A dark room

I also met with Joe Sisco, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, who had been assigned to mediate between Greece and Turkey to avert the escalation of hostilities. His account of events was quite colourful. When I asked him, “Why didn’t Kissinger come in Greece to mediate himself?” he paused. After a few moments, he said: “Why didn’t Dr. Kissinger come instead of me? In all honesty, I never gave it any thought.” I benefited from the invaluable assistance of Thomas Boyatt, a veteran US diplomat and ambassador, who dared to oppose Kissinger, having warned the US government months in advance about the disaster that would befall Cyprus. James Callahan, the UK Minister of Foreign Affairs, recalled how he had to commandeer a milkman’s truck very early in the morning to go to the Foreign Office, after Kissinger woke him up to notify him of the Turkish invasion. When I asked him whether he and Kissinger ever discussed this particular historical event or hashed out their differences, he said: “We have remained good friends. I thought it was best to leave the matter be.” I met with the Greeks that played a leading role in the events, such as Adamantios Androutsopoulos, the Greek Prime Minister at the time, Konstantintos Kypraios, the then-acting Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Aggelos Vlachos, the diplomat who had been tasked with the Cyprus dispute since the 1950s. Admiral Petros Arapakis, who was in charge of the Hellenic Navy and the person who was instrumental in returning Konstantinos Karamanlis to Greece, talked to me about what went on behind the scenes during those sweltering July days, even if he failed to clarify a few things to my satisfaction. Commander Vasileios Gavriil, captain of the submarine which was twice ordered to head to Cyprus, then ordered to turn back, showed me the final signal from Fleet Command, recalling the submarine to Rhodes. Alexandros Simaioforidis recounted to me how he kept up a “live” broadcast of the Turkish landing at Kyrenia until taken prisoner by the Turkish army. This book contains answers to many questions concerning a critical period of Greek history. You will be surprised by what went on behind the scenes, the backroom deals led mainly by Aristotelis Onassis, the cynicism of a number of US officials, the plots and machinations by the leaders of the Junta. You will “hear”—for the first time—the voices of Dimitrios Ioannidis and General Grigorios Bonanos, the Commander of the Greek Armed Forces, during the War Council on 20 July 1974. These were times of chaos and despair. This book is an account of the shocking failures of the Greek leadership at the time. The 38 minutes that this War Council lasted constitute an indispensable record for a full understanding of these momentous events. But I wanted to talk to Ioannidis. It had become a kind of obsession. I called his sister, and she agreed to relay a few of my questions, and possibly arrange a meeting with the man himself. After a few days she called me back with an answer for each of my questions. She said that Ioannidis believed the Americans had tricked him, that at times he felt like Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, the last dictator of South Vietnam, whom the US secret services first installed in office, then cut loose. His answers were illuminating but by no means clarifying, and I continued my search.