- AHEPA TIES TO THE MILITARY & CIA
Being a secret society composed of ethnic Greeks, US military intelligence was especially interested in recruiting AHEPA members. During WWII, the precursor to the CIA, the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), formed special Greek regiments to provide wartime surveillance, and counter British influence in the area. As WWII ended, these Greek American Operational Groups became more intricately tied to US Cold War efforts. To “contain communism” (the new Truman Doctrine), US provided decades of “aid” and “military protection” to Greece & Turkey.
https://twitter.com/OrderOfAHEPA/status/883043519048364034
https://twitter.com/OrderOfAHEPA/status/883044297838272512
https://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/articles/ossgreece.aspx
http://www.pahh.com/oss/straight.html
In 1987, the 122 regiment files were declassified by the CIA. However, some claim there was an additional regiment that recruited Ivy-League educated Greeks into the OWI (office of Wartime Intelligence)
http://greekodyssey.typepad.com/my_greek_odyssey/2006/06/greek_american_.html
(first comment on the article)
“Most Greek American OSS operatives who ended up serving in Greece did not come through 122 or even the Army at all but were Ivy League Greek Americans recruited directly through an operation coordinated by OWI (which was just as much a precursor to CIA as OSS was) Greek desk head, Harry Lagoudakis together with the WWII AHEPA Supreme President George Vournas. The Mousalimas history linked and your entry primarily reflect the radio operator group which was a fraction of the actual effort. A lot of this is tangled up with the fact that the British blocked deployment of the 122 and 2671. This had less to do with the concept of Greece being in "the British Sphere" than the SOE's main concern -- blocking EAM/ELAS. In memo after memo the SOE accused the OSS, and American and Greek American OSS operatives, of being "leftists." Greek American OSS involvement, or more precisily the hampering of their invovlemnt in fighting the Germans, Italians and Bulgarians in Greece, is tied up with the history of British involvment in polarizing the resistance and creating a lot of the aftermath.”
Interestingly, I’ve found no trace of a “Harry Lagoudakis” working for the US Government outside of his Springfield College Alumni newspaper in 1948. I suspect this is due to parts of the Greek Operation still being classified.
https://cdm16122.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/api/collection/p16122coll3/.../download (warning PDF)
“Harry Lagoudakis is in the office of intelligence and research of the State Dept. Washington, D. C., as a senior political analyst.”
Nonetheless, the close relationship between Frankin Delano Roosevelt, George C. Vournas, and AHEPA, is documented by Stanford University:
https://web.stanford.edu/~ichriss/Couvaras.htm
“George C. Vournas is an attorney at law by profession, with offices in Washington, D.C., and a former Supreme President of Ahepa (1924-1945). In World War II he was commissioned Captain in the Army of the United States and was separated from that service with the rank of Major. He had been designated to go into occupied Greece, as a head of a military mission to come into contact with the Greek resistance fighters but, unfortunately, he failed his physical examination because of injuries sustained during maneuvers in the Egyptian desert.
“[George C Vournas] in August 1940, upon my arrival at the National Convention of the Order of Ahepa in Seattle, Washington, I found a telegram from a prominent journalist in Washington urging me to contact Anna Roosevelt Boetinger. Her husband was the editor of the city’s leading newspaper, the Seattle Intelligence; her father was Franklin D. Roosevelt. President Roosevelt had telephoned his daughter the previous evening. The situation in Europe was getting darker by the day and Roosevelt had asked that Ahepa assist in mobilizing public opinion in favor of exchanging “old United States destroyers to Great Britain for bases in the Americas.” As chairman of the convention, I was instrumental in preparing appropriate resolutions for the consideration of the assembly: They were unanimously approved.
The 1942 Ahepa Convention was held in Atlanta, Georgia. Ahepa was already busy in World War II activities, and I, as Supreme President, vigorously intensified these efforts. We organized the fraternity into Ahepa War Service Units, whose efforts were directed toward war bonds,4 selling American Red Cross campaigns, Greek War Relief and National War Chest campaigns, civilian defense, blood donations, hospital visits, and preparation of Red Cross supplies. Speaker of the House of Representatives Sam Rayburn, assisted by the Supreme President of Ahepa, Lyndon Johnson, then congressman, inaugurated the Ahepa’s sale of war bonds over a national radio broadcast.”
