Weissman writes: "Whatever the Greek people decide in Sunday's off-again,
on-again referendum, the story won't end there. The IMF, most Eurocrats, and
the mass media here will continue to vilify Prime Minister Alexis Tsipris
for fighting against austerity, while many on the left will accuse him of
selling out far too much on his anti-austerity, pro-growth promises."
A protester waves a Greek flag during an anti-austerity rally in front of
the parliament building in Athens, Greece on June 21, 2015. (photo: AP)
Greece: When Will NATO Call In the Troops?
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
02 July 15
Whatever the Greek people decide in Sunday's off-again, on-again referendum,
the story won't end there. The IMF, most Eurocrats, and the mass media here
will continue to vilify Prime Minister Alexis Tsipris for fighting against
austerity, while many on the left will accuse him of selling out far too
much on his anti-austerity, pro-growth promises. But if he and his
Syriza-led government manage to retain the confidence of Greek voters and
become a viable model for others in Europe, how long will Washington and its
NATO allies let them be? History offers a nasty warning - and a glimmer of
hope.
On April 21, 1967, high-ranking Greek military, intelligence, and secret
police officers took power in a well-executed coup. They relied on NATO's
Prometheus Plan, which Washington and its allies had designed ostensibly to
prevent local Communists from coming to power anywhere in Western Europe,
even by way of democratic elections.
The Greek officers claimed they were acting to prevent an imminent Communist
plot, and some of them may have believed it. In reality, at least in the
short term, they were blocking the expected election the following month of
the moderate, anti-monarchical Center Union, headed by Georgios Papandreou
Sr. But the colonels, as they became known, had grander ambitions.
"These colonels had been plotting for years and years," explained Robert
Keeley, a US foreign service officer in the country at the time and later
ambassador to Greece. "They were fascists. They fitted the classic
definition of fascism, as represented by Mussolini in the 1920s: a corporate
state, uniting industry and unions, no parliament, trains running on time,
heavy discipline and censorship . almost a classic fascist ideal."
The coup organizers quickly rounded up as many as 10,000 people, including
politicians, artists, academics, students, and priests. Military and
security police tortured many of them, both to gather information about
possible opposition and - more important - to terrify the Greek people into
submission. They pulled out their prisoners' toenails and fingernails, beat
the bottom of their feet, breaking bones and peeling off the skin. They
shoved filthy rags often soaked with urine or even excrement down their
throats, pumped high-pressure water up their anuses, inserted sharp objects
into women's vaginas and men's anuses, and applied electric shocks to heads,
nipples, and genitals.
For seven years in the land that invented democracy, the colonels pursued
their fascist agenda, keeping themselves in power with continued arrests,
torture, exile to desolate prison islands, and denial of basic human rights.
Their behavior so outraged European public opinion that the Council of
Europe voted to exclude Greece from its ranks, a symbolic victory that
served as a stepping stone to the restoration of civilian rule.
Lest we lose all hope, two people did much of the work to make the colonels
official pariahs. Maria Becket, a wealthy Greek aristocrat then in her
thirties, worked with the underground resistance to smuggle torture victims
out of the country to testify before European authorities. Her husband James
Becket, an American lawyer, did Amnesty International's first report on
torture, documenting its use by the Greek junta. Even after Guantanamo and
Abu Ghraib, his 1970 book Barbarism in Greece still offers useful insights.
I came to know the Beckets in the early 1970s, when Jim was working as
Director of Public Information for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in
Geneva. Anna and I happened to be there, and when Maria learned that we were
about to fly on to Istanbul, she asked if we would stop over in Athens. She
wanted us to deliver a series of secret messages to members of the
resistance. We agreed, and the horrors in Greece suddenly appeared far more
personal than writing an article, signing a petition, or applauding the
iconic Costa Gavras film Z.
Our fear focused not just on the colonels, but also on agencies of our own
governments, British and American, who had built up a long, symbiotic
relationship with the fascists of Greece.
Back in the closing days of World War II, the British government of Winston
Churchill moved brutally against the Greek Communists, who had led the
resistance to German and Italian occupation. To oppose them, the Brits
created Greek special forces, the Mountain Raiders Companies (LOK), which
pointedly recruited fascists who had dominated the Greek military and police
ever since the 1930s. Many of the recruits had created "security battalions"
during the occupation to hunt down anti-Nazi partisans and slaughter Greek
Jews. After liberation, the Greek government purged them as Nazi
collaborators, but their brothers-in-arms worked to rehabilitate them
through a group called the Holy Bond of Greek Officers.
The award-winning historian and journalist Christopher Simpson sums up the
story in his book Blowback. When the US declared its Truman Doctrine in
1947, Washington took on London's imperial role in Greece and gave military
backing to these same fascists, along with monarchists and other
ultra-right-wing nationalists, in a civil war to eradicate the Communists.
