Elias P. Demetracopoulos

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Elias P. Demetracopoulos is a greek journalist, dissident and oppositionist during the dictatorship in Greece from 1967 to 1974.

During the dictatorship Demetracopoulos lived in exile in Washington where he lobbied against the greek junta. In June 1970 his citizenship was withdrawn by Greece. In 1968 Demetracopoulos uncovered illegal campaign donations of $ 549.000 spent by the Greek military dictatorship to the Nixon-Agnew campaign. He gave the information to Larry O'Brian then chairman of the Democratic National Committee who issued a call for an inquiry into the activities of Thomas Pappas.

Through suits against the FBI and CIA Demetracopoulos found out that he had been under extensive surveillance from 9 November 1967 to 2 October 1969, 25 August 1971 to 14 march 1973 and 19 February to 24 October 1974 by the agencies. After 1974 he gained access to secret police files in Athen out of which he learned that there had been several attempts to kidnap and eliminate him. Investigating the involvement of US agencies Demetracopoulos in 1967 engaged attorney William A. Dobrovir who was able to get access to hundreds of documents from the FBI, CIA, State Department, Department of Justice and Pentagon via the Freedom of Information Act. Some of the documents indicated that copies were sent to the National Security Council headed by Henry Kissinger at the time. It was not before March 1977 that the NSC agreed to release skeletal computer indices of these documents. In the computer indices Demetracopoulos found a reference to a document referring to his death in a prison in Athen on 18 December 1970. For the next seven years Dobrovir wrote letters to Kissinger asking for copies of the document. Kissinger eventually replied that he could not find such a copy. ^[1]

Demetracopoulos is a personal friend of Louise Gore and congress men Frank E. Moss, Quentin N. Burdick and Mike Gravel.

[edit] External links

G. Robert Blakey, Elias Demetracopoulos, Paul Hoch, Jim Hougan, Jim Lesar, Norman Mailer: JFK'S ASSASSINATION The New York Review of Books, Volume 50, Number 20, 18 December 2003
Scott Armstrong, G. Robert Blakey, Vincent Bugliosi, Don DeLillo, Elias Demetracopoulos, Stephen Dorril: BLOCKED The New York Review of Books, Volume 52, Number 13, 11 August 2005