The Kremlin's Confidant, page 15
Papadopoulos, long prominent in IDEA, had played an active role in Operation Pericles. An habitual conspirator, he was known to his colleagues as ‘Nasser’. Karamanlis had tried to displace him, and been resisted. George Papandreou tried to post him far from Athens, appointing him to command the 117th Artillery Squadron on the Turkish-Greek land border. The palace reacted to this transfer. ‘Are you trying to destroy the armed forces?’ King Constantine telephoned to ask the then undersecretary of Defence.8 Soon after the ousting of Papandreou, Papadopoulos was posted back to Athens, returning to the Greek Central Intelligence Services (Kentrikí Ypiresía Pliroforión (KYP)) and acting as a liaison officer with the CIA. He was one of the officers who regularly visited Dovas and Arnaoutis, the king’s aide-de-camp, according to the memoirs of Philip Deane (Gigantes), who was also serving in the palace.9 Deane also noted as visitors Colonel Makarezos, Lieutenant Colonel Ioannides and Brigadier Pattakos. All of these featured in the coup, when Papadopoulos took matters into his own hands, obliging first Spandidakis and then Constantine to acquiesce. At 4.15 that morning, the king had told the US Defense Attaché, ‘They are headed this way for me. Get word to the Sixth Fleet. Get word to Washington and have them send your army in.’10
Faced with the officers who used to visit his palace, he attempted to pull rank. His bluster fell flat. By noon on 21 April, the plotters had been sworn in as the new government of Greece and Papadopoulos was Minister of National Defence. Constantine had given the whole process a shrivelled fig-leaf of legitimacy, attending the swearing-in and being photographed with the new cabinet.
As the Defense Attaché, O.K. Marshall, wrote a week later to a colleague at the US Embassy: ‘It was the right coup, but the wrong guys at the wrong time.’11
From Officer to Dissident
Challenging the Colonels
On the morning of 21 April 1967, Martin emerged from the Underground at Westminster to see the Evening Standard billboards proclaiming: ‘King’s men seize power in Greece’. He was on his way to talk about the threats of a coup with his initial boss on Malta, Commodore (now Rear Admiral) Farnhill. What Martin had long feared had become a reality. Asked by Farnhill for an appraisal, he questioned whether the king or the generals were in charge, and argued that the overthrow of democratic government would be detrimental to European interests. He was told his views were completely at odds with those of the Foreign Office.
The preamble of the North Atlantic Treaty commits NATO members to ‘the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law’. The coup was at clear variance to this. In its immediate aftermath, around 8,000 alleged communists and potential opponents of the regime were arrested and imprisoned or exiled to remote islands, political parties were closed, and all civil rights suspended. In the following two years, at least 2,000 people were tortured.1
The Labour government reacted with a notable lack of condemnation. The US Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, had ‘ordered continued silence’ about this overthrow of democracy in a NATO ally2 – and in London the Foreign Office came close to toeing the US line. The first statement by the British government was three days after the coup, that ‘to see a friend and an ally go through this kind of problem, it is as much of concern to us as it is to them’. Two weeks later, Richard Crossman, Harold Wilson’s Leader of the House of Commons, remarked that he was ‘deeply shocked by and profoundly alarmed at what is happening there [Greece], as are all members of the government’. Among the Atlanticists at least, the colonels had their cover.
The day after the coup, Martin and David Phillips, a friend from Oxford who shared his love for Greece, went to see the most senior Greek politician outside the country, Elias Tsirimokos, a wartime communist who had just served as the king’s prime minister – for all of ten days. They arrived at the Cumberland Hotel at midday to be greeted warmly by an unshaven Tsirimokos, still in his pyjamas. They asked why, as the only senior politician able to do so, he had made no declaration against the seizure of power. He said he was waiting first to hear what the king had to say. At that moment there was a clamour of noise from Oxford Street. From Tsirimokos’s balcony, they watched a lengthy demonstration wending its way towards Lancaster Gate. Most of the demonstrators were young. They had placards reading ‘No to fascism in Greece’, ‘No to dictatorship’ and ‘Down with the junta’. Tsirimokos hissed, ‘Ilîthioi,’ (Idiots) and closed the balcony door.
