Forty eight years ago the Greek military took over and began a seven year dictatorship. At the time, many Greeks assumed the CIA was behind the takeover. The year was 1967 and I was there – a baby, brought to Athens by my CIA dad, who had arrived in Greece on his first field mission with the Agency. I had no idea what was happening in Greece at the time and spent my time in the garden singing Greek nursery songs with my Greek nanny, who I adored.
I was in college when I learned that while I played in my garden, political prisoners were dragged from their homes and beaten using a technique called ‘falanga.’ This was done by having a metal pipe swung onto the bottoms of feet. It left no scars but could cripple for life. The dictators, who were known collectively as ‘the colonels,’ ruled Greece for seven years. They banned political dissent, controlled the media and arrested and detained thousands. When I learned the details of the junta as a college student, my relationship to Greece became more complicated.
So did my feelings for my father. My mother had died of breast cancer by then and I was left with a dad I didn’t understand. Although I loved him and knew he loved me, he had been so preoccupied with work growing up that I often felt invisible. We were also very different. He lived in Texas and I lived in Boston. He was politically conservative and I was liberal. Still, we had more in common than I liked to think. He told no one that he worked for the CIA and I told no one I was gay. Like father, like daughter.
After college in Boston, questions about Dad’s work in Greece haunted me. The CIA had sent Dad to Athens for his first assignment and so Dad, Mom and me had arrived in Athens just months ahead of the coup. Was the timing of our arrival intentional? Did he have a role in the coup?
I did nothing to answer my questions. They say inside me unexamined, heavy as stones.
By the 90’s, Dad had retired and was teaching a class on intelligence at the George Bush School of Government at Texas A&M. I had come out to him by then. When I did, he had told me it wasn’t natural and that he didn’t approve. But, he also said, “We don’t need to lose contact over it.” We didn’t see each other very frequently during my 30s. When we talked by phone, he seldom asked about my personal life. Years passed.
The journey to learn the truth about the Greek coup began when I was forty after I attended a writing workshop in Greece. Writing about Greece and my spy dad was more difficult than I imagined. Children of spies aren’t supposed to talk about their spy parents. Ever. We are supposed to carry the family secret indefinitely. After all, it’s our secret too. After this workshop I started the process of trying to learn the truth. I researched the coup, traveled to Greece, met scholars, and had conversations with my father. It was challenging but the process helped me heal my connection to Greece and my father. I learned that it was the Greek security police who tortured prisoners during the dictatorship, not the CIA. Moreover, I learned that the situation in Greece during the Cold War was complex, and not as black and white as I once thought.
Even though my relationship with my dad had healed, it took a few more years before I was ready to publish anything about Dad and Greece. Finally, I did. My first piece about the Greek Junta was published last November, the start of more to come.