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"Fuck your parliament and your
constitution," said the President of the United States
"It's the best
damn Government since Pericles," the American two-star General
declared. [1] (The news report did not mention whether he was chewing on a
big fat cigar.)
 The governmnet, about
which the good General was so ebulient, was that of the Colonels' junta
which came to power in a military coup in April 1967, followed immediately
by the traditional martial law, censorship, arrests, beatings, torture, and
killings, the victims totaling some 8,000 in the first month. This was
accompanied by the equally traditional declaration that this was all being
done to save a nation from a "communist takeover". Corrupting and
subversive influences in Greek life were to be removed. Among these were
the miniskirts, long hair, and foreign newspapers; church attendance for
the young would be compulsory. [2]
So brutal and so swift
was the repression, that by September, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the
Netherlands were before the European Comission of Human Rights to accuse
Greece of violating most of the Commission's conventions. Before the year
was over, Amnesty International had sent representatives to Greece to
investigate the situation. From this came a report which asserted that "Torture
as a deliberate practice is carried out by the Security Police and the
Military Police." [3]
The coup had taken
place two days before the campaign for national elections was to begin,
elections which appeared certain to bring the veteran liberal leader George
Papandreou back as prime minister. Papandreou had been elected in February
1964 with the only outright majority in the history of modern Greek
elections. The successful machinations to unseat him had begun immediately,
a joint effort of the Royal Court, the Greek military, and the American
military and CIA stationed in Greece.
Philip Deane (the pen
name of Gerasimos Gigantes) is a Greek, a former UN official, who worked
during this period both for King Constantine and as an envoy to Washington
for the Papandreou government. He has written an intimate account of the
subleties and the grossness of this conspiracy to undermine the government
and enhance the position of the military plotters, and of the raw power
exercised by the CIA in his country [4]. We saw earlier how Greece was
looked upon much as a piece of property to be developed according to
Washington's needs. A story related by Deane illustrates how this attitude
was little changed, and thus the precariousness of Papandreou's position:
During one of the perennial disputes between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus,
which was now spilling over onto NATO, President Johnson summoned the Greek
ambassador to tell him of Washington's "solution". The ambassador
protested that it would be unacceptable to the Greek parliament and
contrary to the Greek constitution.
"Then listen to
me, Mr. Ambassador," said the President of the United States,
"fuck your Parliament and your Constitution. America, is an elephant.
Cyprus is a flea. If these two fleas continue itching the elephant, they
may just get whacked by the elephant's trunk, whacked good . . . We pay a
lot of good American dollars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime
Minister gives me talk about Democracy, Parliament and Constitutions, he,
his Parliament and his Constitution may not last very long." [5]
In July 1965, George
Papandreou was finally maneuvered out of office by royal prerogative. The
king had a coalition of breakaway Centre Union Deputies (Papandreou's
party) and rightists waiting in the wings to form a new government. It was
later revealed by a State Department official that the CIA Chief-of-Station
in Athens, John Maury, had "worked in behalf of the palace in 1965. He
helped King Constantine buy Centre Union Deputies so that the George
Papandreou Government was toppled." [6]
For nearly two years
thereafter, various short-lived cabinets ruled until it was no longer
possible to avoid holding the elections prescribed by the constitution.
What concerned the
opponents of George Papandreou most about him was his son. Andreas
Papandreou, who had been head of the economics department at the University
of California at Berkeley and a minister in his father's cabinet, was
destined for a leading role in the new government. But he was by no means the
wide-eyed radical. In the United States, Andreas had been an active
supporter of such quintessential moderate liberals as Adlai Stevenson and
Hubert Humphrey. [7] His economic views, wrote 'Washington Post' columnist
Marquis Childs, were "those of the American New Deal". [8]
But Andreas Papandreou
did not disguise his wish to take Greece out of the cold war. He publicly
questioned the wisdom of the country remaining in NATO, or at least
ramaining in it as a satellite of the United States. He leaned toward
opening relations with the Soviet Union and other Communist countries on
Greece's border. He argued that the swollen American military and
intelligence teams in Greece compromised the nation's freedom of action.
