The Colonels' Coup and the American Embassy: A Diplomat's View of the Breakdown of Democracy in Cold War Greece

Part Ten: Assessing the Colonels' Regime

Ten ASSESSING THE COLONELS’ REGIME THE FDR FIASCO In mid-February, a few weeks after the Embassy had resumed normal relations with the Greek regime, Ambassador Talbot enthusiastically accepted a proposal by the local American military that he invite Colonel Papadopoulos, the new premier, to a luncheon aboard the Sixth Fleet carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt. The American military sold the idea to him as a means of reingratiating himself with the junta, to counter their displeasure with his performance in connection with the king’s coup. The ambassador and the prime minister would break bread together aboard the American carrier, and they would be friends ever after. I pointed out to the ambassador that while this scheme might be of some benefit in making Papadopoulos less suspicious of him, and therefore more amenable to accepting his advice, it would have the decidedly adverse effect of totally undercutting the posture of ‘‘cool but correct’’ relations with the Greek government that we were supposed to be maintaining as the cornerstone of our policy. I anticipated that the luncheon would be heavily publicized in Greece and abroad as an embrace by the U.S. government of the new Greek regime. My argument was countered with the observation that only official U.S. Navy journalists and photographers would be aboard the carrier, so we would be in control of any publicity that might arise out of the function. As a former newspaperman Talbot should have known better than to swallow that. Papadopoulos eagerly accepted the invitation and brought with him to the luncheon the two other principals of the coup group, Brigadier Pattakos and Colonel Makarezos. There was extensive photographic coverage of their visit to the ship by the official U.S. Navy photographers, who, with their usual efficiency, provided full sets of large, blown-up prints within a few hours for delivery to the high-ranking Greek guests. Naturally, these pictures were plastered all over the Athens papers in their very next editions, under banner headlines proclaiming the shipboard visit a momentous occasion in the history of the April 21 Revolution, as it surely was, since it signaled the official and indisputable embrace of the junta by the U.S. government. The backlash in the U.S. Congress and the American press, led by the New York Times, was equally vehement, with severe criticism of Talbot for having permitted himself to be so used. The fact that the ship in question, the FDR, carried the name of the father of modern American political liberalism aroused special bitterness in that it had served as the bed on which the Greek junta had been embraced. Ambassador Talbot lamely replied to the criticism (privately) that of course we had not anticipated the way in which the regime would make propaganda capital out of the visit, a visit that was moreover quite routine: it was traditional for Greek defense ministers to pay courtesy visits to major ships of the Sixth Fleet visiting Athens. Talbot’s critics in the Greek opposition couldn’t stomach that answer. It was true that Papadopoulos was defense minister, but how could anyone overlook that he was also the prime minister—and the obvious difference between a routine visit by a civilian defense minister of a normal political cabinet under a parliamentary regime and this unprecedented gesture toward a group whom the king had tried to get rid of only a few weeks before? One interesting aspect of this episode (an episode that still rankles many Greeks, for whom it remains a classic instance of diplomatic ineptitude) is that the great enthusiasm the Papadopoulos regime displayed in giving massive publicity to the event is proof positive of their desperate hankering after American acceptance and support. At that time, and for many months afterward , the members of the junta continued to feel terribly insecure in their ministerial chairs and went out of their way to play up and exaggerate any small sign of American benediction. ANDREAS RELEASED Margaret Papandreou and her four children were facing a bleak Christmas season, with husband and father in Averoff Prison, Papadopoulos riding 162 assessing the colonels’ regime high (apparently) down at the Prime Ministry, and the future very much in doubt. To cheer them up a bit, Louise delivered to them a fat American frozen turkey to roast for their Christmas dinner. We then drove north to Salonika through a raging...