Greece - US Department of State

Greece 629
“carpet trading” approach; but I’ll have to rely on the last analysis on
your superior familiarity with the Greek character to judge which technique
is the best.
Another advantage of the course we recommend of restoring the
MAP but also making quite clear that this does not imply acceptance,
let alone approval, of the GOG’s domestic policies, is that it would retain
many of the favorable features of the old withholding policy. We
should clearly begin by disabusing the proponents of the present suspension
policy of the notion that withholding MAP weapons has had
any appreciable effect on the ability of the GOG to carry out a policy of
internal repression. The GOG has always had more than enough of the
type of weapons necessary for this purpose. By making clear that the
resumption of full MAP deliveries does not imply political approval,
we should be able to satisfy the domestic critics of this move within the
United States (i.e. in Congress, the press and the intellectual community),
as well as internationally in the ranks of our NATO partners.
If anything has driven home to me, Dan, the almost pathetic eagerness
of the present GOG for evidence of U.S. approval, it has been
the exaggerated lengths to which their controlled press went in attempting
to interpret the fact that high officials in Washington were
willing politely to receive, listen, and talk to Pattakos as conclusive evidence
of unequivocal U.S. acceptance of the present GOG and all its
works. Conversely, the disproportionately sharp reaction over the
rather minor evidence of U.S. disapproval which the publication in the
USIS’s Viewpoint Bulletin of the Department’s fairly mild effort to set
the record straight brought home with equal force, and in a context unrelated
to MAP policy, the GOG’s acute unhappiness over any public
U.S. censure. One is frankly at a loss to understand why it is that a
regime which is so relatively firmly in the saddle and not seriously
threatened by any organized internal or external opposition, manifests
such patent insecurity. One wonders what in the world might happen
were the President of the U.S., for example, to issue a resounding official
condemnation of the Greek regime. This almost lends credence
to Andreas Papandreou’s contention that the junta would collapse as
a result!
From our Athens vantage point we are not in a position to estimate
how serious the flak would be which the Executive Branch would
run into on the Hill in restoring the suspended MAP items or, indeed,
how willing and able the White House might be at the present time to
accept the repercussions. In the declining days of the past Administration,
the Executive Branch was unwilling to incur these risks. If I recall
correctly the substance of the position Mr. Katzenbach took in a
memorandum to the President on the subject, the Department feared
that the entire Foreign Aid bill might be jeopardized if it pressed for a
restoration of full military deliveries to Greece. From what we hear