Martin stayed on in London, meeting Michael Wall when he returned from Athens. Wall described how he had made contact with Papadopoulos, the leader of the coup, and travelled around Athens in his car. Papadopoulos had lectured him on the docility of the population, claiming this to be proof of the general acceptance of the army’s intervention. He had also talked about the timing of the seizure of power, saying that it had been urged on him by his CIA advisers. Papadopoulos said these advisers had urged him to act because control of the US Congress might shortly fall into the hands of left-wingers and fellow-travellers. At one point, when Wall had edged across the seat to better hear what was being said to him, Papadopoulos had angrily told him to keep his distance; when asked why, Papadopoulos told him, ‘The middle seat I reserve solely for Jesus Christ.’
Wall said that his general impression of Papadopoulos was that he was ‘a nutter in general and a religious maniac in particular’. He did not include these details in any of his articles. Martin suggested that they would have influenced the attitudes of Western politicians. Wall argued that the conversation in the car had been privileged.
Martin spent the last weeks of April and early May campaigning against the junta and, under various pseudonyms, writing letters to the press. He contacted journalists whom he knew from Cyprus and lobbied parliament, particularly through Liberal MPs. He argued that the coup was a gross illegality, was leading to suffering for the Greek people, and would weaken NATO’s south-eastern flank.
He knew that his wife’s family in Greece would oppose the dictatorship and that his close friends would involve themselves in opposition to it. He asked for a meeting with the Admiralty Appointments Board and, explaining that he believed his family would be in danger, asked for temporary leave of absence, if necessary on no pay or half pay. The board was sympathetic. He was told that his qualification as a Greek interpreter entitled him every fourth year to a period of refresher-training in Greece on full pay. He was instructed to start such training, with the position to be reviewed later in the year.
In the second week of May, he flew to Athens, installing himself at Kiki’s family apartment on Odos Patriarchou Ioakeim. Princess Alice of Battenberg, the mother of Prince Philip, had just been evacuated to Britain from the floor above. A friend in the Greek navy, Captain Denis Troupakis, told him of a US-led conference near Halkis which Troupakis had attended and at which details of the coup d’état had been finalised.
He told his friends that he wished to help them against the junta. Within two days, he was approached by Agamemnon Koutsogiorgas, the lawyer of Andreas Papandreou – the latter had been imprisoned by the junta on the night of the coup. Koutsogiorgas explained that Andreas Papandreou had charged him to take over the mantle of the Centre Union and to organise resistance. He asked Martin what sort of help he could give. Martin suggested that he advise on how best to establish secure communication channels with the outside world. He worked out a system overnight and explained this to Koutsogiorgas the next day. The system was based on coded messages placed in the Daily Telegraph. The lawyer thanked him and departed. Later, he was told that Koutsogiorgas had wanted something ‘much less professional’ and had been alarmed at his ‘James Bondish’ proposals.
The next approach came from a family friend, Nentis Dimitrakos, a textile trader, who arranged for Martin to meet other members of the Alexandros Papanastasiou Society. Modelled on the Fabian Society in Britain, this was a grouping of left-of-centre liberals and socialists, many with higher education in Western universities – Greece scarcely offered PhD courses in those days. Among the thinkers they admired was Andreas Papandreou’s mentor and ally, John Kenneth Galbraith. The Society, founded in 1965, was a strong supporter of Andreas Papandreou’s centre-left policies. It was impressed by the Camelot spirit of Kennedy’s White House and by thinkers like the historian Arthur Schlesinger who argued that the US should work with the centre against Communism and not combat it, as had been the case under Eisenhower.
Its charter forbade its members from entering into the political arena, but it was to become the seedbed for the early resistance to the dictatorship. The day after the king watched his new cabinet being sworn in, the leaders of the Society got together, soon agreeing on a leadership including Filias (1927–2018), Costas Simitis (born 1936, prime minister from 1996 to 2004), and Martin’s friend, the journalist Costas Kalligas (1928–1983).
