Post, Globe, AP declare open season on Greeks

Please find below:

(1) Excerpts from three recent articles published in The Washington Post and The Boston Globe;

(2) Contact information for the Post, the Globe and the Associated Press;

(3) Responses by the American Hellenic Media Project; and

(4) The full text of the Post and Globe articles.

(For "fair use" and educational purposes only)

(1) Excerpts from three recent articles published in The Washington Post and The Boston Globe

The Washington Post

Tuesday, November 9, 1999; Page A25

GREEK TERROR
By E. Wayne Merry

"[The U.S. administration] must cope with the fact that Greek authorities do not want to find and prosecute [Greece's 'November 17'] terrorists.
. . . . .
Greek police are often said to be reluctant to pursue November 17 because of its supposed links with figures of the ruling left-wing PASOK party. This is certainly part of the problem. . . The sad truth is that November 17 enjoys wide popular acceptance in Greece, reflecting deep-seated ethnocentric Balkan prejudices. These terrorists are tolerated not for their veneer of Marxism-Leninism but for their rabid anti-U.S., anti-NATO, anti-EU, anti-Turkey, anti-Western nationalism.
. . . . .
For U.S. policy the solution could lie with Congress, if it is willing to apply to Greece some of the sanctions it uses so widely around the world. The bloated U.S. Embassy in Athens should be drastically reduced, and military assistance tightly linked to results on November 17.
Greek officials say privately that they have more influence on Capitol Hill than does the State Department, that the Greek lobby will always protect aid for Athens. If so, is our rhetoric about fighting terrorism as empty as the Greeks'?"

The Boston Globe

Monday, November 8, 1999

ANTI-AMERICAN WINDS BUILDING IN GREECE BEFORE CLINTON VISIT
By Brian Murphy, Associated Press

"Clinton's scheduled arrival in Greece this week has demonstrators feverish to vent decades of anti-American ire and their still-raw anger over NATO's clash with Yugoslavia, which left Greece in an awkward position as Serbia's main backer in the alliance.
'There isn't anywhere in Greece where there will not be a protest,' said [a] rally organizer . . . Antipathy toward the United States runs deep in Greece.
. . . . .
Greeks felt betrayed by . . . a perceived tilt toward rival Turkey over war-divided Cyprus. Earlier this year, the NATO air bombardment of Yugoslavia brought almost unanimous outrage among Greeks, who targeted their anger at the United States while often ignoring the fact that their own government signed the alliance's attack plan.
. . . . .
[Clinton's trip to Greece] is an opportunity for America-trashing protests on a scale rarely seen in a Western ally. 'Protesting against the United States is almost a conditioned reflex in Greece,' said Theodore Couloumbis, a professor of international relations at the University of Athens.
. . . . .
The protests are expected to draw an eclectic collection of leftists, anarchists and Christian Orthodox zealots who identify closely with the Serbs. Some of the rallies will pass near the empty pedestal that held a 12-foot tall bronze statue of former President Harry S. Truman, which was toppled in May.
Clinton's timing is also bound to inflame demonstrations. He will be in Greece during the week of Nov. 17 traditionally a day of fierce anti-American protests to mark the violent crackdown on student demonstrators in 1973 by the then-military regime.
Greeks' relations with the United States is paradoxical, experts say. Washington is widely portrayed as an international bully, but millions of Greek emigrants have been drawn to the United States. Even one of the most relentless bashers of America, the late Premier Andreas Papandreou, lived for decades in the United States and served in the U.S. Navy.
. . . . .
[The PASOK] government faces elections next year and needs the support of old-style Socialists who remain loyal to the party's roots of hyper-nationalism and distrust of Western powers.
'There's a deep current in Greek society and political culture that reinforces the idea that murky outside forces are always to blame for the nation's problems,' said James Ker-Lindsay, a regional analyst at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies in London. ''America is a big and convenient target.''

