“A historic sham”: Zelensky’s speech to Greece’s parliament sparks national outrage, opens WWII-era wounds

By inviting an Azov fighter to address Greece’s parliament, Zelensky opened the country’s historic wounds and triggered angry demonstrations that have shaken its pro-US government.

 

by TJ Coles

 

Part 4 - CIA to Greek military: “Shoot the motherfucker…”

 

The Minister of Coordination under the Center Union government ultimately deposed by the military coup, Andreas Papandreou, happened to be the ex-CIA son of PM Giorgios Papandreou. US intelligence considered Andreas to be too soft on the leftists in the coalition. Gustav Avrakotos, a CIA agent, advised his Greek military colleagues of Papandreou the younger: “shoot the motherfucker because he’s going to come back to haunt you.” Andreas claimed that he knew nothing of the existence of the CIA’s IDEA until they moved to seize power.

President Johnson’s National Security Advisor, W.W. Rostow, warned a committee in February 1967 that, against the interests of the US, the Papandreou-Center Union would likely win the forthcoming election. The main coup plotters were linked to the KYP – the CIA-run intelligence agency. A main coup plotter, one Brigadier Hadjipetrou, was head of the NATO base in Crete. Under the pretext that the Soviets had invaded Czechoslovakia, US “defensive” arms exports to Greece resumed.

Three years into the junta, the Nixon administration (whose campaign received money from the KYP regime) also reversed the US ban on weapons to Greece. The New York Times reported that “the Greek military Government will receive tens of millions of dollars worth of  heavy weapons (sic), such as tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery and possibly jet planes, that have been withheld from them under a selective embargo.”

Despite PR-friendly words and timid actions to make it look as though Washington cared, the junta shored up America’s military installations. Listing numerous US and NATO air bases, an academic study notes that “[t]he advent of dictatorship … did not hinder the US’s base policy. On the contrary, it strengthened the presence of the bases, especially following the signing of the 1973 agreement on the homeporting facilities of the [Navy’s] Sixth Fleet in the bay of Elefsina,” in the south. Between 1967 and ‘69, the junta received over $100 million-worth of weapons, which circumvented Congressional export rules because the arms were supposedly “surplus.”

The junta terrorized the public with the usual atrocities: murder, disappearances, torture, and control over the national media. Despite the state terror, leftist and other progressive groups continued to struggle for democracy. Dedicated protests, the global energy crisis, and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus converged to weaken the generals’ grip on power. The regime collapsed in 1974.

Source, links:

https://thegrayzone.com/2022/04/20/nazis-us-greece-route-russia/

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Zelensky and two Azov fighters speak inside the Greek parliament: One of the most disgraceful moments for the country that suffered most from the nazis