GREECE'S GRIEVANCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302170010-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 27, 2012
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: July 29, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/27: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302170010-1
ARTICIE APPEARED ?1'1
ON PIT!:,. _
Has the U.S. been unfair?
THE NEW REPUBLIC
29 July 1985
tions did it report what the Greek government had con-
tended all along: that the Greek ambassador had also suc-
cessfully negotiated the release of 63 other hostages, most
of whom were American women and children. This trade
may have been unwise or even cowardly, but it was not, as
it was portrayed, a supreme act of chauvinism.
In the days after the hijacking, there were airport terror-
ist attacks in Frankfurt, Norway, Rome, Tokyo, and Ma-
drid in which a total of eight people were killed; and a
flight from Canada to India exploded en route, killing 329
people. The State Department had little to say about any of
these incidents. Why, the Greeks asked, were they being
singled out at a time when the international nature of
terrorism was never more evident? Indeed, days after the
State Department's "travel advisory," a young man wear-
ing army fatigues and carrying a rifle walked into the State
Department itself and, a few yards from George Shultz's
office, shot and killed his mother, a department employee,
and then himself. One Greek opposition politician joking-
ly proposed a ban on Greek Embassy staff visits to the
State Department until security is improved.
One does not have to excuse Greece's nonchalance
about terrorism to suspect that there were other motiva-
tions behind the Reagan administration's "travel adviso-
ry." The administration has not objected to Papandreou's
rhetoric because he otherwise has given the U.S. nearly
everything it's asked for. (He renegotiated the U.S. mili-
tary bases agreement, although he'd won the election by
promising the opposite, and threw in a new AWACs
base.) Having held its tongue for so long, the White House
could not have been unhappy at the chance to get even.
The American press and public shared that unseemly but
understandable urge. Greece became a convenient target
for the frustration of a president, and a country, unable or
unwilling to strike back at the real enemy.
GREECE'S GRIEVANCE
Athens
WITH THE TWA hijacking last month, the American
public's estimation of Greece reached a new low.
The Greek government had failed to act upon repeated
international warnings about lax security at Hellinikon
airport, and thus had no convincing response to charges
that it had effectively allowed the hijacking to take place.
What's more, it negotiated the release of Ali Atwa, the
captured comrade of the Amal hijackers, which violated
the West's general understanding about not giving in to
terrorist demands.
Greece's image had been in slow decline since 1981,
when the outrageous statements of the new prime minis-
ter, Andreas Papandreou, started making headlines.
Papandreou has said, among other things, that the U.S. is
an "imperialist country," that General Jaruzelski is a Pol-
ijh "patriot" and Solidarity "a dangerous movement,"
and that the KAL 007 jetliner shot down by the Soviets was
orj2S.Z.i.J.Eynission. He has also developed a reputation
for coddling terrorists by professing solidarity with the
likes of Muammar al-Qaddafi and Yasir Arafat.
As Papandreou's most quotable slanders circulated in
the U.S. press, Greek anti-Americanism was slowly being
transformed into American anti-Hellenism. Thus no one
complained much when the State Department issued a
"travel advisory" for Greek-bound American tourists?an
announcement that resulted in 30,000 canceled bookings,
an estimated 5100 million drain on Greece's faltering econ-
omy. Many editorials said that this was the least Greece
deserved.
Most Greeks, however, considered the punishment,
and the American media's coverage of Greece's actions,
extremely unfair. They questioned whether the terrorists'
weapons really were smuggled on the plane in Athens,
where there were both Greek security and the extra securi-
ty personnel TWA had itself hired as backup. American
officials seemed to share these doubts. They admitted they
were dubious of Ali Atwa's story that his comrades had
smuggled their weapons past the two security systems by
wrapping them in fiberglass. (X-rays penetrate fiberglass,
as any self-respecting terrorist would probably know.)
Some Washington officials speculated about a possible
"inside job"?Arab spies in the Greek airport ground
crew. Amal leader Akef Haidar claimed that the guns and
grenades had been placed on the plane during an earlier
stop in Cairo.
