of the counter coup. After months of official silence about the increasingly troubled situation in Cyprus, there was now extensive coverage.

The papers constantly strained at their limitations. One favorite device was the trick headline, such as eight columns of screaming woodtype declaring, 'The dictatorship is rapidly receding' coupled with a tiny kicker reading 'in Spain'. Another was to reprint critical comments by foreign political figures. This could be done only in those instances where it was nicely judged that the diplomatic embarrassment to the regime of being seen to suppress the remarks would be greater than the domestic political damage of allowing them to appear. France, for instance, was, for pragmatic reasons of trade, one of the few western European countries not overtly critical of the colonels. Thus, when receiving a new ambassador, French president Georges Pompidou made a one-line passing reference to possible political developments in Greece, it was bannered in Athens next day as 'Insinuations by Pompidou on evolution.'

Eventually Yradyni encroached on the forbidden territory of political commentary when it offered a forum to retired Colonel Dimitrios Stamatelopoulos, a former member of the junta who had broken with his colleagues over their efforts to create a new political order. He favored quick refurbishment of democratic institutions and restoration of a purified parliamentary government. Athanassiades gave Stamatelopoulos carte blanche to write an article for the Saturday paper whenever he wished on the subject of his choosing and at whatever length he liked (each one was worth an additional 30,000 copies in circulation). They were rambling, turgid texts which reiterated Stamatelopoulos' fears that 'a chapter might become a 'tome,' They had an unnerving effect on the regime because they represented a worm in the bud. More importantly, his association with the paper gave it an immunity from overt persecution and afforded protection to other, intelligent commentators, such as political and diplomatic editor Vassos Vassileiou who made sophisticated critiques. Vass. Vass., as he was known, regularly wrote subtle front-page editorials in which he would analyze the discrepancies between government policies and pronouncements and regime practice. He was particularly adept in detailing how statutes produced to flesh out the constitution frequently curtailed in their details liberties set out in the general principles of the larger law. Vassileiou probably did more than any other single individual to destroy the regime's efforts to create a veneer of democratic respectability.

The fate of Ethnos

The colonels retaliated against the press by using covert measures of economic punishment. Circulation was interrupted. Newsprint taxes were applied in proportion to circulation which hit hardest at the popular opposition papers. State advertising was placed selectively and loan facilities which required government authorization were denied to opposition publishers. The revenue department was used to make harassing inspections and to levy punitive sums of tax. But the colonels hadn't counted on Ethnos, a paper which was effectively bankrupt and which, as a consequence, decided that it could afford to risk its all in political defiance of the regime.

Founded in 1913, Ethnos was a family business owned 50% by Constantine Nicolopoulos, son of the founder, 30% and 20% respectively by his first cousins Constantine and Achilles Kyriazis. Nicolopoulos was a businessman, Achilles a translator. Constantine Kyriazis was the journalist, active in the day-to-day operation of the publication. The newspaper was liberal by tradition and in the early days of the dictatorship as one of those papers which it was politically unwise to be seen reading. Its circulation dropped by more than half between April and May 1967 and the paper lost so much money that in August that year the partners agreed that they should cut their losses by declaring bankruptcy. The regime, however, forced Ethnos to take a four million drachma loan from the National Bank of Greece and to accept a government nominee to oversee publication. This was former city editor Andonis Andonikakis, a man described by Kyriazis as 'an ex-communist who had become an addict of the dictatorship.' Kyriazis boycotted his own office for nearly two years as a sign of protest. Under Andonikakis' guidance, the paper staggered on in undistinguished fashion gradually losing more and more money until, by the time censorship was lifted, the paper was once again on the brink of collapse. Kyriazis says the government would have provided more funds had the paper been prepared to 'genuflect' but the partners refused and again contemplated bankruptcy. This time, however, Kyriazis argued that they should see whether they might reverse their fortunes by taking what advantage there was to be had from the limited freedom of expression. He returned to the paper on November 1,1969. Finding staff that had not been paid their salaries for two weeks, he told them there was 'no money, only the will to fight the dictatorship.' Everyone, he claims, agreed to work on.

