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One INTRODUCTION WITH DRAMATIS PERSONAE In setting out to write an account that is admittedly personal, and labeled as such, one should not have to apologize for presenting the story strictly from one’s own perspective. Yet so much historical writing by public servants purports to be the inside-story-as-it-actually-happened rather than only one man’s version of the story that it seems proper to admit at the beginning that what follows necessarily emphasizes my own role (or what I thought it to be) in the events described, that it suffers from the human tendency to remember occasions when one was right and to forget instances when one was wrong, that the views and actions of others with whose policies I was in disagreement are obviously presented less sympathetically than they would be by those other persons, and that a history of the same place and period by any other participant/observer would read vastly differently. If it is a truism that all history is memoir, it nevertheless bears repeating.1 It may strike the reader as curious that a number of the policy disagreements mentioned in the account to follow were recorded in memoranda and are thus available for quotation. Anyone with experience of an American Embassy knows that most discussions of and disagreements about policy matters occur orally—in face-to-face meetings of officers, in staff meetings, and in ad hoc ‘‘country team’’ meetings—and are therefore hardly ever recorded on paper. The final result, that is, the policy arrived at, is recorded, but not the often contradictory inputs. One explanation for the existence of a written record in this case is that during the period covered I was not working on Greek ‘‘internal’’ (i.e., domestic) political affairs and was therefore not a member of the inner circle of officers regularly consulted by the ambassador about policy matters other than the Cyprus problem. Thus, I had to try to inject my views from ‘‘outside ,’’ and that required in most cases an unsolicited memorandum to my boss, the political counselor. But why did I not simply tell her what I thought and save the trouble of preparing a formal memorandum? One reason is that most bureaucrats can more easily ignore an oral demarche than they can a piece of paper. (‘‘Demarche’’ is diplomatic jargon for a presentation of an argument for, or an explanation of, a policy position, usually made by a diplomat to a foreign government interlocutor.) Secondly, during a crisis period it is extremely difficult to get a senior officer’s undivided attention long enough to present a coherent case for a different policy approach. Thirdly, one can go over the head of one’s superior—acceptably if not too subtly—by passing a copy of one’s memo up the line to the deputy chief of mission or the ambassador or both without violating the hierarchical niceties too profoundly.2 If one’s boss won’t pass one’s ideas along, one can do it oneself by using this technique. It was furthermore known that one could more readily obtain access to Ambassador Phillips Talbot’s mind through a written document than orally. He liked to mull over ideas at his leisure. His successor, Ambassador Henry Tasca, was just as likely to ignore anything in writing; the way to reach him was through the ear. Finally, writing a memorandum is an exercise in selfdiscipline : if one cannot organize and present one’s ideas coherently on paper, they are probably not worth bothering anyone else with. My assignment to Athens came about principally because an acquaintance of mine, Robert Houghton, happened to be in charge of the Personnel section dealing with political officers of my rank, and he knew that I would welcome an assignment to Athens. For some seven years I had regularly listed Greece as my first choice on my annual ‘‘Post Preference Report,’’ a bureaucratic form notorious for the lack of use made of it by personnel officers and usually referred to as the ‘‘April fool’s card,’’ in reference to the date of its annual submission to Washington. But the IBM computer used by Personnel had included my name on a list of Greek-speaking officers (probably because some other form showed that I had once spoken the language fluently), which brought my name to the attention of Houghton, who was looking for a ‘‘warm body’’ to fill an upcoming...

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