1328_A41-A47.qxd 12/7/07 9:19 AM Page 605 310-567/B428-S/11006 Eastern Mediterranean Greece 239. Letter From the Deputy Chief of Mission in Greece (McClelland) to the Country Director for Greek Affairs (Brewster)1 Athens, January 2, 1969. Dear Dan: I’ve been wanting to get off a good letter to you for a long time, but as I expect you’re aware, performing satisfactorily as DCM in Athens involves a good deal of generalized activity—attending to per- sonnel questions, administrative problems, American community rela- tions, representational work, and the like, which limits the time I can devote to important policy matters such as the “$64 question” of where do we go from here in US-Greek relations? (Such secondary issues as the Georgopapadakos and Father Panteleimon cases,2 which arise pe- riodically, also take up a great deal of time.) Now that we have an ex- cellent Political Counselor in the person of Arch Blood, it is also bet- ter, I think, that I not get too directly into the business of policy recommendation, which is more properly the bread and butter of re- lations between POL and the Ambassador. I don’t mean to imply by this that the Ambassador doesn’t welcome my views and give me am- ple opportunity to present them, but simply that a lot of other matters inevitably land in my lap related to the operation of the Mission which prevent me from giving the sort of undivided, intensive attention to policy questions which should underpin valid judgments on them. With this preamble, let me nevertheless deliver myself of some thoughts about the future of our relations with Greece which have been accumulating over the weeks and which your letters of November 26th 1 Source: Department of State, Greek Desk Files: Lot 71 D 509, Correspondence to and From Athens. Confidential; Official–Informal. A notation on the letter reads: “A very good think piece by R. McClelland.” 2 The reference to Georgopapadakos was not identified. Bishop Panteleimon had refused to officiate at ceremonies attended by junta officials and had been disciplined by the government-controlled Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church. 605 1328_A41-A47.qxd 12/7/07 9:19 AM Page 606 310-567/B428-S/11006 606 Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, Volume XXIX to Arch and of December 10th to the Ambassador prompt me to formulate.3 I detect a definite note of urgency, Dan, in your letters about re- ceiving further, and hopefully, regular evidence of “concrete progress” on the part of the GOG in the well-known directions. Whereas I’m not sure what is specifically at the root of this (other than the commend- able desire of an efficient and concerned officer such as yourself to get on with the show), I imagine that one element is the constant weight of Congressional, press and public pressure on the Department, gen- erated and kept alive by the police-state aspects of the present Greek regime. I sincerely wish we could be more responsive and helpful to you in relieving this pressure with more precise, frequent and reas- suring evidence of moderation and relaxation on the part of the GOG. As you well know, though, our leverage in this touchy area is very lim- ited. About all I can call attention to positively at the moment in this respect is the fact that the Strasbourg fiasco4 seems definitely to have made the regime somewhat more gun-shy and to have caused them, advisedly, to pull back on the almost uninterrupted series of trials they have been conducting. (And incidentally, there is no evidence that the Strasbourg mess was the result of anything more sinister than the gen- eral obtuseness of the Greek police in respect to public relations and the lack of proper coordination between them and the Foreign Min- istry people in preparing this undertaking.) I think it’s encouraging, however, in terms of the GOG’s increasing awareness of the impor- tance of its foreign image, for example, that they decided not to exe- cute Panagoulis; sent Theodorakis back to the Peloponnesian moun- tains; and postponed (possibly indefinitely) the trial of old General Argyropoulos.5 These moves could, of course, be more in the nature of a tactical retreat than indicative of any fundamental policy changes. Still, I believe that they are manifestly beginning to “wise up.” 3 Copies of the letters are in the Department of State, Greek Desk Files: Lot 71 D 6, Correspondence to and From Athens. 4Apparently a reference to the resolution adopted by the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe, September 26, 1968, calling for an end to martial law and par- liamentary elections in Greece and recommending that the Council consider suspend- ing Greece from membership at its January 1969 session. 