In the beginning the approach was tentative, with opposition confined to reprinting the texts of others such as Council of Europe deliberations on Greece. But, by the new year, the newspaper was itself generating opposition material. It openly challenged the regime's press policy in a bold page one editorial on January 10, 1970. 'We call on the government to decide. If it thinks it feasible and expedient, let it go ahead with its experiment on press freedom - courageously, sincerely and without hesitation. If not, let it reimpose preventive censorship. It would be preferable and braver.' In February, it launched a series of hostile features, one serious, involving well-known writers being interviewed about the degree of freedom of expression then current in Greece, another lighter, in which public figures were asked to say what they could do 'If I were a dictator.' The paper dredged up and ran an Athenian law from 335 B.C. which urged citizens to slay all tyrants.

The trial, on March 31 and April 1, was a legal farce. The prosecution made no serious effort to mount a case and, as the charge was a political one, the defense treated it as such, calling twenty leading figures of the former political world, headed by deposed Premier Panayotis Kanellopoulos and centrist George Mavros. The confrontation turned into a political slanging match at one stage of which an officer of the military tribunal leaned forward and barked, 'Zigdis and the others won't live long enough to see elections again.' At two a.m. on April 2, the tribunal handed down its verdicts: Kapsis five years, Zigdis four and a half years, Constantine Kyriazis four years, Nicolopoulos and Achilles Kyriazis three years and Economides thirteen months, these to be accompanied by fines ranging between lOO,00 and 200,00 drachmas. It spelled the end. From their prison cells on April 3, the proprietors announced the closure of Ethnos. That this had been the intention of the regime from the outset was reinforced by the substantial reduction of the sentences when appeals were heard the following September: Kapsis twenty months, Constantine Kyriazis fourteen months, Nicolopoulos and Achilles Kyriazis thirteen months, and Economides acquitted. The appeal hearing was highlighted by an incident which epitomized the farcical tone of the entire affair. One of the prosecution witnesses, a trade union official, told how he had read the report in Athens at 8.30 a.m. before setting out for Patras. He said that when he arrived there, he found a number of people anguishing over the article. Ethnos was an afternoon paper which did not come out till noon.

With time off for good behavior, the four jailed newspapermen were free by May 1971. Zigdis, however, refused to recognize the court's right to have tried him in the first place and would not appeal. He stayed in jail until January 1972 when the regime released him, without an appeal, on the grounds of ill health.

Kyriazis says that, while imprisoned, the partners were approached by an employee of long standing, acting as an emissary of the colonels, with a new offer of a loan if only the paper would re-appear without attacking the regime. This was refused. The proprietors were determined that if the paper couldn't operate on ' their terms, it wouldn't open again. By the time, they were released from prison, staggering debts of twenty-seven million drachmas had accumulated and so, finally, in June 1971, Ethnos was put into liquidation.

The beginning of the end for the colonels

The treatment of Ethnos served as an object lesson for the rest of the press, demonstrating just how ruthless the regime was prepared to be if it felt threatened. Editors took the message and cautiously curbed their criticism. The tone of the papers for a while after was one of grudging sullenness. To chivvy them along, Papadopoulos introduced as Undersecretary the propagandist, George Georgalas. In his capacity as a psychological warfare specialist prior to the coup, he had been associated with Papadopoulos at the Greek Central Intelligence Service (K.Y.P.) and probably advised the junta on how to prepare public attitudes for the takeover. His approach to the press was coldly calculating. Using classical tactics of divide and rule, he crooned a siren song designed to persuade journalists to abandon their loyalty to their proprietors and to ally their interests with the Revolution. 'I believe that the press problem in Greece is mainly a publishers' problem and it is my conviction that a way must be found to draw a distinction between the responsibility of journalists and owners.'

Prior to the coup, he said, publishers had been able to make and unmake governments. Their opposition to the Revolution was founded in their desire to reassert that influence. In this, they exploited their employees. The Revolution wanted a 'true democracy which means that no individual or group will wield as much power as that wielded by the press before the Revolution. 'In the beginning, he said, the regime had made a mistake; it had tended to identify journalists with press enterprises some of which had played a negative role.' Now it realized that 'a free, responsible and conscientious journalist cannot but agree with the great national and regenerating endeavour of the Revolution.' The government was therefore 'studying ways to prevent publishers from dismissing journalists who refuse to act against their consciences.'

His alternative, spelled out in draft legislation on the profession of journalism published in August 1971, would have made journalists as dependent upon the state as he contended they now were upon their employers. It called for them to sign loyalty oaths similar to those required of civil servants, laid down a code of ethics which said that journalists should 'serve the interests of the nation' and made them subject to discipline administered by government appointed committees. Georgalas argued that this code of ethics, by being enshrined in law, gave journalists for the first time a legal means with which to confront their employers.