In this effort, the Pentagon poured millions of dollars into the pro-fascist
Holy Bond to create a "Secret Army Reserve," which became central to
Washington's longterm intervention in Greece. Hold in mind that one of the
Holy Bond's founders - Col. George Papadopoulos - became the recognized
leader of the military junta after the 1967 coup.
A cadre of Greek-American officials added to this initial intimacy, none
more so than Thomas Hercules Karamessines, who headed US intelligence in
Greece during the civil war and then became CIA station chief in Athens. He
played a leading role in creating Greece's national intelligence service,
the KYP, which Papadopoulos came to head. The KYP then worked with the CIA
to control Greece's largely fascist special forces, the LOK, and groom them
for their part in NATO's secret stay-behind armies that operated throughout
Western Europe.
Called "Operation Gladio" in Italy and "Red Sheepskin" in Greece, these
shadowy groups trained for guerrilla resistance should the Soviet Union
invade. They also prepared for "domestic emergencies," which is how the
special forces came to play such a prominent role in the 1967 coup and how
the Greek colonels came to rely on NATO's Prometheus Plan. "It was," said
Col. Yannis Ladas of the military police, "a very simple, diabolical plan."
And what of Tom Karamessines? In the years before the coup, he had become
deputy chief of all CIA covert action worldwide, and not just in Greece. His
work included the very similar Piano Solo coup attempt in Italy in 1964 and
- first as deputy and then as operations chief - a string of military coups
in Latin America, culminating in the death of president Salvador Allende in
Chile in 1972. Karamessines was a very busy man.
More to the point, his career serves as metaphor. America's historic
intervention in Greece shaped the first Cold War. It emboldened policy
makers who wanted to work with fascists elsewhere, from the followers of
Stepan Bandera in Ukraine to the military regimes in Chile and Argentina.
And it defined how succeeding US presidents would expand a generally
unacknowledged American empire under the guise of defending "the free world"
from some overhyped Soviet - or Russian - expansion.
History is unlikely to repeat itself in the same way. But with the buildup
of the new Cold War and the overhyped flirtation between Tsipris and
Russia's Vladimir Putin, we should remember the sadly-forgotten heroism of
Maria and James Becket as we keep our eye on NATO's current relationship
with the Greek military. Stay tuned.
________________________________________
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly
Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a
magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France,
where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How
Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently
Break Their Hold."
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
A protester waves a Greek flag during an anti-austerity rally in front of
the parliament building in Athens, Greece on June 21, 2015. (photo: AP)
/SRCURLONE/SRCURLONE
Greece: When Will NATO Call In the Troops?
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
02 July 15
hatever the Greek people decide in Sunday's off-again, on-again referendum,
the story won't end there. The IMF, most Eurocrats, and the mass media here
will continue to vilify Prime Minister Alexis Tsipris for fighting against
austerity, while many on the left will accuse him of selling out far too
much on his anti-austerity, pro-growth promises. But if he and his
Syriza-led government manage to retain the confidence of Greek voters and
become a viable model for others in Europe, how long will Washington and its
NATO allies let them be? History offers a nasty warning - and a glimmer of
hope.
On April 21, 1967, high-ranking Greek military, intelligence, and secret
police officers took power in a well-executed coup. They relied on NATO's
Prometheus Plan, which Washington and its allies had designed ostensibly to
prevent local Communists from coming to power anywhere in Western Europe,
even by way of democratic elections.
The Greek officers claimed they were acting to prevent an imminent Communist
plot, and some of them may have believed it. In reality, at least in the
short term, they were blocking the expected election the following month of
the moderate, anti-monarchical Center Union, headed by Georgios Papandreou
Sr. But the colonels, as they became known, had grander ambitions.
"These colonels had been plotting for years and years," explained Robert
Keeley, a US foreign service officer in the country at the time and later
ambassador to Greece. "They were fascists. They fitted the classic
definition of fascism, as represented by Mussolini in the 1920s: a corporate
state, uniting industry and unions, no parliament, trains running on time,
heavy discipline and censorship . almost a classic fascist ideal."
The coup organizers quickly rounded up as many as 10,000 people, including
politicians, artists, academics, students, and priests. Military and
security police tortured many of them, both to gather information about
possible opposition and - more important - to terrify the Greek people into
submission. They pulled out their prisoners' toenails and fingernails, beat
the bottom of their feet, breaking bones and peeling off the skin. They
shoved filthy rags often soaked with urine or even excrement down their
throats, pumped high-pressure water up their anuses, inserted sharp objects
into women's vaginas and men's anuses, and applied electric shocks to heads,
nipples, and genitals.
