Greece - US Department of State

Greece 811
As a result of Ambassador Tasca’s two visits in the White House,
there is again a confusing set of signals on Greece:
—The President apparently told Tasca that he wanted him to
persuade Papadopoulos to set a date for elections in connection with
Vice President Agnew’s visit. 2 Tasca went away wondering whether
the President’s policy had changed so that he was now supposed to
be pressing the Greeks for major concrete steps toward a democratic
government.
—Your talk with him 3 left him with the clear impression that we
were not supposed to be beating the Greeks over the head. Since he
prefers this policy himself and since it is easier to carry out, the reason
for his great pleasure in his talk with you was his relief in feeling that
perhaps he had some relief from the pressures of what the President
had said.
Now Tasca has sent you the back channel message at Tab B 4 suggesting
a trip by Robert Murphy in early October to make a general
pitch to Prime Minister Papadopoulos on taking some convincing action
to implement the 1968 constitution before our 1972 elections.
I, at least, am not sure how to put these two positions together.
The attached memorandum for the President is one possible way of
trying to get these positions into balance.
Recommendation: That you send the memo at Tab A to the President
unless you have a more precise sense of what our policy really is.
[It may be that it will be better to kill this memo and sort the issue out
in connection with a separate memo on the Vice President’s visit.] 5
2
See Document 320.
3
See Document 321.
4
Tab B, attached but not printed, is backchannel message 1099 from Athens, August
13.
5
Brackets in the original.