Martin expressed his general willingness to assist, as long as that could be done within the boundaries imposed by his conscience and his professional obligations, although, he said, he was prepared to stretch those to their limits. He said he did not want to learn any names or sensitive matters. A number of Dimitrakos’s friends were sceptical about him, but, on checking with Dr Vassos Lyssarides, the doctor of President Makarios and a prominent politician in Cyprus, were reassured; Lyssarides had been leader of an EOKA group and could be relied on to have no sympathy for the British. Martin was asked to meet with the leader of the Society’s newly formed resistance movement, Democratic Defence:
Kalligas collected me and we drove 20km southward on the road to Sounion. There was no one else on the beach at Kavouri. Kalligas told me to swim out towards the edge of the bay. There I was approached by another, dark-haired, swimmer. Treading the still cold water of the Aegean, we embarked on a lengthy discussion of my background and my beliefs. We then concentrated on the provenance and solidity of my democratic commitment and my motivation in hazarding myself in any fight against the dictatorship.
I described the tendency to individualism in my early youth and the radicalisation that followed, particularly during the Korean War, my mediating in Cyprus and my time as an intelligence analyst in Malta.
I noted that Individualism Reconsidered, and Other Essays, by David Riesman, had been particularly influential for me, and talked about my reading of Rousseau, Dewey and Thoreau, and my course, while I was in America, on the economic theories of Henry George. I described myself as a liberal activist with a dedication to democratic process and, as such, a committed opponent of the military dictatorship that had overtaken Greece. I offered my assessment of the process that had led to dictatorship, citing the particular knowledge I had of US intelligence involvement and suggesting that NATO intentions for Cyprus were a major element in the picture.
Only months later, after his arrest, did I learn that the name of my invigilator was Vasilis Filias. For the time being I was to know him as ‘Hector’. I was to be known as ‘Hank’.3
Filias, a former commando officer, understood quickly that Martin could help Democratic Defence tackle its most immediate needs, for printing equipment and for money. He told Martin that in Greece he would be Martin’s only counterpart and he asked Martin to return to England, establish contact there with former members of the society, raise some funds, purchase a duplicator and a small press, and bring them back to Athens. This was more than Martin had expected, but he decided to act as Filias requested and accept the consequences. Filias gave him articles to be printed in the next edition of Δημοκρατική Άμυνα (Democratic Defence), the organisation’s paper, and an introduction to its editor, Asteris Stangos. Martin flew to the UK, met with Stangos and then, at the suggestion of David Phillips, visited the classicist, Sir Maurice Bowra, Master of Wadham College in Oxford, a prior acquaintance, who was a known champion of the cause of democracy in Greece.
Sir Maurice and Stangos provided him with some initial funds, but the major contribution came from Kiki mortgaging the house in Oxford, which was in her name, and from Martin and Kiki’s personal savings. He purchased a Gestetner duplicator and a simple and miniscule, but weighty, printing device, dismantled them and packed them into two large holdalls, checking in late to his flight to avoid having his bags placed in the hold. On arrival at Athens, he had difficulty lifting the cases for inspection. He explained that they were full of books, and opened the bags to show a mixture of strategically arranged dirty laundry and Greek grammar books. The customs officer took a cursory look and waved him through. With some difficulty, he carried them to a taxi.
Filias was quick to use these to print a stream of resistance leaflets. Every serving officer was sent a letter from Democratic Defence demanding that he remember his oath to defend the Constitution. Copies of the first Demokratikí Ámina arrived from London in a Mini Cooper and were handed over to Martin. These too were widely distributed.
From May to September, he devoted most of his spare time to lobbying. In July, Dom Mintoff, worried at the threat to socialism in the Mediterranean, flew to London and introduced Martin to members of Socialist International. Mintoff gave him two or three passports, including his own, with his profession entered as ‘former prime minister’. Martin also made one or two trips by air to Greece to deliver material requested by Filias. Kiki too was shuttling back and forth between Oxford and Athens in her pale blue Triumph Herald.
In July, he delivered a further issue of Demokratikí Ámina to Greece. Accompanied by Kiki, Madeleine Lowell from Malta and Kit von Zweigbergk, a 2I-year-old geography student from Durham University and a squash partner, he drove to Athens in a Humber Super Snipe, laden with further duplicating and printing equipment hidden behind the seat backs. They travelled via Sweden, where they raised financial help from the Social Democrats and Count Harold Folke de Väring, whom Martin had befriended in Cyprus, and West Germany, where Mintoff had introduced them to Karl Anders, head of the printers’ union and an adviser to Willy Brandt, leader of the Social Democratic Party.
