This past summer the fiftieth anniversary of the collapse of the junta that ruled Greece between 1967-1974 and the ensuing crisis on Cyprus generated a great deal of public discussion over those events. The image of the United States emerged more than tarnished thanks to the support the junta received from the Nixon administration. I happen to be aware of the opposition to the Greek dictatorship expressed on Capitol Hill. But I searched in vain for even brief mentions of them in the discussions surrounding the anniversary of the events of 1974.

I could not find any references of Congressional and Greek-American opposition in one of the more authoritative and well documented accounts, Alexis Papahelas’ book-length accounts of the junta, and the moment of its downfall. Papahelas, who served as a Greek foreign correspondent in the United States, is currently the executive editor of the Kathimerini newspaper and one of the most important journalists in Greece. His book is based on decades of research, interviews with key players, and taped proceedings of Greece’s ‘War Council’ at the time of Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus in July 1974. Published in Greek in 2021, it is currently in its 11^th printing, by far the bestselling book on the junta period. It has an unwieldly title, ‘A Dark Room 1967-1974: Ioannidis and the Trap of Cyprus, Oil in the Aegean and the Role of the Americans’ and things don’t get much easier for the reader after that. Papahelas sacrifices narrative flow in order to provide every piece available of information he has gleaned from classified documents or interviews surrounding an event. There is often repetition or overlaps but their sum serve as a useful cross-referencing of the sources. And there are rich rewards for the readers who persist, because the insights the book affords are eye-opening. The most significant information Papahelas provides concerns Dimitrios Ioannidis, who ousted Georgios Papadopoulos in November of 1973. He replaced him as leader of the dictatorship and then went on to engineer the failed coup on Cyprus that triggered the Turkish invasion the following summer. The Ioannidis that Papahelas’ findings conjure up is a fanatical nationalist, unable to fully comprehend the geopolitical dynamics in the eastern Mediterranean and whose incompetence meant he did not have the courage of his own convictions.

As far as the American role is concern, Papahelas confirms the Nixon’s administration’s support of both Papadopoulos and Ioannidis but provides a great deal of rich nuance concerning the ways American officials related to the regime. This includes the role of the CIA, including its Greek-American agents, Gust Avrakotos, Peter Coromilas, John Fatseas, and Tom Karamesinis.

Papahelas’ book will remain a standard study of the junta period for a long time, so I was disappointed there is only a passing reference to Congress’ efforts to extend an embargo of arms sales to the junta. Granted, his focus on Nixon and Kissinger entails shedding light on the bad guys. But for the sake of the historical record we should also remember the good guys because there were members of the U. S. Congress who opposed the Greek junta and advocated for a different U.S. foreign policy, one that would contribute to the restoration of democracy in Greece.

An early critic of the coup in Greece in 1967 was Oregon Senator Wayne Morse, an unrelenting critic of the Vietnam War and a supporter of democratic representation and human rights. Morse lost his reelection bid in 1968, but equally sharp critics of the Greek junta took up in mantle in the Senate. They included Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell, who sponsored a bill to prohibit all military assistance to the junta, Indiana Senator Vince Hartke, sponsor of an amendment that would have achieved the same goal, and Senators Daniel Inouye of Hawaii and Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. In the House of Representatives there were several leaders in the fight to obstruct the United States’ support of Greece. Minnesota Congressman Donald Fraser returned from a visit to Greece in 1968 and described how many pro-democracy Greeks had been arrested and how several political prisoners had been tortured. Joining Fraser were his fellow congressmen Don Edwards of California, Benjamin Rosenthal of New York, and Wayne Hays of Ohio, who in turn were backed up by the votes of many of their colleagues in the House. Their actions are referenced in several academic works on the topic of U.S.-Greek relations between 1974 that have been published in English.

Recent works on Congress and Greece in this period include studies by Neovi Karakatsanis, Jonathan Swarts, and Sarah B. Snyder. But I know from personal experience that academic publications have a limited impact on the wider public, and if they are in English they remain unknown in Greece. All the more reason to remember there were also the other Americans who worked to restore democracy in Greece between 1967 and 1974.