[Because George C. Vournas failed his physical examination, another AHEPA Ivy Leaguer, Costa Couvaras was recruited for the intelligence mission]
“In late 1942 the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was eager to recruit Americans of Greek descent into its service. Members of Ahepa in and out of uniform were urged to apply for acceptance in the OSS. This is how Costa Couvaras was recruited. Costa Couvaras had been in the United States since 1935. He studied political science and history at Cornell University receiving B.A. and M.A. degrees. His first job was with the National Herald, a Greek daily published in New York. After joining the OSS, he was dispatched to Cairo.
In the spring of 1944 he was sent into enemy-occupied Greece as head of an OSS mission. He eventually succeeded in reaching the EAM (Ethniko Apeleftherotiko Metopo, Greek Liberation Movement) command in the mountains of Greece. His reports were eagerly awaited by his higher-ups at the OSS headquarters. “PERICLES”—his assumed name—became famous for his objectivity and lucidity. His immediate superior, Arthur J. Goldberg, postwar Supreme Court Justice and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations said:
“Costa Couvaras served under me with great distinction and although naturally proud of his origins, as we all should be, he remained faithful throughout to his sworn duty to forward, to the best of his ability, the interests of the United States. I never found in his work of the OSS that he ever deviated from this solemn obligation.”
Couvaras saw the EAM as a patriotic movement dedicated to the liberation of Greece and so reported.Costa was with the EAM command until liberation. As liaison officer he promised the command of EAM that America would stand by them. He was given the Bronze Star medal with the following citation: “First Lieutenant Costa G. Couvaras, performed meritorious service as chief of an intelligence operation in occupied Greece from March to October, 1944. Penetrating the mountain regions he established contact with and gained the confidence of leaders of the Greek Resistance Movements, secured and transmitted important political and military information and assisted other United States intelligence missions in their operations.”
The war in Greece was upgraded. From civil war it became “International Communist aggression,” despite the fact that Stalin—the internationally-acknowledged Communist High Priest—was fighting on the side of Truman. Through a constant barrage of anti-communist statements, news releases and pronouncements from the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House, plus special Presidential messages to the Congress personally delivered, McCarthy’s “anticommunism,” became Truman’s policy. The “Truman Doctrine” was born, inaugurating the era of Cold War.
The U.S. domestic political dialogue soon discovered that “poor Turkey,” which played “footsie” with Hitler during the war, was also “menaced,” and awarded the major part of the “Aid to Greece” [12] program. From there the march proceeded merrily on until every country bordering the Soviet Union was included, making this the third attempt at containment of the Soviet Union. John Foster Dulles extended the principle to encompass the world.”
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/01/us/george-c-vournas-lawyer-98.html
“Born in Greece, he came to the United States at the age 17 and earned his law degree in Washington. He was in private practice until about 10 years ago, often representing business interests before Government agencies. He was a past president of the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association. His familiarity with Greek-American affairs led President Lyndon B. Johnson to name him to the official United States delegation to the funeral of King Paul I of Greece in 1964.”
https://www.facebook.com/OrderOfAHEPA/photos/ahepa-hails-todays-passage-of-the-office-of-strategic-services-oss-congressional/10154797368233887/
Finally, the head of the 122nd regiment, Peter Clainos, was a member of the Order of AHEPA, the first Greek graduate of West-Point, and a FOUNDING MEMBER of the Sons Of Pericles.
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NOMOCHOMO ago
https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKkaramessines.htm
Thomas Hercules Karamessines was born in 1917. After attending Columbia University he worked as a deputy assistant attorney general, under Thomas Dewey. During the Second World War Karamessines served in the United States Army. Later, because of his knowledge of Greek language and history, he was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).
In 1948 Karamessines joined the Central Intelligence Agency. He worked under Frank Wisner, head of the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). This became the espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the CIA. Wisner was told to create an organization that concentrated on "propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world."