The Greeks were also angered at how the United States
portrayed the release of Ali Atwa. For days after the hijack-
ing the press stated that the Greek government had traded
Atwa merely for the seven Greek passengers of TWA flight
847. Only after the last of the hostages were freed and be-
gan recounting their experiences of those early negotia-
THERE IS A special dimension, though, to the
new American anti-Hellenism and the Greek anti-
Americanism that preceded it. Unlike other small, poor
countries that sling hostile remarks at the U.S., Greece has
been one of America's most reliable allies. Greeks and
Americans fought together in two world wars and in Ko-
rea. Even today anti-Americanism in Greece remains rath-
er half-baked. The Greeks still love the idea that all West-
ern nations have their roots in Greek civilization. With
their entrepreneurial ways and embrace of consumer cul-
ture, they simply don't bring to their criticisms of America
the same violent rejection of modernity that characterizes
anti-American movements elsewhere. The most treacher-
ous "anti-Americanism" any U.S. citizen in Greece this
summer will likely encounter is a heated political discus-
sion with a Greek over drinks at a kafenion?after which
the Greek will almost certainly insist on picking up the tab.
Greece's new, self-consciously independent behavior,
in other words, is the result of the nation having un-
learned to some extent a previous policy of full coopera-
tion with America. This unlearning, as many American
officials privately admit, is the result of Greece's exest-
inued
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2.
ence with shortsighted American foreign policy.
That policy began with the Truman Doctrine of 1947,
when America replaced waning British influence in
Greece. A civil war had broken out between Greek com-
munist-led guerrillas and the shaky new government?
nominally led by centrist republicans but dominated by
right-wing monarchists and Nazi collaborators. Writers
such as Nicholas Gage have vividly documented commu-
nist atrocities during the civil war; but atrocities by govern-
ment forces?including the Security Battalions, Greece's
version of right-wing death squads?were just as grue-
some. The guerrillas, who were the main resistance force
against the Nazi occupation, had shown much interest in
democratic political solutions to end the fighting. But
American officials, gripped by the new cold war mental-
ity, were in no mood to compromise with communists.
The U.S. drifted into closer association with the unpopular
Greek monarchy and the right, a tie that would continue
for the next 25 years.
The communists were ultimately defeated. But when
the Greek public used its newly won freedom to elect a
centrist coalition government, the U.S. ambassador, John
E. Peurifoy, made his country's displeasure?and its
power?known. Distrustful of "fuzzy-headed liberals,"
Peurifoy threatened to cut American aid unless the gov-
ernment changed the electoral system to assure control by
the less popular but more "stable" right. The government
had little choice but to concede. "Centrists and leftists felt
rejected by the representatives of American foreign policy
here," explains Sotiris Papapolitis, a Greek member of
parliament with the center-right New Democracy party.
Papapolitis's father was a cabinet minister under that ear-
ly, short-lived center government. He says that Peurifoy
would walk into his father's office, and in a perfect gesture
of American conceit, put his feet up on the minister's desk:
"You can't imagine the humiliation."
For the next 12 years right-wing politicians ran the
gpvernment, though always at the behest of a "para-state'.;
made up of the_creek palace, the Greek and American
militag, the American Embassy, and, most notori-
ously, the CIA. The communist threat had withered; anti-
communism, however, remained the official state religion
and the excuse the government used to suspend various
civil liberties. Yet still most Greeks deeply admired Ameri-
ca (where many friends and relatives had gone to seek
work) and were acutely aware that their country's eco-
nomic and defense interests were best served by close
association with the United States.
SUPPORT for the American presence only wavered
when the Greeks felt that it threatened their national
interests. This occurred in 1955, when John Foster Dulles
sent a tersely written letter to the Greeks demanding, in
essence, that they ignore, for the sake of NATO, Cyprus
-
related Turkish atrocities against Greeks living in Istanbul
and Izmir. Fierce anti-American feelings swept over
Greece, from right to left, and died down only as outrage
over the atrocities faded. To this day Washington tends to
treat Greece's conflict with Turkey?a matter to the Greeks
of territorial integrity?as an atavistic tiff between NATO's
backward Balkan brothers.