For seven years in the land that invented democracy, the colonels pursued
their fascist agenda, keeping themselves in power with continued arrests,
torture, exile to desolate prison islands, and denial of basic human rights.
Their behavior so outraged European public opinion that the Council of
Europe voted to exclude Greece from its ranks, a symbolic victory that
served as a stepping stone to the restoration of civilian rule.
Lest we lose all hope, two people did much of the work to make the colonels
official pariahs. Maria Becket, a wealthy Greek aristocrat then in her
thirties, worked with the underground resistance to smuggle torture victims
out of the country to testify before European authorities. Her husband James
Becket, an American lawyer, did Amnesty International's first report on
torture, documenting its use by the Greek junta. Even after Guantanamo and
Abu Ghraib, his 1970 book Barbarism in Greece still offers useful insights.
I came to know the Beckets in the early 1970s, when Jim was working as
Director of Public Information for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in
Geneva. Anna and I happened to be there, and when Maria learned that we were
about to fly on to Istanbul, she asked if we would stop over in Athens. She
wanted us to deliver a series of secret messages to members of the
resistance. We agreed, and the horrors in Greece suddenly appeared far more
personal than writing an article, signing a petition, or applauding the
iconic Costa Gavras film Z.
Our fear focused not just on the colonels, but also on agencies of our own
governments, British and American, who had built up a long, symbiotic
relationship with the fascists of Greece.
Back in the closing days of World War II, the British government of Winston
Churchill moved brutally against the Greek Communists, who had led the
resistance to German and Italian occupation. To oppose them, the Brits
created Greek special forces, the Mountain Raiders Companies (LOK), which
pointedly recruited fascists who had dominated the Greek military and police
ever since the 1930s. Many of the recruits had created "security battalions"
during the occupation to hunt down anti-Nazi partisans and slaughter Greek
Jews. After liberation, the Greek government purged them as Nazi
collaborators, but their brothers-in-arms worked to rehabilitate them
through a group called the Holy Bond of Greek Officers.
The award-winning historian and journalist Christopher Simpson sums up the
story in his book Blowback. When the US declared its Truman Doctrine in
1947, Washington took on London's imperial role in Greece and gave military
backing to these same fascists, along with monarchists and other
ultra-right-wing nationalists, in a civil war to eradicate the Communists.
In this effort, the Pentagon poured millions of dollars into the pro-fascist
Holy Bond to create a "Secret Army Reserve," which became central to
Washington's longterm intervention in Greece. Hold in mind that one of the
Holy Bond's founders - Col. George Papadopoulos - became the recognized
leader of the military junta after the 1967 coup.
A cadre of Greek-American officials added to this initial intimacy, none
more so than Thomas Hercules Karamessines, who headed US intelligence in
Greece during the civil war and then became CIA station chief in Athens. He
played a leading role in creating Greece's national intelligence service,
the KYP, which Papadopoulos came to head. The KYP then worked with the CIA
to control Greece's largely fascist special forces, the LOK, and groom them
for their part in NATO's secret stay-behind armies that operated throughout
Western Europe.
Called "Operation Gladio" in Italy and "Red Sheepskin" in Greece, these
shadowy groups trained for guerrilla resistance should the Soviet Union
invade. They also prepared for "domestic emergencies," which is how the
special forces came to play such a prominent role in the 1967 coup and how
the Greek colonels came to rely on NATO's Prometheus Plan. "It was," said
Col. Yannis Ladas of the military police, "a very simple, diabolical plan."
And what of Tom Karamessines? In the years before the coup, he had become
deputy chief of all CIA covert action worldwide, and not just in Greece. His
work included the very similar Piano Solo coup attempt in Italy in 1964 and
- first as deputy and then as operations chief - a string of military coups
in Latin America, culminating in the death of president Salvador Allende in
Chile in 1972. Karamessines was a very busy man.
More to the point, his career serves as metaphor. America's historic
intervention in Greece shaped the first Cold War. It emboldened policy
makers who wanted to work with fascists elsewhere, from the followers of
Stepan Bandera in Ukraine to the military regimes in Chile and Argentina.
And it defined how succeeding US presidents would expand a generally
unacknowledged American empire under the guise of defending "the free world"
from some overhyped Soviet - or Russian - expansion.
History is unlikely to repeat itself in the same way. But with the buildup
of the new Cold War and the overhyped flirtation between Tsipris and
Russia's Vladimir Putin, we should remember the sadly-forgotten heroism of
Maria and James Becket as we keep our eye on NATO's current relationship
with the Greek military. Stay tuned.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly
Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a
magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France,
where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How
Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently
Break Their Hold."
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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