Karamessines worked undercover in Greece until 1953. He was Chief of Station in Rome in the early 1960s before being appointed Assistant Deputy Director for Plans under Richard Helms. He held the same post under Desmond FitzGerald.
NOMOCHOMO ago
The Director of the CIA's "dirty work" was Greek Lawyer Thomas Karamessinis
https://the-eye.eu/public/concen.org/The%20CIA%20Books%20Reports%20and%20Manuals%20Collection/Books%20on%20the%20CIA/Dirty%20Work%20The%20CIA%20in%20Europe%20by%20Philip%20Agee.pdf
Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe
Then, in 1951, at the personal invitation of the director, Allen Dulles, [Cord Meyer] joined the CIA. His career has been made, not in intelligence, in the strict sense of the word, but in the departments which come under the authority of the Deputy Director for plans, which is a euphemism for clandestine operations, and is not unjustly known in Washington as the "department of dirty tricks. "He began by working for Tom Braden, who later resigned and became a fashionable liberal columnist. Braden has admitted that he was responsible for pouring CIA money into the trade union movement, both in America and in Europe. Later, Meyer worked for the legendary Thomas Karamessinis: it was believed that he would succeed “the Greek”as Deputy Director of Plans-"Washington's closest equivalent,,' according to the late Stewart Alsop, a considerable authority on these matters,"to James Bond's boss, 'M’
NOMOCHOMO ago
KARAMESSINES was part of Operation Mockingbird & MHCHAOS
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/3658-thomas-hercules-karamessines/
When Desmond FitzGerald died of a heart-attack in July, 1967, Karamessines was appointed Director for Plans. His deputy was Cord Meyer. Along with Richard Ober they worked on Operation Mockingbird. This included a major campaign against the left-wing press. Called MHCHAOS it targeted some 500 newspapers. CIA agents infiltrated those papers that were opposing the Vietnam War.
Karamessines, as chairman of the Chile Task Force, played a major role in FUBELT, the covert operation against Salvador Allende in Chile. In a secret cable to Henry Hecksher, CIA station head in Santiago, dated 16th October, 1970, Karamessines pointed out: "It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup ... it is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG (Unites States Government) and American hand be well hidden."
Karamessines has also been blamed for the plot against René Schneider, the army chief commander who refused to support a coup against Allende. The CIA provided guns and money for kidnapping Schneider, but he was killed inside his car during the operation.
The Watergate Scandal caused problems for Karamessines and Helms when it was revealed that three of the central figures in the operation, E. Howard Hunt, Eugenio Martinez and James W. McCord had close links with the CIA. By this time Richard Nixon was beginning to have doubts about the loyalty of Helms. In February, 1973, Nixon sacked Helms. Karamessines resigned in protest.
Thomas Karamessines was expected to be questioned by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. However, he died of an apparent heart attack on 4th September, 1978, at his vacation home in Grand Lake, Quebec, before he could give evidence before the HSCA.
Karamessines was only 61. He must have known a great deal about the CIA and Oswald. Those involved in the conspiracy (and cover-up) must have been very pleased to hear about his death.
NOMOCHOMO ago
EDIT: This National Herald Article serves as an excellent introduction: Public Service and Public Politics: Very Few Greeks https://www.thenationalherald.com/13477/public-service-and-public-politics-very-few-greeks/
Few remember that the CIA, when first created out of the World War II Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, was a virtual monopoly of Irish Americans from Notre Dame and Greek Americans from Boston. These included officers with distinguished, not to say heroic, records such as Tom Karamessines and Nick and James Natsios. They also served during a period when Greek American names were found in high positions throughout the Federal Administration.
When I entered the Foreign Service in 1963, a constellation of stellar ambassadors was there to inspire me, giants such as Viron Vaky, Nick Veliotes and John Condon. At one time, the number of Greek Americans holding flag rank (General and Admiral) in the American Armed Forces exceeded 20. Pete Petersen was Secretary of Commerce. Many others held high-ranking positions elsewhere in the bureaucracy. In numbers, the presence and, therefore, the influence of the community was punching way above its weight....
Finally, the very presence of Greek Americans in the inner circles of U.S. Government shapes the tone and content of the discussion, as our fellow citizens of Jewish heritage have long since discovered.