The Washington Post

Wednesday, November 3, 1999; Page A30

U.S. PRESSES GREECE FOR ACTION AGAINST LEFTIST TERROR GROUP
By R. Jeffrey Smith

"[There is] renewed concern among U.S. officials that some Greek political and security officials do not share Washington's goal of bringing [November 17] to justice. Instead, they complain, some within the Greek government may have sought to preserve its anonymity, possibly to hide past links to the organization by top Greek officials.
. . . . .
[The U.S. Ambassador to Greece] said he is confident that Prime Minister Costas Simitis and Minister of Public Order Michalis Chrysohoides share the American desire to act against the group. But a U.S. official who asked not to be identified said Washington could not vouch for 'people at other levels [of government] who have potential associations' with the group.
. . . . .
November 17 also has killed more than a dozen prominent Greeks, but the group's actions have provoked only limited outrage here, partly because its overtly leftist and nationalist leanings and its strident anti-Americanism resonate with many Greeks.
. . . . .
'It is logical to assume that people didn't want to look under every rock because of what they might find,' a U.S. official said. 'If they arrest the leader, for example, and he turns out to be a former best friend of a Pasok leader, that would be embarrassing.'"

(2) Contact information for the Post, the Globe and the Associated Press

WASHINGTON POST
Leonard Downe, Executive Editor 202-334-7502 (fax)
Stephen Coll, Managing Editor 202-334-7502 (fax)

call: (202) 334-6000

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THE BOSTON GLOBE
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THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
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(3) Responses by the American Hellenic Media Project

Via post & e-mail

November 9, 1999

To the Editor of The Washington Post:

E. Wayne Merry's "Greek Terror" (11/9/99, p. A25) is the second of two articles in the Post (R. Jeffrey Smith, "U.S. Presses Greece For Action Against Leftist Terror Group", 11/3/99; p. A30) that use Greek security problems and popular Greek opposition to a war in which NATO bombed civilian targets as an excuse to bash Greeks.

Merry employs incendiary language to perpetuate negative ethnic stereotypes, using crude brush strokes to paint all Greeks as having deep-seated "ethnocentric Balkan prejudices".

Merry's transparent hostility to Greeks and his myopic treatment of a complex problem betrays an anti-Hellenic bias that resurrects our media's worst tradition of ethnic-bating and yellow journalism.

Merry mischaracterizes Greece as "anti-Western" and "nationalist", yet conveniently ignores Greece's standing as the most progressive, stabilizing and democratic country in the region. Greece, for example, has received more Albanian refugees from Kosovo than any other EU country, and its government has taken a leadership role in peace-making and peacekeeping initiatives in the region using a sophisticated mix of financial and diplomatic incentives.

Rather than look towards outdated stereotypes of Greeks as ethnic hysterics to explain growing popular opposition to US policies in the region, a more sober analysis would reveal that many other Europeans, as well as a growing number of Americans, have recognized that our government's Balkan and Mideast policy is impairing rather than reinforcing humanitarian and democratic ideals there.

In the land where democracy was born, Greeks continue to share a deeply-held allegiance to America and its democratic vision for our world. Recent Greek frustration with the US stems from the fact that our foreign policy has increasingly served to undermine this vision for the sake of short-sighted, parochial and decidedly un-American agendas.

Very truly yours,

P. D. Spyropoulos, Esq.
Executive Director
American Hellenic Media Project
PO Box 1150
New York, NY 10028-0008
ahmp@hri.org
www.ahmp.org

________________

The American Hellenic Media Project is a non-profit organization created to address inaccuracy and bias in the media and encourage independent, ethical and responsible journalism.

Via fax & e-mail: (617) 929-2098

November 9, 1999

To the Editor of The Boston Globe:

Brian Murphy's November 8th report, ("Anti-American winds building in Greece before Clinton visit") uses Greek security concerns and popular humanitarian opposition to an unjust war as an excuse to bash Greeks.

Murphy uses incendiary language ("unanimous outrage", "feverish", "ang[ry]", "zealots") to berate Greeks as a whole, perpetuate negative ethnic stereotypes, and to condemn what people in democracies are supposed to do -- voice their opposition.

Murphy's superficial and clearly partisan coverage of a complex problem betrays a transparent anti-Hellenic bias that is wholly inappropriate for news organizations of the AP's and The Boston Globe's stature.

Murphy's broad and crude brush strokes painting all Greeks as fanatic, anti-American zealots rises beyond shoddy and biased journalism to resurrect our media's worst tradition of ethnic-bating and yellow journalism.

