Since 2018, the story of my life and my project took a turn where I became the target of relentless harassment. What is so interesting about those who harass me is that they are so incredibly adept at hiding their identities. Since I would like to ascertain the identity of my hiding persecutors, I’ve been looking for patterns. Not many people can fit the shoes of the ones who have instituted a media wide policy of silence against me. Not many could just wipe away my Wikipedia entry as if it never existed.
Here we continue to examine the Christopher Hitchens’ case about how it was more than likely that Henry Kissinger was sneakily targeting the influential renegade independent journalist Elias Demetracopoulos.
The text below is continued from here.
Demetracopoulos's dangerous knowledge of the secret campaign donations, and his incessant lobbying on the Hill and in the press against Nixon's and Kissinger's client regime in Athens, drew unwelcome attention to him.
He later sued both the FBI and the CIA-becoming the first person ever to do so successfully-and received written admissions from both agencies that they possessed “no derogatory information" about him.
In the course of these suits, he also secured an admission from then FBI director William Webster that he had been under “rather extensive" surveillance on and between the following dates: 9 November 1967 and 2 October 1969; 25 August 1971 and 14 March 1973; and 19 February and 24 October 1974.
Unaware of the precise extent of this surveillance, Demetracopoulos had nonetheless more than once found himself brushed by a heavy hand. On 7 September 1971 he was lunching at Washington's fashionable Jockey Club with Nixon's chief henchman, Murray Chotiner, who told him bluntly, "Lay off Pappas. You can be in trouble. You can be deported. It's not smart politics. You know Tom Pappas is a friend of the President."
The next month, on 27 October 1971, Demetracopoulos was lunching with columnist Robert Novak at the Sans Souci and was threatened by Pappas himself, who came over from an adjacent table to tell him and Novak that he could make trouble for anyone who wanted him investigated.
On the preceding 12 July, Demetracopoulos had testified before the European subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by Congressman Benjamin Rosenthal of New York, about the influence of Thomas Pappas on US foreign policy and the Athens dictatorship (and vice versa).
Before his oral testimony could be printed, a Justice Department agent appeared at the sub-committee's office and demanded a copy of the statement. Demetracopoulos had then, on 17 September, furnished a memorandum on Pappas's activities to the same subcommittee.
His written deposition closed thus: "Finally, I have submitted separately to the subcommittee items of documentary evidence which I believe will be useful."
This statement, wrote Rowland Evans and Robert Novak in their syndicated column, caused "extreme nervousness in the Nixon White House."
Later disclosures have accustomed us to the part-mafioso and part-banana-republic atmosphere in Washington during those years; it was still very shocking for Demetracopoulos to receive a letter from Ms. Louise Gore.
Ms. Gore has since become more celebrated as the cousin of Vice President Albert Gore and the proprietress of the Fairfax Hotel in Washington, DC, where the boy politician grew up. She was then quite celebrated in her own right: as a Republican state Senator from Maryland, and as the woman who introduced Spiro Agnew to Richard Nixon. She was a close friend of Attorney General John Mitchell, and had been appointed as Nixon's representative to UNESCO. Demetracopoulos lived, along with many congressmen and political types, as a tenant of an apartment in her hotel. He had also been a friend of hers since 1959. On 24 January 1972 she wrote to him:
Ms. Louise Gore
Dear Elias- I went to Perle's [Perle Mesta's] luncheon for Martha Mitchell yesterday and sat next to John [Attorney General John Mitchell]. He is furious at you-and your testimony against Pappas. He kept threatening to have you deported! At first I tried to ask him if he had any reason to think you could be deported and he didn't have any answer - But then tried to counter by asking me what I knew about you and why we were friends. It really got out of hand. It was all he'd talk about during lunch and everyone at the table was listening...
Among those present at the table were George Bush, then ambassador to the United Nations, and numerous other diplomats. The Attorney General's lack of restraint and want of tact, on such an occasion and at the very table of legendary hostess Perle Mesta, were clearly symptomatic of a considerable irritation, even rage.
I have related this background in order to show that Demetracopoulos was under surveillance, that he possessed information highly damaging to an important Nixon-Kissinger client regime, and that his identity was well known to those in power, in both Washington and Athens.
The United States ambassador in Athens at the time was Henry Tasca, a Nixon and Kissinger crony with a very lenient attitude to the dictatorship. (He later testified to a closed session of Congress that he had known of the 1968 payments by the Greek secret police to the Nixon campaign.)
In July 1971, shortly after Demetracopoulos testified before Congressman Rosenthal's subcommittee, Tasca had sent a four-page secret cable from Athens. It began: For some time I have felt that Elias Demetracopoulos is head of a well-organized conspiracy which deserves serious investigation. We have seen how effective he has been in combatting our present policy in Greece. His aim is to damage our relations with Greece, loosen our NATO alliance and weaken the U.S. security position in the Eastern Mediterranean.
This was certainly taking Demetracopoulos seriously. So was the closing paragraph, which read as follows:
The conspirators were trying to label Demetracopoulos a conspirator?
I am therefore bringing the matter to your personal attention in the hope that a way will be found to step up an investigation of Demetracopoulos to identify his sponsors, his sources of funds, his intentions, his methods of work and his fellow conspirators.... I bring this matter to your attention now, believing that as an alien resident in the United States it may be possible to submit him to the kind of searching and professional FBI investigation which would lift some of the mystery.