And he viewed the Greek Army as a threat to democracy, wishing to purge it
of its most dictatorial-and royalist-minded senior officers. [9]
Andreas Papandreou's
bark was worse than his bite, as his later presidency was to simply
demonstrate. (He did not, for example, pull Greece out of NATO or US bases
out of Greece.) But in Lyndon johnson's Washingon, if you were not totally
and unquestionably with us, you were agin' us. Johnson felt hat Andreas,
who had become a naturalized US citizen, had betrayed America". Said
LBJ:
We gave the son of a
bitch American citizenship, didn't we? He was an American, with all the
rights and privileges. And he had sworn allegiance to the flag. And then he
gave up his American citizenship. He went back to just being a Greek. You
can't trust a man who breaks his oath of allegiance to the flag of the
United States. [10]
What, then, are we to
make of the fact that Andreas Papandreou was later reported to have worked
with the CIA in the early 1960s? (He criticized publication of the report,
but did not deny the charge.) [11] If true, it would not have been
incompatible with being a liberal, particularly at that time. It was
incompatible, as he susequently learned, only with his commitment to a
Greece independent from US foreign policy.
As for the elder
Papandreou, his anti-communist credentials were impeccable, dating back to
his role as a Brtitsh-installed prime-minister during the civil war against
the left in 1944-45. But he, too, showed stirrings of independence from the
Western superpower. He refused to buckle under Johnson's pressure to
compromise with Turkey over Cyprus. He accepted an invitation to visit
Moscow, and when his government said it would accept Soviet aid in
preparation for a possible war with Turkey, the US Embassy 'demanded' an
explanation. Moreover, in an attempt to heal the old wounds of the civil
war, Papandreoubegan to reintroduce certain civil liberties and to readmit
into Greece some of those who had fought against the government in the
civil war peroid. [12]
When Andreas Papandreou
assumed his ministerial duties in 1964 he was shocked to discover what was
becoming a fact of life for every techno-industrial state in the world: an
intelligence service gone wild, a shadow government with powers beyond the
control of the nation's nominal leaders. This, thought Papandreou,
accounted for many of the obstacles the government was encountering in
trying to carry out its policies. [13]
The Greek intelligence
service, KYP, as we have seen, was created by the OSS/CIA in the course of
the civil war, with hundreds of its officers receiving training in the
United States. One of these men, George Papadopoulos, was the leader of the
junta that seized power in 1967. Andreas Papandreou found that the KYP
routinely bugged ministerial converstaions and turned the data over to the
CIA. (Many Western intelligence agencies have long provided the CIA with
information about their own government and citizens, and the CIA has
reciprocated on occasion. The nature of much of this information has been
such that if a private citizen were to pass it to a foreign power he could
be charged with treason.)
As a result of his
discovery, the younger Papandreou dismissed the two top KYP men and
replaced them with reliable officers. The new director was ordered to
protect the cabinet from surveillance. "He came back
apologetically," recalls Papandreou, "to say he couldn't do it.
All the equipment was American, controlled by the CIA or Greeks under CIA
supervision. There was no kind of distinction between the two services.
They duplicated functions in a counterpart relationship. In effect, they
were a single agency." [14]
Andreas Papandreou's
order to abolish the bugging of the cabinet inspired the Deputy Chief of
Mission of the US Embassy, Norbert Anshutz (or Anschuetz), to visit him.
Anshutz, who has been
linked to the CIA, demanded that Papandreou rescind the order. Andreas
demanded that the American leave his office, which he did, but not before
warning that "there would be consequences". [15]
Papandreou then
requested that a thorough search be made of his home and office for
electronic devices by the new KYP deputy director. "It wasn't until
much later," says Andreas, "that we discovered he'd simply
planted a lot of new bugs. Lo and behold, we'd brought in another
American-paid operative as our No. 2." [16]
An endeavor by Andreas
to end the practice of KYP's funds coming directly from the CIA without
passing through any Greek ministry also met with failure, but he did
succeed in transferring the man who had been liaison between the two
agencies for sevearl years. This was George Papadopoulos. The change in his
position, however, appears to have amounted to little more than a
formality, for the organization still took orders from him; even
afterwards, Greek "opposition politicians who sought the ear (or the
purse) of James Potts, CIA [deputy] chief in Athens before the coup, were
often told: 'See George -- he's my boy'."
In mid-February 1967, a
meeting took place in the White House, reported Marquis Childs to discuss
CIA reports which "left no doubt that a military coup was in the
making ... It could hardly have been secret. Since 1947 the Greek army and
the American military aid group in Athens, numbering several hundred, have
worked as part of the same team ... The solemn question was whether by some
subtle political intervention the coup could be prevented" and thus
preserve parliamentary government. It was decided that no course of action
was feasible. As one of the senior civilians present recalls it, Walt Rostow,
the President's adviser on national security affairs, closed the meeting
with these words: I hope you understand, gentlemen, that what we have
concluded here, or rather have failed to conclude, makes the future course
of events in Greece inevitable. [18]
A CIA report dated 23
January 1967 had specifically named the Papadopoulos group as one plotting
the coup, and was apparently one of the reports discussed at the February
meeting. [19]
Of the cabal of five
officers which took power in April four, reportedly, were intimately
connected to the American military or to the CIA in Greece. The fifth man
had been brought in becasue of the armored units he commanded. [20] George
Papadopoulos emerged as the 'de facto' leader, taking the title of prime
minister later in the year.