Murphy disingenuously characterizes Greece's present government as "hyper-nationalis[t]" despite Greece's standing as by far the most progressive, stabilizing and democratic country in the region. Greece, for example, has taken in more Albanian refugees from Kosovo than any other EU country, and its government has taken a regional leadership role in both peace-making and peacekeeping with mature financial and diplomatic incentives.

Murphy selectively reports facts and issues, censoring those that contradict his position. For example, Murphy quotes Greek academic Theodore Couloumbis as stating that "[p]rotesting against the United States is almost a conditioned reflex in Greece" but neglects to mention what another journalist interviewing Couloumbis was conscientious enough to report when exploring this same issue, namely, that protests against the bombing of civilian targets by American warplanes in Yugoslavia was "not so much [a result of] anti-NATO or anti-U.S. feeling in Greece as anti-war feeling" (USA Today, 5/21/99).

Murphy takes great pains to argue that Greeks have a "deep antipathy towards the United States" and disingenuously characterizes Clinton's coming visit to Greece as "an opportunity for America-trashing protests on a scale rarely seen in a Western ally."

Unlike any of its neighbors, including Turkey, Italy, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe, Greece has supported the U.S. in all of its wars and played a decisive military role during WWII, paying an enormous human cost for doing so. In the land where democracy was born, Greeks in fact share a deeply-held allegiance to America and to its democratic vision for the world. The source of many Hellenes' current frustration with our government stems from a realization that its foreign policy has increasingly served to undermine this democratic vision for the sake of short-sighted, parochial and decidedly un-American agendas.

Rather than look towards outdated stereotypes of Greeks as anti-American zealots to explain growing popular opposition to US foreign policies in the region, a more sober analysis would have indicated that it is not just the Greeks who have been critical of America's disastrous Balkan intervention. A growing number of other Europeans, and Americans, have come to realize that rather than advance humanitarian and democratic ideals in the Balkans and Mideast our foreign policy there is working to undermine them.

Murphy's article marginalized legitimate concerns regarding US patronage of an expansionist-minded, militarily-controlled government that continues to occupy foreign territory in violation of UN resolutions and that has ethnically cleansed and killed exponentially more civilians than those victimized in Kosovo. Our arming of Turkey far beyond its defense requirements is taking a heavy toll on neighboring democracies Greece and Armenia, and upon stability and democratic reform in the region.

Finally, Mr. Murphy's disproportionate focus on what is in essence a minor concern for U.S. interests in Greece -- namely, low-level, sporadic and essentially property-targeted terrorism -- is a red herring that not only detracts from the real foreign policy issues our government must address in the region, but hands otherwise inconsequential extremists their biggest victory by magnifying the perception of danger they pose and thus their ability to spread terror. By exaggerating the effects of terrorism in Greece, Mr. Murphy helps to undermine America's most democratic ally in the region and our best hope for the dissemination of democratic and free-market institutions to the Balkans, Turkey and beyond.

Very truly yours,

P. D. Spyropoulos, Esq.
Executive Director

cc:
Matthew Storin, Editor
Thomas Mulvoy, Managing Editor
Glenda Buell, Letters Editor
John Wollman, AP Managing Editor
Sally Jacobsen, AP International Editor
Walter Shapiro, USA Today

Via post & e-mail

(the longer of two letters submitted)

November 5, 1999

To the Editor of The Washington Post:

R. Jeffrey Smith's overstatement of a Greek terrorist threat is a red herring that detracts from the real foreign policy issues our government must address in the region-handing otherwise inconsequential extremists their biggest victory by magnifying the perception of danger they pose and thus their ability to spread terror ("U.S. Presses Greece For Action Against Leftist Terror Group", 11/3/99; Page A30).

The group responsible for the sporadic attacks, "November 17", is a perverse exception to Greece's standing as among the safest of Europe's democracies; the memorial commemorating 168 dead at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City should serve as a sobering reminder that US officials are far safer walking the streets of Athens or Thessaloniki than those of Washington, D.C. or New York.

Exaggerating the perception of a terrorist threat in Greece helps undermine our most democratic ally in the region and our best hope for the spread of progressive western and free-market values to the Balkans, Turkey and beyond.

