Talk:Greek junta

The article had this comment at the end of the lead:

It has been said to have been heavily influenced by the CIA.

This claim was added in October 2023, with no discussion. I am having trouble even understanding what it's supposed to mean. Apparently it doesn't mean that the CIA caused the coup, because later in the article we say:

Although there have been persistent rumors about an active support of the coup by the U.S. government, there is no evidence to support such claims. The timing of the coup apparently caught the CIA by surprise.

So what exactly does it mean? And why is it so indirect ("it has been said")? -- who said it? The lead is supposed to reflect the body of the article -- what is this claim reflecting? --Macrakis (talk) 01:30, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

It is reflecting that junta leader Georgios Papadopoulos had been trained by the Central Intelligence Agency. Per his own article:

• • "He served in the KYP Intelligence Service from 1959 to 1964 as the main contact between the KYP and the top CIA operative in Greece, John Fatseas, after training at the CIA in 1953."^[1]
  • "Papadopoulos is widely reported to have had certain ties to the Central Intelligence Agency,^{[note 1]} and has also been reported to have undergone military and intelligence training in the United States during the 1950s.^[2][3]"
  • "On 1 July 1973, The Observer published an investigative journalism article that accused the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of engineering the 1967 coup, further writing that Papadopoulos was known among senior officials in the Joint United States Military Aid Assistance Group in Athens as "the first CIA agent to become Premier of a European country".^[4][5] The following day, during CIA agent William Colby's confirmation hearings to be Director of Central Intelligence, Colby was asked in response to the article if there was any justification for the assertions. Colby denied that the CIA had engineered the coup or that Papadopoulos was either a CIA agent or otherwise paid by the CIA, adding that "[Papadopoulos] has been an official of the Greek Government at various times, and in those periods from time to time we worked with him in his official capacity.".^{[6][non-primary source needed]}"
  • "In 1977, John M. Maury, a CIA agent who was Chief of Station in Athens during the coup, wrote in an article in The Washington Post that the CIA had considered swaying the elections to prevent Papandreou from winning by promoting moderate candidates. The agency ultimately decided against the plan. As the election drew near, CIA agents were vaguely prodded by their Greek contacts about the possibility of a coup. Maury argues that the CIA's choice to officially condemn suggestions of a military takeover and remain uninvolved led to the agency being taken by surprise by the events of April 21, 1967. He concludes: "That we seriously attempted neither to influence nor to injure them is still taken by Greeks of all kinds as proof of U.S. complicity, or at least acquiescence, in the excesses of the dictatorship. And when the dictatorship eventually fell, to the shame of its perceived U.S. support was added the humiliation of perceived U.S. defeat."^{[7][relevant?]}" Dimadick (talk) 08:58, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for this.

Yes, there were certainly connections between the CIA and Papadopoulos, as your first two bullets point out. But the sentence "It has been said to have been heavily influenced by the CIA." is far too vague and general. What is the "it" that is said to have been influenced? Who said this? When? In what context? In what way was it influenced? Also, your third and fourth bullets say that the CIA didn't cause the coup, although many Greeks did and do believe it did -- which strangely isn't mentioned in the article. The US government did support the junta after it came into power. Not sure how much of this belongs in the lead, though. --Macrakis (talk) 16:39, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

@Macrakis, I think we need to keep an eye on the article because people keep adding claims that the CIA was involved the coup. Based on @Dimadick's observations, I just removed one such claim by an IP editor. --Minoa (talk) 23:11, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

I also noticed this in several articles. It appears to me that this narrative has deep roots and may be originating from Andreas Papandreou even before the Greek Junta, when he was blaming the USA for everything. It was a time when the money from the Marshall Plan was drying up quickly, and Greek politicians needed a diversion. Blaming the USA at the time, especially with various failed interventionist policies (Vietnam War) or not (Turkish invasion of Cyprus), was particularly popular among left-leaning political parties in nearly every country, and Greece was no exception. For Andreas, it was a good excuse to make people forget his actions that effectively led to the Colonels taking power in Greece; he used a narrative in which was a victim of larger forces. The best academic article that I found that reviews the literature on this issue was the following:

• Klarevas, Louis (2006). "Were the eagle and the phoenix birds of a feather? The United States and the Greek coup of 1967". Diplomatic History. 30 (3): 471–508. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7709.2006.00562.x. JSTOR 24915022.

which concludes that there was no official involvement of the USA, but fails to conclude due to a lack of evidence on any unofficial activities. I hope this was helpful. A.Cython (talk) 18:13, 28 June 2025 (UTC)

Article says, "His funeral, on 20 September 1972, turned into a massive demonstration against the military government." The year of death is incorrect. 71.60.11.213 (talk) 00:00, 31 July 2024 (UTC)