The catchword amongst
old hands at the US military mission in Greece was that Papadopoulos was
"the first CIA agent to become Premier of a European country".
"Many Greeks consider this to be the simple truth," reported
Charles Foley in 'The Observer' of London. [21]
At the time of the
coup, Papadopoulos had been on the CIA payroll for some 15 years. [22] One
reason for the success of their marriage may have been Colonel
Papadopoulos's World War II record. When the Germans invaded Greece, Papadopoulos
served as a captain in the Nazi's Security Battalions whose main task was
to track down Greek resistance fighters. [23] He was, it is said, a great
believer in Hitler's "new order", and his later record in power
did little to cast doubt upon that claim. Foley writes that when he
mentioned the junta leader's pro-German background to an American military
adviser he met at a party in Athens, the American hinted that it was
related to Papadopoulos's subservience to US wishes: "George gives good
value," he smiled, "because there are documents in Washington he
wouldn't like let out." [24]
Foley relates that
under Papadopoulos:
intense official
propaganda portrayed Communism as the only enemy Greece had ever had and
minimized the German occupation until even Nazi atrocities were seen as
provoked by the Communists. This rewriting of history clearly reflects the
dictator's concern at the danger that the gap in his official biography may
some day be filled in. [25]
As part of the
rewriting, members of the Security Battalions became "heroes of the
resistance". [26]
It was torture,
however, which most indelibly marked the seven-year Greek nightmare. James
Becket, an American attorney sent to Greece by Amnesty International, wrote
in December 1969 that a "conservative estimate would place at not less
than two thousand" the number of people tortured. [27] It was an
odious task for Beckett to talk to some of the victims:
People had been
mercilessly tortured simply for being in possession of a leaflet
criticizing the regime. Brutality and cruelty on one side, frustration and
helplessness on the other. They were being tortured and there was nothing
to be done. It was like listening to a friend who has cancer. What comfort,
what wise reflection can someone who is comfortable give? Torture might
last a short time, but the person will never be the same. [28].
Becket reported that
some torturers had told prisoners that some of their equipment had come as
US military aid: a special "thick white double cable" whip was
one item; another was the headscrew, known as an "iron wreath",
which was progressively tightened around the head or ears. [29]
The Amnesty delegation
desribed a number of the other torture methods commonly employed. Among
these were:
a) Beating the soles of
the feet with a stick or pipe. After four months of this, the soles of one
prisoner were covered with thick scar tissue. Another was crippled by
broken bones.
b) Numerous incidents
of sexually-oriented torture: shoving fingers or an object into the vagina
and twisting and tearing and brutally; also done with the anus; or a tube
is inserted into the anus and water driven in under very high pressure.
c) Techniques of
gagging: the throat is grasped in such a way that the windpipe is cut off,
or a filthy rag, often soaked in urine, and sometimes excrement, is shoved
down the throat.
d) Tearing out the hair
from the head and the pubic region.
e) Jumping on the
stomach.
f) Pulling out toe
nails and finger nails. [30]
These were not the
worst. The worst is what one reads in the many individual testimonies. But
these are simply too lengthy to be repeated here. [31]
The junta's response to
the first Amnesty report was to declare that it was comprised of charges
emanating from "International Communism" and to hire public relations
firms in New York and London to improve its image. [32]
In 1969, the European
Commission of Human Rights found Greece guilty of torture, murder and other
violations. For these reasons and particularly for the junta's abolition of
parliamentary democracy, The Council of Europe -- a consultative body of,
at that time, 18 European States, under which the Commission falls -- was
preparing to expel Greece. The council rejected categorically Greece's
claim that it had been in danger of a communist takeover. Amnesty
International later reported that the United States, though not a member of
the Council, actively applied diplomatic pressure on member states not to
vote for the expulsion. (Nonetheless, while the Council was deliberating,
the 'New York Times' reported that "The State Department said today
that the United States had deliberately avoided taking any position on the
question of continued Greek membership in the Council of Europe.") The
European members, said Amnesty, believed that only the United Sates had the
power to bring about changes in Greece, yet it chose only to defend the
junta. [33]
On the specific issue
of torture, Amnesty's report concluded that:
American policy on the
torture question as expressed in the official testimony has been to deny it
where possible and minize it where denial was not possible. This policy
flowed naturally from general support for the military regime. [34]
As matters transpired,
Greece walked out before the Council could formalize the expulsion.