Lending credence to groundless conspiracy theories from anonymous sources conjuring up involvement by the Greek government with the very fringe group that is seeking to overthrow it is as irresponsible as were the Post to publish equally speculative claims, circulated by some within the intelligence community, of direct involvement by Mossad with November 17 given the group's professionalism, methods and choice of targets.

Yet perhaps even more unsettling is the Post's readiness to publish such unfounded assertions while simultaneously censoring from within its pages Turkey's confirmed use of extremist groups to terrorize its minorities and dissenting citizens. Whereas 22 deaths have been attributed to November 17 in as many years, during this same period thousands of civilian deaths in Turkey have been attributed to the quasi-official Grey Wolves-a far-right, extremist organization whose political arm, the Nationalist Action Party, has recently become the second largest party in Turkey.

It is this reality, well-known outside the accommodating silence of the mainstream U.S. media, that led Danielle Mitterrand, president of the France-Freedom Foundation and widow of the late French president Francois Mitterand, to declare that "if you judge [Kurdish separatist leader] Ocalan as a terrorist, you should also judge and impose sanctions for state terrorism represented by [Turkey's] official army."

Very truly yours,

P. D. Spyropoulos, Esq.
Executive Director

(4) The full text of the Post and Globe articles

The Washington Post

Tuesday, November 9, 1999; Page A25

GREEK TERROR
By E. Wayne Merry

Bill Clinton goes to Athens Nov. 13 to reward the Greek government for not breaking NATO ranks on Kosovo. The administration also hopes to sign a protocol on counterterrorist cooperation aimed at the "November 17" terrorist organization, held responsible for the deaths of four Americans and attacks on many more.

However well-intentioned on the American side, this accord must cope with the fact that Greek authorities do not want to find and prosecute the terrorists. The real question is what our own government is prepared to do when a foreign power consistently fails to combat terrorism targeted at U.S. personnel. Clinton's visit to Athens will be a test.

Greece does not have the world's worst terrorism problem; far from it. But Greece does have the world's worst counterterrorism problem. Since the first murder of a U.S. official 24 years ago, no member of November 17 has been arrested or even officially identified. The terrorists have expanded their tactics from guns to bombs to rockets, but the Greek police and their political masters remain unmoved. With complete impunity terrorists have murdered more than 20 people and attempted to kill hundreds.

I cannot pretend to be objective on this topic. During 1987-90 I was a State Department officer in Athens responsible for terrorism issues. It was a bitterly frustrating experience. Our defense attache -- Navy Capt. William Nordeen, a fine man on the verge of retirement -- was literally blown to pieces. Dozens of our personnel were nearly killed in bus bombings. Many Americans lived with deadly peril on a daily basis. Prominent Greeks were also killed, including a talented young member of Parliament.

Now, 10 years later, the situation is no better and in some respects worse. We spend more taxpayer dollars to protect our embassy staff in Athens than in Beirut or Bogota or Algiers.

The response by Greek police then and now is nothing short of deliberate negligence. The investigation of each attack is pro forma and even counterproductive. For example, a senior police officer on the scene of a lethal shooting once gave the expended shell casing -- vital evidence -- to a friendly reporter as a souvenir. Investigations are effectively shut down after a few days. Political oversight prevents investigators from going "too far." This is not a resource problem. The Ministry of Public Order is large, amply funded and snoops into many aspects of Greek life.

The real problem is one of attitude. Officials from Public Order and the Foreign Ministry many times told me that November 17 is not really an important problem, New York is more dangerous than Athens, and the terrorists will eventually stop their killing. U.S. help is not wanted. Patience is the solution. The problem, in their eyes, is the bad image in America that keeps our tourists (and the dollars they might spend) away from Greece.

Official visitors from Washington, especially congressmen, find it difficult to grasp the seriousness of the problem. They say Greece is a NATO ally and the recipient of a great deal of U.S. assistance. How, then, could Greek authorities be doing nothing to capture the terrorists? The fact remains, after 24 years: Nothing is changed and nothing accomplished except more casualties.

