VZCZCXRO1927
PP RUEHAG RUEHAST RUEHBW RUEHDA RUEHDF RUEHFL RUEHIK RUEHKW RUEHLA
RUEHLN RUEHLZ RUEHPOD RUEHROV RUEHSR RUEHVK RUEHYG
DE RUEHTH #0637/01 1331412
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 121412Z MAY 08
FM AMEMBASSY ATHENS
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 1765
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 ATHENS 000637 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PREL SOCI GR
SUBJECT: CONFERENCE CHALLENGES CONVENTIONAL WISDOM ON U.S. 
ROLE IN 1967 COUP 
 
 
SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED -- PROTECT ACCORDINGLY 
 
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SUMMARY 
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¶1.  (SBU) In Greece, conventional wisdom holds that the 
United States was comlicit in the April 21, 1967 coup that 
put a mlitary junta in power through 1974.  In a rare 
public conversation about these sensitive events, former PM 
Mitsotakis (father of current FM akoyannis) and his 
foundation hosted a May6-8 conference on domestic politics 
of the 190s, and challenged the conventional wisdom head 
on.  The participants in the seminar, from Mitsotakis 
himself, to other politicians from th era and historians 
generally concluded that U.S. diplomats in Athens, although 
suspicious of the Army, were taken as much by surprise when 
the coup came as the Greek political establishment.  In 
all, the conference marked one of the first objective 
attempts to look at this controversial period of recent 
Greek political history.  It remains to be seen, however, 
whether any of the discussion will actually inform 
popularly held "truths" about the role of the United States 
in those events.  End Summary. 
 
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Mitsotakis Foundation Sponsors Conference 
----------------------------------------- 
 
¶2. (U)  On May 6 - 8, the Constantine K. Mitsotakis 
Foundation held a three-day conference on Greek domestic 
politics of the 1960s leading up to the Greek army's coup 
dQetat on April 21, 1967 and the rise of the junta that 
ruled Greece until July 1974. Mitsotakis himself offered 
the keynote address of the conference and provided 
commentary throughout the proceedings.  The conference, 
covering roughly the 1961-67 period of political upheaval 
that paved the way for the April 1967 coup, brought 
together politicians from the era, former army officers, 
historians and political scientists, who reviewed a broad 
range of political, social, economic, and military topics 
in an effort to outline the domestic conditions that 
eventually led to the army's intervention into politics and 
seven years of military government. 
 
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The Role of the U.S. 
-------------------- 
 
¶3. (U)  The conference addressed many key questions that 
continue to elicit deep emotions within Greece, tapping 
into the political pathos born out of the catastrophic 
confrontation between the royalist Right and the communist 
Left in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Perhaps 
most prominent among these questions remains the role of 
the U.S. in Greek domestic politics in the 1960s and the 
widely-held belief that it was the U.S. that actually 
engineered the April 21 army coup in an effort to avert the 
rise of a left-center political coalition to power due to 
fears of a communist takeover. 
 
¶4. (SBU)  In a refreshing departure from the norm, 
conference participants generally agreed that while U.S. 
diplomats in Athens feared a military intervention amid 
steadily increasing chaos in the streets and in the 
Parliament against the backdrop of revolving door 
governments, their understanding of the intricate 
conspiracies developing inside the army was neither 
complete nor detailed.  Several speakers cited now 
declassified diplomatic communications which indicated that 
the U.S. Embassy was indeed aware of junta chief Colonel 
Papadopoulos, and suspected he could play a central role in 
an attempt to overthrow the government, but could not 
positively connect him to anything specific. In fact, with 
the protagonists of the coup working virtually undetected 
by even the high command of the Greek armed forces, the 
U.S. Embassy had anticipated that any potential military 
putschists would have had to approach then-King Constantine 
for his approval by necessity -- this assumption proved to 
be false.  Thus, the coup, when it came in the early 
morning of April 21, 1967, caught both the Greek political 
establishment and the U.S. Embassy by surprise. As one of 
the speakers put it, "A handful of colonels and majors 
worked around 11,000 regular officers without a hint." 
 
¶5. (U)  Among the conference speakers there was general 
agreement that in the end, there had no direct sinister 
role of U.S. "secret services" in the Papadopoulos coup, 
that the U.S. had not expected a "rogue" group of colonels 
to topple the Greek government, and that the April coup 
 
ATHENS 00000637  002 OF 002 
 
 
remained very much a "Greek affair" carried out by 
Papadopoulos, two immediate accomplices, and perhaps a 
dozen or so other middle-rank officers.  Not surprisingly, 
these conclusions were not well received by some in the 
audience, with some interrupting speakers to jeer and on at 
least one occasion to challenge the "Greek patriotism" of 
those making this claim 
 
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Public Reaction - Skepticism 
---------------------------- 
 
¶6. (U)  The conference drew attention and mixed reactions 
from the Greek media, with left-wing columnists suggesting 
that Mitsotakis, a leading figure in the anarchic political 
free-for-all of the 1960s, was in effect trying to 
reinterpret Greek history to present himself in a better 
historical light.  (Note:  In July 1965, Mitsotakis was the 
leader of a group of dissidents known as the "July 
apostates" who toppled the center-left government of George 
Papandreou -- grandfather of current PASOK leader George 
Papandreou. A significant segment of the older voting 
public and Greece's left recall the "apostasy of '65" as 
the immediate precursor of the April 21, 1967 military 
coup. End Note) 
 
¶7. (SBU) Greek party politics and old feuds aside, however, 
the conference offered a rare objective look at a sensitive 
and complicated period of recent Greek political history, 
from whose negative implications the Greek political system 
has yet to recover.  Most of the speakers approached their 
topics with a fresh outlook based on latest research 
findings and did not hesitate to challenge the conventional 
wisdom surrounding this painful period in Greek history. 
 
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Comment 
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¶8.  (SBU) We were pleasantly surprised by the conference 
and its general conclusions.  We have also been pleased 
that there has been extensive reporting on the conferocuments 
that will constitute a significant addition to the scant 
literature documenting this sensitive period.  End Comment. 
 
SPECKHARD