NOMOCHOMO ago
More connections between George C. Vournas (Supreme President of AHEPA) and the Deep-State
Audio Archive: LBJ discussing George Vournas and the Greek Delegation (WOW LBJ/The Democrats are such Racists)
https://discoverlbj.org/item/tel-02385
"George Vournas..he's a good Greek, and a good Democrat isn't he...I think that if we expect to do anything, we've just got find some way to pass this farm bill. The mean, mean vicious Republicans that dont want us to have anything so that wheat price will drop and cotton will be in hell of a shape. And we just cant let them get by with it. Now I think thats got to be our major project after you got rid of taxes and you got rid of civil rights and done a good job you have..I think we oughtta tell our Southern Cotton boys, very quietly, and bring em in, and tell em we're ready to do or die for ya."
NOMOCHOMO ago
Lady Bird Johnson describes the "racy crowd", political functions, and "stag parties" that she and LBJ attended. George's farm was one mentioned location
J: Lyndon went off on a lot of the stag events that men did in those days. For instance, there was an annual fishing trip somewhere on the coast of Virginia, and I think probably there was more talking than fishing. Then one time we went down in the summer to the beach somewhere in Virginia with Senator [Warren] Magnuson and his current lady -love and a newspaperman, I think Collingwood was his name. He was on the air, a broadcaster. G: Was that Charles? J: Yes, Charles Collingwood. Why they took along a couple like Lyndon and me, because they were much--it was a racier life than we were acquainted with, but great fun, delightful folks. Took a lot of years to lure Magnuson into matrimony. ...An interesting event was to go out to Drew Pearson's farm. He was by turns our friend and supporter and our enemy and--well, I think he just wanted to correct and get back on the right path a young man that he really liked. I think he really always did like Lyndon. I cannot say the same of his later partners. His early partner I can. G: Bob Allen? J: Bob Allen. G: Did LBJ understand Drew Pearson, do you think? J: Oh, yes, I think he understood him. They suffered each other for their differences. Lyndon would get mad at him, too. But deep down I think there was always a friendship between them. G: He seemed to feel that Drew Pearson would distort things. J: Oh, yes, he certainly did. I'm sure he did. And through Drew we met an interesting Greek named George Vournas, who had a farm out there close to Drew's. He would have a sort of a fiesta in the summertime called a mastia [could be referring to "pascha," a Greek Easter feast that can be held in late spring], where there would be lamb on the spit and those honeyed cakes for desserts, you know, real Greek food, and a lot of congressmen and newspaper people
NOMOCHOMO ago
Interestingly, Drew Pearson was a journalist who ran afoul of the McCarthy administration. He wrote of Bipartisan sex scandals and implicated Ronald Reagan.
By the mid-1950s, Pearson's appetite for championing liberal and populist causes had waned considerably. In a column attacking California Governor Ronald Reagan released on October 31, 1967, Pearson claimed that a "homosexual ring has been operating in his (Reagan's) office", including a claim that a tape recording existed of "a sex orgy which had taken place at a cabin near Lake Tahoe, leased by two members of Reagan's staff. Eight men were involved."[10] Later press reports claimed that the alleged tape that Pearson had mentioned in his column did not exist.[8]
In other writing, Pearson referred to homosexuality as a "bipartisan problem" in Washington and a "disease".[46]
NOMOCHOMO ago
Washington Merry-Go-Round: The Drew Pearson Diaries, 1960-1969
Drew Pearson also states in his journals: https://books.google.com/books?id=Kz5TCgAAQBAJ
"A lot more is coming out about the strange, mixed-up character of Lee Oswald...George Vournas raised the question as to whether he wasn't a CIA agent when he went to Russia. Most Americans who spend two years there are."
As an OSS agent himself, Vournas seems to know a lot about how "The Agency" works
NOMOCHOMO ago
https://web.stanford.edu/~ichriss/Couvaras.htm
though long, I encourage everyone to read the entirety of Couvaras' military journals.
It reveals that the OSS tasked Couvaras with infiltrating "communist" Greek guerillas. Claiming to be a communist sympathizer and part of the OSS "labour" wing, he subverted the institution, pledged US military support, and basically through gasoline onto the fire that became the Greek Civil war.