Greek police are often said to be reluctant to pursue November 17 because of its supposed links with figures of the ruling left-wing PASOK party. This is certainly part of the problem. However, several right-wing governments also did nothing. The sad truth is that November 17 enjoys wide popular acceptance in Greece, reflecting deep-seated ethnocentric Balkan prejudices. These terrorists are tolerated not for their veneer of Marxism-Leninism (which nobody takes seriously) but for their rabid anti-U.S., anti-NATO, anti-EU, anti-Turkey, anti-Western nationalism.

For U.S. policy the solution could lie with Congress, if it is willing to apply to Greece some of the sanctions it uses so widely around the world. The bloated U.S. Embassy in Athens should be drastically reduced, and military assistance tightly linked to results on November 17.

Greek officials say privately that they have more influence on Capitol Hill than does the State Department, that the Greek lobby will always protect aid for Athens. If so, is our rhetoric about fighting terrorism as empty as the Greeks'?

The writer, a former State Department and Pentagon official, is a program director at the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington.

The Boston Globe

Monday, November 8, 1999

ANTI-AMERICAN WINDS BUILDING IN GREECE BEFORE CLINTON VISIT
By Brian Murphy, Associated Press

ATHENS, Greece (AP) In a well-publicized mock trial planned for today in Athens' main square, President Clinton faces charges of international meddling and mayhem. The proceeding is, of course, not real but the sentiments are.

Clinton's scheduled arrival in Greece this week has demonstrators feverish to vent decades of anti-American ire and their still-raw anger over NATO's clash with Yugoslavia, which left Greece in an awkward position as Serbia's main backer in the alliance.

''There isn't anywhere in Greece where there will not be a protest,'' said rally organizer Thanassis Pafilis.

On Sunday, a powerful explosion damaged a Levis jeans store in Athens, and shots were fired at a Greek-American cultural institution. No one was hurt. A leftist group said the attacks were part of protests against Clinton.

Antipathy toward the United States runs deep in Greece.

Denunciations of the United States became a battle cry for the leftist losers of Greece's civil war in the late 1940s. The Cold War produced even more bitterness over the heavy U.S. shadow in the West's main Balkan foothold.

Greeks felt betrayed by U.S. encouragement to the 1967-74 military junta and a perceived tilt toward rival Turkey over war-divided Cyprus. Earlier this year, the NATO air bombardment of Yugoslavia brought almost unanimous outrage among Greeks, who targeted their anger at the United States while often ignoring the fact that their own government signed the alliance's attack plan.

Into the cross fire steps Clinton, making the first trip to Greece by a U.S. president since George Bush eight years ago. His Nov. 13-15 stop part of an 11-day, four-nation trip is an opportunity for America-trashing protests on a scale rarely seen in a Western ally.

''Protesting against the United States is almost a conditioned reflex in Greece,'' said Theodore Couloumbis, a professor of international relations at the University of Athens. ''In times of crisis, like Kosovo, it is awakened again.''

The protests are expected to draw an eclectic collection of leftists, anarchists and Christian Orthodox zealots who identify closely with the Serbs. Some of the rallies will pass near the empty pedestal that held a 12-foot tall bronze statue of former President Harry S. Truman, which was toppled in May.

Clinton's timing is also bound to inflame demonstrations. He will be in Greece during the week of Nov. 17 traditionally a day of fierce anti-American protests to mark the violent crackdown on student demonstrators in 1973 by the then-military regime.

Greeks' relations with the United States is paradoxical, experts say. Washington is widely portrayed as an international bully, but millions of Greek emigrants have been drawn to the United States. Even one of the most relentless bashers of America, the late Premier Andreas Papandreou, lived for decades in the United States and served in the U.S. Navy.

Greece's Socialist leadership is left in an awkward spot. It is desperate to keep the expected protests far from Clinton to avoid international embarrassment. But lines of riot police could spell domestic troubles for Premier Costas Simitis. His government faces elections next year and needs the support of old-style Socialists who remain loyal to the party's roots of hyper-nationalism and distrust of Western powers.

''There's a deep current in Greek society and political culture that reinforces the idea that murky outside forces are always to blame for the nation's problems,'' said James Ker-Lindsay, a regional analyst at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies in London. ''America is a big and convenient target.''

The Washington Post

Wednesday, November 3, 1999; Page A30

U.S. PRESSES GREECE FOR ACTION AGAINST LEFTIST TERROR GROUP
By R. Jeffrey Smith

ATHENS-German Ambassador Heinz Kuhna was seated in his second-floor study here on May 16 when a rocket-propelled grenade exploded in the next room and nearly knocked him from his chair.

