Elias P. Demetracopoulos

Elias P. Demetracopoulos (1 December 1928 – 17 February 2016) was a Greek journalist and dissident during the Greek military junta of 1967–1974 ("Regime of the Colonels"). During the dictatorship, Demetracopoulos lived in exile in Washington, D.C., where he lobbied against the Greek junta. In June 1970, the Greek dictatorship revoked his citizenship.

In 1968, Demetracopoulos uncovered illegal campaign donations of $549,000 given by the Greek military dictatorship to the 1968 presidential campaign of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. He gave the information to Larry O'Brian, then chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who issued a call for an inquiry into the activities of Thomas Pappas.

Through suits against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Demetracopoulos found out that he had been under extensive surveillance by those agencies from November 9, 1967, to October 2, 1969, August 25, 1971, to March 14, 1973 and February 19 to October 24, 1974.

After 1974, he gained access to secret police files in Athens out of which he learned that there had been several attempts by the Greek junta to kidnap and kill him.

In 1967, Demetracopoulos engaged attorney William A. Dobrovir to investigating the involvement of the United States. Dobrovir uncovered hundreds of documents from the FBI, CIA, Department of State, Department of Justice and Department of Defense, via the Freedom of Information Act.

Some of the documents indicated that copies were sent to the National Security Council headed by Henry Kissinger at the time.

It was not before March 1977 that the NSC agreed to release skeletal computer indices of these documents. In the computer indices, Demetracopoulos found a reference to a document referring to his death in a prison in Athens on 18 December 1970. For the next seven years, Dobrovir wrote letters to Kissinger asking for copies of the document. Kissinger eventually replied that he could not find such a copy.^[1]

Demetracopoulos was a personal friend of Louise Gore and Senators Frank E. Moss, Quentin N. Burdick and Mike Gravel.

Demetracopoulos died in Athens from natural causes on 17 February 2016 at the age of 87.^[2]

External links

• G. Robert Blakey, Elias Demetracopoulos, Paul Hoch, Jim Hougan, Jim Lesar, Norman Mailer: JFK'S ASSASSINATION The New York Review of Books, Volume 50, Number 20, 18 December 2003
• Scott Armstrong, G. Robert Blakey, Vincent Bugliosi, Don DeLillo, Elias Demetracopoulos, Stephen Dorril: BLOCKED The New York Review of Books, Volume 52, Number 13, 11 August 2005

References

Christopher Hitchens: Hostage to History, Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger 1984 pp 87–88 et al.