In my following posts, I'll demonstrate how AHEPA and the US intelligence agencies played both sides of the conflict in an effort to reduce British influence over Greece post WWII.
This attempt to infiltrate directly led to the Cold War Truman Doctrine. Then, they utilized the chaos to create a displaced orphan funnel into the United states.
NOMOCHOMO ago
Excepts:
The British and ourselves already have many missions in Greece, but relations with the EAM guerrillas are not always as smooth as they might be. My job will be to persuade the leaders of EAM that our purpose is strictly intelligence gathering, and that we have no other axe to grind. In this respect, I possess certain advantages. Besides being a U.S. officer (the guerrillas prefer Americans to British), this mission is part of the Labor Section of the OSS a factor that will supposedly facilitate my work. My labor background will, of course, help in this respect. Once I can persuade the resistance leaders that our purpose is strictly the collection of intelligence and that their internal affairs are of no interest to us, we can expect a good reception.
George, the guerrilla to whom I mostly spoke, is a young man of about twenty, and extremely intelligent. At the same time he seems modest and sincere. In talking to him I know I had found the best companion of the lot. Besides, what he said more or less reflected the thoughts and ideas of all the guerrillas that we have met during the last few days, and it is important to understand the feeling prevailing among these fighters.
Of course George is no philosopher. He is not even remotely aware of Marxist dialectics; he is not even a Communist. He is a peasant boy who felt the patriotic call to duty. His duty, he figured, was to become a guerrilla and fight the enemies of his country. At the present time his social ideas are [23] only in the process of formation, but he absorbs well and rather quickly.
Two years ago George was just a peasant and today he is a guerrilla: tomorrow, he will be a full-fledged Communist! Of that I have no doubt, because his mind has taken that direction already. Communist or not, though, there is one fact that cannot escape the student of modern Greece: these young guerrillas are full of idealism and vigor. They belong to a rising generation that will fight hard to give their country the leadership they believe it needs.
The Greeks have always complained about their leaders, but they have never had any cohesive ideas to develop their complaints into a coherent philosophy! The EAM seems to have been providing exactly those. They have been supplying the people with the ideas and the people seem to approve, to like the change which is being promised. The popular democracy idea is good enough in content and vague enough, and very few people are troubled about its vagueness; perhaps that is precisely what people like.
The discussion came around to my mission. I told them I belonged to an American intelligence outfit, of which Bill Donovan was in charge, and that I belonged to the labor section of that outfit, the section most sympathetic to their ideals. I wanted their cooperation to establish my mission near them and also to explore the possibility of getting more missions into Greece to work in cooperation with other guerrilla units.
Three things I stressed: first, that I had no authority to conclude any agreements; second, that I had very little to offer in tangible remuneration; and thirdly, that, according to my opinion, it was to their benefit to cooperate with us, because it was important that the Americans get firsthand information on the Greek situation themselves instead of getting it through British sources. Also I told them that the Americans, who have no big interests to support in Greece, stand on the side of what they think to be right.
My thesis was accepted without much difficulty, and they were soon satisfied that they were dealing with a sympathetic Greek-American. From this very first meeting the leaders promised to help us as much as possible. They permitted us to set up an intelligence organization of our own, and promised to make their intelligence reports available to us.
I had more talks with him on the possibility of organizing American intelligence groups around Greece, and he accepts my general plan. I told him that I am submitting a report to my superiors for the organization of twelve; or thirteen additional missions around Greece, in order to cover the country well. I said that we would like to use their people to gather intelligence, but in every case the main agent would be a person appointed and trained by us; he could be an American of Greek descent, a person recruited in Greece, or one recruited in Egypt, but in every case a man sympathetic to the labor point of view. The main intelligence we are interested in is military, but we also want economic and some political information. We are not interested in organizing groups that will work against the EAM, because American interests in Greece are not of that type.
derram ago
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shewhomustbeobeyed ago
militaryhistoryonline - https://archive.is/0uYSh
greekodyssey - https://archive.is/63WZ
stanford - https://archive.is/kCg9O