In a world grown
increasingly hostile, the support of the world's most powerful nation was
'sine qua non' for the Greek junta. The two governments thrived upon each
other. Said the American ambassador to Greece, Henry Tasca, "This is
the most anti-communist group you'll find anywhere. There is just no place
like Greece to offer these facilities with the back up of the kind of
Government you have got here." ("You", not "we",
noted the reporter, was the only pretense.) [35]
The facilities the
ambassador was referring to were dozens of US military installations, from
nuclear missile bases to major communication sites, housing tens of
thousands of American servicemen. The United States, in turn, provided the
junta with ample military hardware despite an official congressional embargo,
as well as the police equipment required by the Greek authorities to
maintain their rigid control.
In an attempt to
formally end the embargo, the Nixon administration asked Papadopoulos to
make some gesture towards constitutional government which the White House
could then point to. The Greek prime minister was to be assured, said a
secret White House document, that the administration would take "at
face value and accept without reservation" any such gesture. [36]
US Vice-president Spiro
Agnew, on a visit to the land of his ancestors, was moved to exalt the
"achievements" of the Greek government and its "constant
co-operation with US needs and wishes". [37] One of the satisfied
needs Agnew may have had in mind was the contribution of $549,000 made by
the junta to the 1968 Nixon-Agnew election campaign. Apart from any other
consideration, it was suspected that this was money given to the junta by
the CIA finding its way back to Washington. A Senate investigation of this
question was abruptly canceled at the direct request of Henry Kissinger.
[38]
Perhaps nothing better
captures the mystique of the bond felt by the Greeks to their American
guardians than the story related about the Chief Inspector Basil Lambrou,
one of Athens' well-known torturers:
Hundreds of prisoners
have listened to the little speech given by Inspector Basil Lambrou, who
sits behind his desk which displays the red, white, and blue clasped-hand
symbol of American aid. He tries to show the prisoner the absolute fultility
of resistance: "You make yourself ridiculous by thinking you can do
anything. The world is divided in two. There are the communists on that
side and on this side the free world. The Russians and the Americans, no
one else. What are we? Americans. Behind me there is the government, behind
the government is NATO, behind NATO is the U.S. You can't fight us, we are
Americans." [39]
Amnesty International
adds that some torturers would tell their victims things like: "The
Human Rights Commission can't help you now ... The Red Cross can do nothing
for you ... Tell them all, it will do no good, you are helpless."
"The torturers from the start," said Amnesty, "had said that
the United States supported them and that was what counted." [40]
In November 1973, a
falling-out within the Greek inner circle culminated in the ousting of
Papadopoulos and his replacement by Col. Demetrios Ioannidis, Commander of
the Military Police, torturer, graduate of american training in
anti-subversive techniques, confidant of the CIA. [41] Ioannidis named as
prime-minister a Greek-American, A. Androutsopoulos, who came to Greece
after the Second World War as an official employee of the CIA, a fact of
which Androutsopoulos had often boasted. [42]
Eight months later, the
Ioannidis regime overthrew the government. It was a fatal miscalculation.
Turkey invaded Cyprus and the reverberations in Athens resulted in the
military giving way to a civilian government. The Greek nightmare had come
to an end.
Much of the story of
American complicity in the 1967 coup and its aftermath may never be known.
At the trials held in 1975 of junta members and torturers, many witnesses
made reference to the American role. This may have been the reason a
separate investigation of this aspect was scheduled to be undertaken by the
Greek Court of Appeals. [43] But it appears that no information resulting
from this inquiry, if it actually took place, was ever announced. Philip
Deane, upon returning to Greece several months after the civilian
government took over, was told by leading politicians that "for the
sake of preserving good relations with the US, the evidence of US
complicity will not be made fully public". [44]
Andreas Papndreou had
been arrested at the time of the coup and held in prison for eight months.
Shortly after his release, he and his wife Margaret visited the American
ambassador, Phillips Talbot, in Athens. Papandreou related the following:
I asked Talbot whether
America could have intervened the night of the coup, to prevent the death
of democracy in Greece. He denied that they could have done anything about
it. Then Margaret asked a critical question: What if the coup had been a
Communist or a Leftist coup? Talbot answered without hesitation. Then, of
course, they would have intervened, and they would have crushed the coup.
[45]
by William Blum
(Common Courage Press ISBN: 1567510523)
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