The great challenge to the "para-state" came with the
rise of George Papandreou's Center Union party in the
early 1960s. Riding a wave of indignation over heavy-
handed voter intimidation by the Greek military in the
1961 elections, Papandreou?with his son Andreas, re-
cently returned from the U.S., at his side?won an unprec-
edented 53 percent of the vote in 1964. But 17 months
later, after clashing with Lyndon Johnson over Dean Ach-
eson's plan for the partition of Cyprus, and with the mon-
archy over control of the military, Papandreou was ma-
neuvered into resigning. Not long after that, an obscure
group of colonels seized power. Democracy in Greece,
such as it was, disappeared for seven years.
Ask a Greek if he thinks the U.S. had anything to do
with the colonels' coup, and he'll look at you with that
contemptuous smile the world reserves for American in-
nocents. Indeed, many of the Greek officers involved hal
been trained by the CIA?the junta's leader, Colonel
George Papadopoulos, had been the liaison officer be-
tween the CIA and its Greek evivalent, the KYI3 The
very execution of the coup was based on a NATO-drafted
contingency plan. To this day Washington denies it had
any idea that the men it was supporting to defend democ-
racy were in fact plotting to undermine it.
Surprised or not, Washington made the colonels feel
right at home. While other Western leaders avoided public
contact with the brutal regime, the U.S. sent dignitaries
such as Spiros Anagnostopoulos (a.k.a. Spiro Agnew) to
have their pictures taken with the dictators and assure
them of generous assistance. Large American corpora-
tions such as Litton Industries and Coca-Cola also courted
the colonels, and won access to Greek markets on almost
colonial terms. "We in the U.S.," wrote President Nixon to
Colonel Papadopoulos, "greatly appreciate the welcome
that is given to American companies and the sense of
security that the government of Greece is imparting to
them." The colonels, eager to create an appearance of
legitimacy, spread these and other gushing U.S. tributes
across the headlines of the government-controlled press.
Thus a whole generation of Greeks learned to make a
connection between the American government, multina-
tional corporations, and "capitalist imperialism."
All this pleased the Soviets. "Communist countries cul-
tivated good relations with the junta," recalls Paul Anas-
tasi, the Greek-Cypriot journalist who uncovered the
KGB's hidden support for Ethnos, the currently popular
Greek anti-American newspaper. "The Soviet strategy
was that it was in their interest for the dictatorship to last
as long as possible, because this would radicalize the pop-
ulation to the left and justify the left-wing cause. They
were right."
If American support for the junta assured an anti-
American reaction, the Cyprus crisis of 1974 guaranteed
that the reaction would be broad and unstoppable. Few
Greeks today doubt?nor should they?that Henry Kis,;
Cortfinuelf
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singer and the CIA were neck deep in the bloody affairs.
The junta's insane bid for the Republic of Cyprus, which
paved the way for the brutal Turkish counterattack, result-
ed in roughly the same partition of the island nation Dean
Acheson had pressured for ten years earlier.
Humiliated by the Cyprus crisis, the junta collapsed.
The job of dealing with the subsequent national outrage
fell to the conservative and democratic government of
Constantine Karamanlis. Karamanlis jailed the colonels,
legalized the Communist Party, and pulled Greece out of
the military wing of NATO. But that wasn't enough to hold
back the populist left-wing movement coalescing around
Andreas Papandreou. When Papandreou's Pan-Hellenic
Socialist Movement (Pasok) was reelected last month after
four years in office, it became the first non-right-wing gov-
ernment to survive in Greece in over 40 years.
The American press never tires of observing that much
of Papandreou's appeal is due to his ability to exploit
popular resentment of the American government. Yet this
appeal can only go so far in an otherwise conservative,
pro-Western nation like Greece. "There's a sense that the
Greeks got their own back against America," observes
Paul Anastasi. "But just as the right wing's excessive anti-
communism generated an anti-right, anti-American back-
lash, today the trend is in the other direction." Indeed,
opinion polls last year noted a slight ebbing of anti-U.S.
government sentiments among Greeks. Foreign policy
was hardly an issue in the spring elections. "People are
rather fed up with hearing about the American threat,"
says Anastasi.
That is, until this hijacking fiasco. The Reagan adminis-
tration's "travel advisory" touched the wrong raw nerve
at the wrong time. The administration has promised "re-
taliation" against the perpetrators of this terrorism, and
has so far succeeded only in punishing one of the victims.
PAUL GLASTRIS
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