5 Alexander Panagoulis, who was convicted of an August 1968 attempt to assassi- nate Prime Minister Papadopoulos, had his death sentence commuted. Mikis Theodor- akis, the composer and anti-junta activist, was released from prison during a December 1968 amnesty but rearrested in April 1969. General Archimedes Argyropoulos was con- victed by a military court of planning civil unrest in the event that national elections scheduled for May 1967 had been rigged. 1328_A41-A47.qxd 12/7/07 9:19 AM Page 607 310-567/B428-S/11006 Greece 607 If anything is clear at this juncture, in the aftermath of the Prime Minister’s December 14th speech,6 and even more so of the Sta- matelopoulos–Ladas hassle,7 it is that the Papadopoulos government is indisputably in control of the country, and is accordingly going to proceed in the course of the coming months, or possibly even years, at a pace of its own choosing, which is likely to be slow and deliberate. The Prime Minister has won the first round with his recalcitrant hard- line Secretaries General (if, indeed, a really serious conflict has ever ex- isted in this area) and seems to see eye-to-eye with General Angelis, who has emerged with the reorganized HNDGS in a very powerful and independent position. In the circumstances, what compelling rea- sons has Papadopoulos to act otherwise? There are two potential lines of development (or a combination of the two) which could force him to do so: 1) the growth of serious and organized internal opposition (generated by protracted oppression and/or grave economic deterioration); and, 2) the rise of similarly se- rious opposition externally, including in particular, that of the United States, plus some of the other major NATO powers, like West Germany or Italy, where there are vocal domestic political forces opposed to the present GOG. It must be conceded, on examining the situation dispassionately, that neither of these adverse developments is taking place, or at least shows any signs of doing so in sufficiently acute or immediate form to worry the GOG. Certainly no serious domestic political opposition is at present on the horizon. On the contrary, we are beginning to see some evidence of a willingness on the part of the old political forces to reach some sort of accommodation with Papadopoulos. Admittedly, this development is in a very incipient stage and could well break down or come to naught, particularly if Papadopoulos is not sincere, but proves merely to be “playing games” for his own tactical purposes. While the intellectual establishment remains unalterably and articu- lately opposed to the regime (and this is not a negligible factor because a potential leadership element is involved), there are a great many small people (perhaps even a majority), especially in the country but also in the cities, who don’t find the present GOG too bad, in fact are often reasonably enthusiastic about it. On the economic front conditions could go down hill seriously somewhere along the road, a year or two from now, if the Government 6 The Embassy provided an analysis of the speech in telegram 8308 from Athens, December 16, 1968. (National Archives, RG 59, Central Files 1967–69, POL 15–1 GREECE) 7 Dimitri Stamatelopoulos and Ioannis Ladas, two members of the original con- spiratorial group of military officers. Stamatelopoulos had become an outspoken con- servative critic of the junta while Ladas, an Under Secretary in the Ministry of Interior, was one of its foremost spokesmen. 1328_A41-A47.qxd 12/7/07 9:19 AM Page 608 310-567/B428-S/11006 608 Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, Volume XXIX persists in certain of its foolish and short-sighted policies such as in- discriminate borrowing at high interest rates to improve its balance of payments image. It will also have to guard very carefully against in- flation which, paradoxically, could become a threat if confidence in the economy is restored to the extent that a boom in consumers spending takes place with the money now being cautiously held. But the eco- nomic oligarchy (and this represents a significant power factor in Greece) has unmistakably cast its lot with the regime and, for obvious reasons, is not going to try to undermine it (unless the Government tries to promote really radical, share-the-wealth schemes). We have the large projected Onassis investment, meanwhile, together with a con- certed effort on the part of the GOG, offering concessions that no pre- vious government has been willing to make, to attract the money of other wealthy Greek shipping operators. Quite conceivably this could succeed. Even Litton’s investments seem at long last to be picking up.8 And underlying these more striking economic indicators, the everyday things that matter to the bulk of the Greek population, such as the con- sumer goods price level, the absence of labor unrest and better treat- ment at the hands of the bureaucracy, remain not only tolerable, but probably more favorable than before April 1967.