1974 to demand that Congress impose an arms embargo on Turkey. That achievement was one of the finest accomplishments of the Greek American community.
The book accurately describes the pro Turkish tilt of American administrations. It is recounted that the Greek American community supported the election of Jimmy Carter only to be disappointed by that administration which maintained support for Turkey over Greece. The support for the military dictatorship in Greece was never pro Greek but an effort to impose western dictates on Greece.
The real disregard that Washington had for Greece came to be seen after the overthrow of George Papadopoulos by another dictator Dimitrios Ioannides and following the restoration of Greek democracy when the elder Karamanlis returned to Greece. Kissinger made it very clear to the Ford administration that replaced the Nixon administration that Turkey was more important than Greece.
In the year 2020, things have changed. Most changes have been relatively positive. Some negatives remain such as the aforementioned strangle hold that Washington has over Greek foreign policy. The most important difference in relations between Athens and Washington today is that Turkey has lost its strategic value.
Turkey has defected from the western alliance and in its provocations of Greece, Athens seems to have American support. The challenge for Greeks is to win over the United States as a real and genuine ally in point of fact and not just on paper. If the United States commits itself fully to the isolation of Turkey and the territorial, legal, and moral rights of Greece and Cyprus all the negative connotations of past relations between Washington and Athens may disappear.
The late Elias Demetracopoulos is a very heroic figure who fought valiantly for the liberation of Greece from dictatorship and lobbied hard after the anti Makarios Coup in Cyprus to prevent the Turkish invasions. He established friendships with American conservatives and liberal alike. It is not likely that prominent Republican conservatives and military officials would have remained friends with someone who was a “communist”.
The end of the economic crisis in Greece and the rapid disappearance of Golden Dawn indicates that Greek politics have been stabilized. Greece does not need the likes of Golden Dawn or the Colonels which that party has repeatedly praised. In terms of national interest, the Colonels not only left Greece in a pathetically weakened state, they abandoned Cyprus to the Turks.
A previous work on the Colonels regime entitled, “The Rape of Greece” by Peter Murtagh published in 1994 recounted that the Colonels promoted “double enosis” for Cyprus. In other words, what the Turks called “taksim”meaning partition. It should not be forgotten that the Colonels betrayed both Greece and Cyprus.
This biography of Elias Demetracopoulos by James H. Barron has a great deal to commend it. The ongoing activities of Congress, the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, and the media are all recounted here. Vivid examples are also given with regard to the collaboration between the foreign policy apparatus in Washington and various newspapers and media outlets. Many journalists acted in ways that were not in accordance with the objective aims of their profession.
In conclusion, this is a fine book on modern Greek history as well as on American foreign policy. Elias Demetracopoulos is an example of a Greek success story who was able to make a difference and to contribute greatly to the demise of the Colonels. He was not only a superb journalist but demonstrated great diplomatic prowess by alliances he established with many on both sides of the political spectrum.
His example should serve to inspire Greek Americans in their struggles to build support for Greece and Cyprus.