The attack came a week after a similar attack on the Dutch ambassador and was at least the fifth carried out this year by a terrorist group known as November 17, which has operated in the Greek capital for more than two decades.

Since November 1975, when the group assassinated the top CIA official in Greece, Richard Welch, the United States has pressed Greek police to bring the members of the group to justice, but officials here say their first arrest is still a long way off.

The group's long record of violence helps explain why the State Department spends more on diplomatic security here than anywhere else in the world, according to U.S. Embassy officials. In 24 years, November 17 attacks have killed 22 people--four of them U.S. government officials--and wounded 70.

November 17's seeming immunity has provoked renewed concern among U.S. officials that some Greek political and security officials do not share Washington's goal of bringing the group to justice. Instead, they complain, some within the Greek government may have sought to preserve its anonymity, possibly to hide past links to the organization by top Greek officials.

"There is a high degree of unhappiness in the U.S. government and this embassy about the fact that no one has been arrested" in 24 years in connection with the deaths of the four U.S. officials and the wounding of 30 others in attacks by November 17, said U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns.

Burns said he is confident that Prime Minister Costas Simitis and Minister of Public Order Michalis Chrysohoides share the American desire to act against the group. But a U.S. official who asked not to be identified said Washington could not vouch for "people at other levels [of government] who have potential associations" with the group. "There is a clear record of failure" so far, the official said.

U.S. officials say they suspect that arrests of group members have been blocked by both a lack of official interest and active opposition within the Athens government. Senior Greek security officials have rejected the accusation.

Burns said the issue is certain to be discussed during President Clinton's visit here Nov. 13, when security precautions are likely to be among the tightest for any foreign visit Clinton has made. U.S. officials say they hope the two NATO allies can finish drafting a protocol authorizing cooperation between a special squad of Greek police and a trio of FBI counter-terrorist specialists. The United States also wants to help train and equip Greek police involved in the investigation.

Washington's interest stems not only from the group's killing of Welch and the three other officials in 1983, 1988 and 1991, but also from its 1987 bombing of two buses carrying U.S. Air Force personnel; its attempted assassination of two other U.S. officials; a failed 1996 missile attack on the U.S. Embassy; and its attacks on many prominent U.S. corporations here.

November 17 also has killed more than a dozen prominent Greeks, but the group's actions have provoked only limited outrage here, partly because its overtly leftist and nationalist leanings and its strident anti-Americanism resonate with many Greeks. Greece was the site of furious demonstrations against NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia earlier this year, and Washington's image here is still tainted by its support for a Greek military junta from 1967 to 1974.

The group's name is taken from the 1973 date on which Greek army tanks smashed a student protest at Athens Polytechnic University. Its initial aims were to promote a Marxist-Leninist system, challenge U.S. influence in Greece and overturn an amnesty given policemen involved in torture.

U.S. and Greek officials say the group's membership was likely drawn from the same anti-junta student organizations that also gave birth to the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok), which ruled the country from 1981 to 1989 under Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, a harsh critic of U.S. policies. The party rules today under Simitis, a political moderate and pragmatist who had been Papandreou's top economic adviser.

"It is logical to assume that people didn't want to look under every rock because of what they might find," a U.S. official said. "If they arrest the leader, for example, and he turns out to be a former best friend of a Pasok leader, that would be embarrassing."

Some prominent Greeks share U.S. suspicions. "There were a lot of cases where police did not do what they had to do," said Dora Bakoyannis, whose husband, Pavlos, was assassinated by November 17 in 1989. "Everybody in Greece knows that. So the question is why? Did they have someone inside? . . . There are a lot of heavy accusations behind closed doors, but we don't have anything tangible," said Bakoyannis, whose father is a former prime minister.

Mary Bossis, a former Public Order Ministry official and the author of several books on terrorism, said: "We are very gossipy . . . and here we have a group where nobody seems to know anything." If Greek security agencies could keep 21 million files before 1981 and penetrate hundreds of communist cells in that era, why can it not find November 17, she was asked. "If they want to find them, they will," she said.

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