Their first problems were at the Yugoslav–Greek border. Here, Yugoslav guards looked with suspicion at the sealed brown-paper parcels containing the movement’s newspaper. Martin faffed, saying that they were medical literature being used as samples. They repacked the car, with food and personal clothing on top, and on the Greek side were given only a cursory search. A month later, after a further trip, he delivered a photocopier and additional printing material.
Martin had been due to pursue his Arabic studies at the Foreign Office’s Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies in the hills south-east of Beirut, but an outbreak of fighting in the Lebanese capital led to the course being transferred to Beaconsfield. At this point, keen to devote himself more fully to the resistance to the junta, he applied to the Admiralty for voluntary retirement or for an extended leave on half pay. The Admiralty demurred but said that he had the right to a further three-month language refresher course in Athens, and that he should start this from the end of September.
Trouble-making in Athens
Martin arrived in Athens at the beginning of October. He was entitled to engage two tutors, and nominated Filias (using a pseudonym) and Kalligas, meaning that the British government was now the unwitting paymaster of two leaders of the Greek resistance. As before, Martin saw his main role as helping with communications. Kiki, her brother, Aris, and Martin wrote numerous letters to the foreign press and to Greek addresses supplied by Filias. Kiki and Martin would drive around Athens at night posting letters in different areas so as to give the impression of widespread support. His role was soon to develop.
Filias had warned that he might have to go underground and had said that in an emergency he would send someone who would say, ‘I think I met you in Cambridge in 1963,’ to which Martin would reply, ‘No. It was in Edinburgh in 1964.’ On 23 October, the bell rang at Martin’s parents-in-law’s flat. When he answered the door-phone, a voice said, ‘We met in 1963,’ continuing breathlessly, ‘No, it was in 1964 in Edinburgh.’
Martin opened the door to an eminent artist friend of Filias. The artist was in a state of considerable agitation. Dispensing with further passwords or introductions, he said, ‘The naval cell has been broken. Other members of Democratic Defence have been arrested. Vasilis is being hunted. He needs to go underground.’
The police had caught Haralambos Protopapas, a 46-year-old lawyer who was president of the Democratic Socialist Union of Greece, Gerassimos Notaras, a 30-year-old sociologist and historian, and Constantine Sophoulis, a 29-year-old economist whose grandfather had been prime minister of Greece during the Greek Civil War. The first two of these were to be tortured. Although they were all members of the Papanastasiou Society, the police never made the connection with the Society, which would have helped them identify naval and air force cells.
Martin collected Filias and took him back to a small studio next to the Athens Hilton which Aris said they could use. Kiki and Martin moved in there too. They christened Filias ‘the baby’, never referring to him by any other name.
Filias liked the studio because there was no concierge in the building to note his comings and goings and increase the risk of betrayal. He instructed Martin to rent four flats or cottages in Athens so that he could have alternative hideaways, strategically positioned, and from which resistance literature could be issued. Some landlords asked Martin to prove his identity and he showed his passport, hiding his first name with his thumb and saying he was Henry Packard. In some cases, Kiki went with him, describing herself as Katie Athanassopoulos, the daughter of a Salonika doctor. They let it be supposed that they were having an affair and that they would not be using the house all the time, but that Katie’s cousin might use it in their absence.
Two of these properties, isolated but unremarkable, were in the coastal suburb of Glyfada, an area liked by foreigners. At some point, Filias stayed briefly there in a flat above the local chief of police with Yangos (John) Dragoumis, an ex-sailor who was the brother of one of the leaders of the breakaway Communist Party of Greece (Interior) (Kommounistikó Kómma Elládas Esoterikoú (KKE Esoterikoú)). On one occasion, Martin went to collect him, walking down the road whistling a particular tune which would cause Dragoumis to let him in. He walked up and down the road for about an hour without result, his mouth becoming too dry to whistle. Eventually, he climbed up the drainpipe and looked in. Dragoumis was filling Filias with brandy and playing music so loudly that neither of them would have heard a bomb going off. Filias had just learnt his father had died and Dragoumis thought brandy the best treatment.
