The Greek Journalist Who Rubbed Shoulders With America’s Powerful

Elias Demetracopoulos was honored astatine the Greek Embassy successful DC for his combat against the junta successful 2008. Credit: AMNA

Greek writer Elias Demetracopoulos whitethorn not beryllium a acquainted sanction among Greeks oregon Greek-Americans but helium was 1 of the astir fascinating figures successful 20th-century governmental history.

Demetracopoulos whitethorn beryllium overlooked, but his beingness reads similar an epic escapade story, says writer James H. Barron successful the instauration of The Greek Connection: The Life of Elias Demetracopoulos, published recently.

As a precocious twelve-year-old successful occupied Greece, the young Athenian took portion successful heroic absorption efforts against the Nazis, actions that led to his imprisonment and torture.

After his beingness was miraculously spared, helium became an investigative journalist, covering Greece’s tumultuous authorities and the expanding power of the US successful the region. A clever and scoop-hungry reporter, Demetracopoulos soon gained entree to almighty figures successful some governments.

From 1950 to 1958, helium served arsenic the governmental exertion of the newspaper Kathimerini. In 1951, helium became a analogous for Macedonia and Thessaloniki. Demetracopoulos was besides a governmental exertion for Ethnos and co-founded the English-language Athens Daily Post. He was a analogous for the North American Newspaper Alliance and the New York Herald Tribune.

Greek writer escapes to the US

When the Greek military dictatorship took powerfulness successful 1967, the Greek writer narrowly escaped to Washington DC, wherever helium would pb the combat to reconstruct ideology successful his homeland portion moving afoul of the US authorities astatine the aforesaid time.

The writer uncovers the communicative of a antheral whose tireless pursuit of uncomfortable truths would enactment him astatine likelihood with not lone his ain authorities but that of the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations, making him a people of the CIA, FBI, and State Department surveillance and harassment—and Greek kidnapping and assassination plots US authorities whitethorn person purposefully overlooked.

Demetracopoulos’ largest scoop, the find that the authorities successful Athens funneled $549,000 to Richard Nixon’s run successful the run-up to the 1968 elections via Greek-American concern mogul Tom Pappas, did not person an contiguous impact.

As Barron notes:

“The thought that US payer dollars had been laundered by the Greek junta with CIA complicity could person been a large stroke to Nixon [and] could person fed specified a large communicative to respective reporters and urged them to travel up. He was a reliable root for scoop-hungry columnists similar Rowland Evans and Bob Novak, and muckrakers similar Jack Anderson and Drew Pearson. He besides could crook to his friends connected Capitol Hill for statements of outrage and calls for investigation.”

Instead, for reasons that adjacent Barron can’t rather fathom, Demetracopoulos went to Larry O’Brien, seat of the Democratic National Committee who, incredibly, chose not to usage the accusation to harm Nixon’s chances of being elected. Nixon past went connected to bushed his Democratic hostile Hubert Humphrey by the narrowest of margins.

Demetracopoulos had idiosyncratic friendships crossed the governmental spectrum, including Admiral Arleigh Burke, Louise Gore, and Senators Ted Kennedy, Strom Thurmond, Frank E. Moss, Quentin N. Burdick, and Mike Gravel.

In 2008, helium received Greece’s Order of the Phoenix. He died successful Athens from earthy causes connected February 17, 2016 astatine the property of 87.

The writer of the book, James H. Barron, is simply a journalist, attorney, and founding advisory committee subordinate of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting.