{"product_id":"the-greek-connectionisbn-9781612198286","title":"The Greek Connection","description":"\u003cb\u003eSpanning from WWII to the Cold War and beyond, this is the “magnificent . . . triumphant” biography of the investigative journalist, resistance fighter, and whistle blower who helped expose the Watergate scandal (Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of \u003ci\u003eLeadership\u003c\/i\u003e)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eHe was one of the most fascinating figures in 20th-century political history. Yet today, Elias Demetracopoulos is strangely overlooked—even though his life reads like an epic adventure story . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As a precocious twelve-year-old in occupied Athens, he engaged in heroic resistance efforts against the Nazis, for which he was imprisoned and tortured. After his life was miraculously spared, he became an investigative journalist, covering Greece’s tumultuous politics and America’s increasing influence in the region. A clever and scoop-hungry reporter, Elias soon gained access to powerful figures in both governments—and attracted many enemies. When the Greek military dictatorship took power in 1967, he narrowly escaped to Washington DC, where he would lead the fight to restore democracy in his homeland—while running afoul of the American government, too.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Now, after a decade of research and original reporting, James H. Barron uncovers the story of a man whose tireless pursuit of uncomfortable truths would put him at odds with not only his own government, but that of the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations, making him a target of CIA, FBI, and State Department surveillance and harassment—and Greek kidnapping and assassination plots American authorities may have purposefully overlooked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A stunning feat of biographic storytelling, sweeping from World War II to the Cold War, Watergate and beyond, \u003ci\u003eThe Greek Connection\u003c\/i\u003e is about a lifetime of standing up for democracy and a free press against powerful special interests. It has much to teach us about our own era’s abuses of power, dark money, journalist intimidation, and foreign interference in elections.“Richly sourced . . . at times cinematic. [The] tension between journalism and activism sits at the heart of the book’s inquiry into a corner of the Watergate story . . . ambitious.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Engrossing, richly detailed . . . the story of one of America’s first complex, controversial, and powerful émigré residents.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eWashington Monthly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This is a magnificent work, a triumphant combination of exhaustive research and fine narrative writing. The story of the Greek Connection to the Watergate saga is told through a sweeping biography of a compelling figure who captures our attention from beginning to end.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of \u003ci\u003eLeadership: In Turbulent Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“James Barron has done history a favor by telling the incomparable life of the amazing and indefatigable Elias Demetracopoulos, who spent his teenage years fighting against fascism in World War II and suffering, after the war, as America threw in against those inside Greece who had stood off the Nazis. Elias, having seen it all in his youth, became a real life Zelig as an investigative reporter, committed to the telling of truth and the making of trouble for Presidents from Jack Kennedy through the post-Nixon years.  There is much new history in this book, especially about the beginnings of the Watergate scandal.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Seymour M. Hersh\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Greek Connection\u003c\/i\u003e is a marvelous book, a biography that illuminates an essential yet nearly forgotten figure who navigated some of the most important events of the 20th century. In Elias Demetracopoulos, author James Barron has vividly portrayed a real-life character as remarkable as any fictional Cold War hero. In our own era of political and journalistic skullduggery, this is a must-read.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eMitchell Zuckoff, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eFall and Rise\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003e13 Hours\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The hero of this story, Elias Demetracopoulos, was a freedom fighter in the fullest sense, both in battle trenches and in confrontations with powerful political adversaries. His story, deftly woven together here for the first time, is a lens through which we can see 20th-century history in a new light.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Stephen Kinzer, author of \u003ci\u003eOverthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Barron brilliantly brings to life a Cold War story of international intrigue— and unravels one of the last mysteries of Watergate.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eTim Weiner, author of \u003ci\u003eLegacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA\u003c\/i\u003e and T\u003ci\u003ehe Folly and the Glory: America, Russia, and Political Warfare: 1945-2020\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“A fascinating biography of a remarkable gadfly, Elias Demetracopoulos, who influenced the modern history of both his homeland, Greece, and his adopted country, the United States, to a degree not yet fully measured. Packed with revelations about John F Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon, and the real reasons behind the Watergate break in, it is a meticulously researched and absorbing chronicle of one of the 20th century’s most powerful political sagas.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Nicholas Gage, author of \u003ci\u003eEleni\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e “Dogged probing and flair for narrative …, James Barron has produced a gripping you-can't-make-this-up profile that belatedly lifts the veil on a mysterious Watergate figure and on Cold War political hijinks that reverberate across two continents.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003eSam Roberts, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e reporter and author of \u003ci\u003eThe Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Atom Spy Case\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e “Elias Demetracopoulos is an illustration of how much can be achieved by a determined and courageous individual.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Christopher Hitchens\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“[A] page-turner... Highly recommended.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Library Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Barron’s excellently-researched and well-crafted biography of a man whose pursuit of the truth despite the potential cost of that pursuit is an inspiration in an era when the truth is all too often lies.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eRon Jacobs\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e, Counterpunch\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Excellent. . . . written with extraordinary care and diligent assembly of facts. Reading this book was an enriching experience and it will undoubtedly become a required text for anyone wishing to understand U.S.- Greek relations between 1967 and 1974.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eAlexander Kitroeff,\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Pappas Post\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Barron offers an even handed portrait of a complex man . . . a deeply researched life of a man in the crossroads of history.”\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Kirkus\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eJames H. Barron\u003c\/b\u003e is a journalist, attorney, and founding advisory board member of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting. A creator of the award-winning International Boston Initiative and Atlantic Rim Network, he has taught courses at MIT, led study groups at Harvard's Institute of Politics, and lectured at universities in Paris and Tokyo. Barron lives in Massachusetts with his wife, journalist Marjorie Arons-Barron.FOREIGN MEDDLING IN AMERICAN ELECTIONS didn’t start in 2016. In 1968, the Greek military junta, which had overthrown its country’s democratic government the year before, tried to buy influence by secretly funneling $549,000—almost $4 million in today’s dollars—to the Nixon campaign, money that likely began as “black budget” US aid to the Greek equivalent of the CIA.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe winning margin in that election, the second-closest presidential contest in the 20th century, was less than 1 percent. The bagman for the illegal funds was tycoon and Republican Party fundraiser Tom Pappas, who later became known on the Watergate tapes as “the Greek bearing gifts.” Timely disclosure of this transfer could have meant a Hubert Humphrey victory, no President Nixon, no Watergate, and a different course of history.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt a 2009 fundraiser for the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, of which I am a founding board member, I told our guest speaker Sy Hersh I was considering writing something on this unexplored transaction, a stillborn October Surprise. He recommended I contact Greek journalist Elias Demetracopoulos in Washington, the person who tried unsuccessfully to expose the money-laundering plot. When I did, I quickly realized that this episode was but part of Elias’s much larger and even more compelling life story.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs a boy he was brutalized for fighting his homeland’s Nazi occupiers and imprisoned. He survived being shot in the Greek Civil War and nearly died of tuberculosis incubated during his incarceration. Inspired to become an investigative journalist by the 1948 assassination in Greece of CBS correspondent George Polk, Elias became a fiercely independent and scoop-hungry reporter, exposing truths others wanted hidden.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1967 he escaped Greece’s military dictatorship and fled to Washington, where for seven years he led the fight to restore democracy in his homeland. He became a target of Greek plots to kidnap and execute him, as well as of CIA, FBI, and State Department attacks on his reputation and effectiveness. Unbroken, he resolutely stood up for himself, his country, and his sense of honor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eElias Demetracopoulos was a difficult subject. He gave me full power under the Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts to access all his government files, and he provided reams of articles and documents concerning better-known aspects of his career, but opened up only slowly about his multifaceted personal life. He steadfastly resisted divulging the names of sources to whom he had pledged confidentiality, even long after the sources had died. Nevertheless, for more than five years I visited him frequently and talked with him by phone, often daily, as I tried to peel back the layers of his story, getting him to confirm or disconfirm information I’d discovered elsewhere, and reveal more of himself. Eventually he gave me access to his personal files, shared once-hidden stories, and permitted friends who held his confidences to speak openly with me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJournalist, information broker, lobbyist, Wall Street financial consultant, trusted advisor, tipster, troublemaker, “dangerous gadfly,” suspected foreign agent, desired extra man for Georgetown dinner parties, impassioned democracy fighter and free press advocate, a man with friends and sources spanning the political spectrum, Elias always cultivated an air of mystery and carefully compartmentalized the different parts of his life. When he died in 2016, obituaries in both the New York Times and the Washington Post described him as “enigmatic”; he was said to have negotiated “a unique and controversial swath through Washington’s political and social thickets.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eElias P. Demetracopoulos was never as famous as celebrity mononyms like Bono, Oprah, Liberace, and Madonna, but for decades he was known around the nation’s capital and in major European cities as simply “Elias.” And being famous in Washington is different from being famous in music or Hollywood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen Susan Margolis sought to explain fame in her 1977 book of that name, she chose Elias as her exemplar of fame in Washington. Fame, for Margolis, involved having power, having access to power, or appearing to have such access. Elias had it all. The essence of his success, she wrote, was his ability to be both an outsider and an insider, projecting an attractively reassuring savoir faire; to be a trusted keeper and sharer of secrets who had mastered the game of knowing what and how much to disclose or tantalizingly hold back until the next time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe can see the impact of Demetracopoulos’s reputation in the difference between two 1976 receptions held in honor of the publisher of To Vima, the then-influential Greek newspaper, following the restoration of Greek democracy. The Greek ambassador invited celebrity journalists and government officials to his embassy, but the gathering was small and unnoticed. The only “A-list invitees” who attended were Margaret Truman and her husband Clifton Daniels of the New York Times.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe next evening, Elias borrowed the mansion of his friends Walter and Lydia Marlowe and threw a party for the same publisher that became the talk of the town. The guests included forty-two senators, with names like Fulbright, Kennedy, and Javits, thirty-four congressmen, cabinet officials, leading Washington socialites, financiers, reporters, columnists, editors, broadcast journalists, bureaucrats, and twenty-two ambassadors, including the Greek ambassador.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was a remarkable achievement for someone who for many years was deemed persona non grata by both Greek and American officials.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere are lessons for us in Elias’s unyielding battles against powerful and abusive governments and for human rights and democratic values; his dogged pursuit of news and would-be news leakers; his belief in the potential of congressional investigations and hearings to expose wrongdoing; and his effectiveness in working across partisan political aisles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere are eerie echoes today of Elias’s world of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s: when foreign money tainted and undermined free and fair elections, when fragile democratic norms buckled under popular susceptibility to authoritarian impulses, when human rights were deemed expendable, when independent journalists and political critics were harassed, subjected to disinformation campaigns, and disparaged as purveyors of fake news.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt’s my hope that the saga that follows will illuminate the real story behind this extraordinary Greek patriot and relentless champion of democracy and a free press.","brand":"Melville House","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304353222885,"sku":"NP9781612198286","price":32.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781612198286.jpg?v=1730757062","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-greek-connectionisbn-9781612198286","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}