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Title: RISE FALL GREEK COLONELS by C M Woodhouse ISBN: 0-246-12469-5 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Pub. Date: 25 July, 1985 Format: Hardcover

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: Opposition to the Colonels
Comment: ...C. M. Woodhouse has created the means to examine this relationship between the foreign policy of the United States and its far reaching effect on Greece, and in a certain way his task is an easy one: aside from displaying their arsenal of political tools, censorship and terror, the Colonels had no real domestic policy agenda but to rid Greece of an imagined communist threat, and of course to maintain their own privileges won by force. The former pleased the policy makers in Washington so much that with each growing crisis, the Six Day War, Quaddaffi's coup d'état in Libya, the death of Nassar, and efforts to broker a Homeport deal for the US Atlantic Fleet, the Colonels were able to effortlessly confirm their value to the stability of the region, and were given kudos, boosts of confidence, and aid from abroad.

Opposition to the Colonels in Greece mostly found expression in the rumor-mills of Athens, which in turn fostered a greater sense of paranoia inside the xenophobia-prone regime. Athenians saw the handiwork of the CIA behind most Greek domestic and foreign policy. Long standing rumors that Papadopoulos worked for the CIA circulated long b! efore the coup of 1967. Woodhouse works to deflate these rumors partly in the interest of putting bugaboos to rest, and partly to examine unencumbered the true complexity of the relationships as they existed between the US State Department and officers of the Greek Pentagon. Problems, according to Woodhouse, were national and systemic, not borne from cloak and dagger recruitment or special training.

More troubling about the relationship between American foreign policy and what policy can be said to have existed in Greece during the repressive years of the Military regime, Woodhouse makes clear, is the extent to which Washington was often ill-informed about Greek policy and policy-makers: CIA Athens Station was taken completely surprised by the coup of 1967, and Johnson spent the entirety of his office never knowing the name of one Greek political figure; Washington's policy was often directed from a distance and in subterfuge by pro-regime insiders like Greek-American business tycoon Tom Pappas, and other close friends of Congressman-turned-Vice President Agnew who had financial stakes in labor-weak Greek ports. Woodhouse manages to reveal a troubling blind-spot in American foreign policy and an even more troubling legacy of short-sighted policy as a rippling effect which resonated from one side of the Atlantic to the other. He does so inadvertently however, and without capitalizing on a strong discussion. Were this a stronger narrative, the dynamic exchange between superpower policy and repressive, supported forms of government would be explored further and raised to thematic status. But Woodhouse has refused this opportunity in favor of producing a rounded, denser historical text, the result of which is a history plagued by dereliction of this aim at textual density, and which lacks the usual Woodhouse Midas-touch for consistent lyricism and analysis. The narrative is further plagued by runaway binary appositives ("x says this, though y would later contradict this in testimony"), giving the u! ndesired effect of a narrative bent on trying the Colonels in a court of law and in absentia. Possibly, Woodhouse is too intimate with the subject and the players; possibly too little time has passed between the events and the account... But in fairness to the project's dimension, source material for the book makes difficult reading too, the density and details of which results from culling thousands of pages of court transcripts and transforming them into minute incremental stretches of narrative. Still, it would be difficult to disguise the villainy of the Colonels by any fete of removal or feign to own an objective distance, and trying them under a double-jeopardy clause seems a small price to pay for insights into their motives. Besides, Woodhouse has added nothing to the judgement of the Greek Courts. What better way then to make history and restitution for the barbarous crimes of the Colonels?