LETTER FROM ATHENS

En route to the airport, to cover the arrival of left-wing firebrand Andreas Papandreou, son of the former prime minister George Papandreou, I watched a mob of young men burn an American-built car despite the protests of its owner, a Greek. This was just one of many such anti-American acts in the fortnight following the Cyprus fighting. A sampling: Item. The beating of three Sudanese, who had been taken for American Negroes. The left-wing paper Athinaiki, reporting the incident, said the people were right to beat up “anyone resembling an American.” Item. Dave Tonge, the BBC’s man in Greece, thrusting a mike into a crowd of rampaging Papandreou youths and urging them to yell “Kissinger murderer” for the audience back in Britain. Item. Stories in the leftist press urging taxi drivers not to pick up Americans, instructing the state-controlled radio not to play American music, inciting mobs to destroy American property, attack American dependents. Item. Avgi, the Communist daily, saying flat out that former strongmen George Papadopoulos and Demetrios loannidis were paid agents of the CIA and that Kissinger personally ordered loannidis to kill Makarios. Item. On the day after the murder of U.S. Ambassador Rodger Davies in Nicosia, Apogevmatini, the largest afternoon paper in Athens, reporting that a U.S. Marine guard had caused the riot and subsequent death of the Ambassador by “provoking the crowd with taunts and finally by shooting at it.”

Now the case of A pogevmatini is particularly interesting, and illustrative of the Greek press. Until very recently it was very pro-American; until July 23 it was an ardent supporter of the military regime. The flipflop came overnight. One day it was extolling the Americans, the next it was explaining in great detail how Henry Kissinger had plotted to start a war between the two communities on Cyprus in order to effect a partition of the island that would net the U.S. two bases on Cyprus, one on the Turkish and one on the Greek side.

TT

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Taki Theodoracopulos

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En route to the airport, to cover the arrival of left-wing firebrand Andreas Papandreou, son of the former prime minister George Papandreou, I watched a mob of young men burn an American-built car despite the protests of its owner, a Greek. This was just one of many such anti-American acts in the fortnight following the Cyprus fighting. A sampling: Item. The beating of three Sudanese, who had been taken for American Negroes. The left-wing paper Athinaiki, reporting the incident, said the people were right to beat up “anyone resembling an American.” Item. Dave Tonge, the BBC’s man in Greece, thrusting a mike into a crowd of rampaging Papandreou youths and urging them to yell “Kissinger murderer” for the audience back in Britain. Item. Stories in the leftist press urging taxi drivers not to pick up Americans, instructing the state-controlled radio not to play American music, inciting mobs to destroy American property, attack American dependents. Item. Avgi, the Communist daily, saying flat out that former strongmen George Papadopoulos and Demetrios loannidis were paid agents of the CIA and that Kissinger personally ordered loannidis to kill Makarios. Item. On the day after the murder of U.S. Ambassador Rodger Davies in Nicosia, Apogevmatini, the largest afternoon paper in Athens, reporting that a U.S. Marine guard had caused the riot and subsequent death of the Ambassador by “provoking the crowd with taunts and finally by shooting at it.”

Now the case of A pogevmatini is particularly interesting, and illustrative of the Greek press. Until very recently it was very pro-American; until July 23 it was an ardent supporter of the military regime. The flipflop came overnight. One day it was extolling the Americans, the next it was explaining in great detail how Henry Kissinger had plotted to start a war between the two communities on Cyprus in order to effect a partition of the island that would net the U.S. two bases on Cyprus, one on the Turkish and one on the Greek side.