In a further effort to curb the hegemony of the Athenian publishers, Georgalas produced legislation to strengthen provincial publications. It provided for indirect central government subsidies to regional daily newspapers and the establishment of a regular news service for the provinces to be provided by the government-controlled Athens News Agency. The wire service was inaugurated on June 1, 1971, but, although the legislation to provide the financial aid was actually gazetted, the decision of the Prime Minister necessary for its implementation was never forthcoming.

During Georgalas' tenure, pressures on the press showed scant respect for the rule of law. The Lambrakis group was particularly hard hit. George Romaios, editor-in-chief of Vima, disappeared on March 19,1971 and was missing without trace for several days before the military police admitted that they

Lambrakis and Karapanayotis were prosecuted for publishing stories which could 'mislead public opinion and do harm to Greece's foreign relations.' The charges arose out of articles concerning a sixteenth century Roman Catholic church in Crete which the government had demolished despite protests by archaeologists and architects. Vima's stories, it was alleged, threatened to damage relations with the Vatican and other Catholic nations, a charge so ludicrous that when the case came to court, even the prosecutor suggested that the two men should be acquitted. In a second case, a week later, the publisher and editor of Nea, Costas Nitsos and Vassilios Varikas, were charged with obscenity for having published a photo of a nude dancer at Paris' Crazy Horse Saloon. Again by the end of the hearing the prosecutor recommended the defendants' acquittal.

The third charge was more substantial. Nea had published an article on western intellectuals by a Soviet professor but had changed the by-line. Eleftheros Kosrnos ran a series of editorials accusing them of

publishing 'contraband communist ideas.' Nitsos and Varikas were convicted of a breach of the press law and each sentenced to four months' imprisonment. Varikas' testimony before the court spoke eloquently of the strain.

We live with the nightmare of being brought before a military tribunal for a phrase, a word, a slip of the pen, a mere nothing. We have constant recourse to our lawyer who has become a sort of super -editor... without this always being effectual, as our present hearing proves. In these conditions, the management of the newspaper has given a very strict order to all levels of the editorial staff to be specially careful. We must cut out of our texts anything which has even the slightest chance of getting us involved in judicial adventures.

The day after the two men were convicted, Lambrakis and Karapanayotis both published signed articles on political subjects for the first time since the lifting of prior censorship. Karapanayotis insists that it was mere coincidence but it has been suggested that this was the quid pro quo for a subsequent successful appeal in which the verdict against the Nea editors was overturned.

Georgalas left the Ministry to the Prime Minister in a cabinet shuffle on August 26, 1971 after a furore over the draft legislation on the profession. Papadopoulos regularly renewed personnel but the wholesale changeover at the Ministry to the Prime Minister on this occasion suggested that he realized that the draughtsmen of the bill had so incensed the press that they could no longer have any influence with them. Minister without Portfolio Loukas Patras, one of the main authors of the draft, was dropped from the government altogether; Georgalas was replaced as Under-Secretary by Byron Stamatopoulos (who had resigned as Director of Press and Information in 1969 apparently over the earlier draft law on the practice of journalism); and Secretary General Ioannis Anastassopoulos was transferred and his place taken by Loukas Papangelis, a lawyer newly associated with the regime.

The cabinet reshuffle was meant to mark the beginning of a process of transformation from a revolutionary to a guided political regime. Pattakos and Makarezos were kicked upstairs from their vital posts at the Ministries of the Interior and of Economic Coordination to become largely titular Deputy Ministers, and senior civilians who had proven particularly loyal to the regime were elevated to their ministerial positions. Other former junta members were sent off to become governors of recently created regional administrations, being replaced in cabinet with new men, some of whom came from the Advisory Committee on Legislation, the so-called mini-parliament. This was a body of 56 members selected by the Prime Minister following a preliminary balloting procedure carried out by a college of 1,240 state-nominated electors. It met in the old parliament building and discussed draft laws presented to it by the government although its opinions were in no way binding and it had no power to generate legislation. It was designed primarily to give public exposure to 'new personalities' for the New Democracy.

In a cabinet reshuffle in 1972, Papadopoulos included a number of minor former politicians, but none of these people were the sort who could appeal to the public to command widespread support. The end result of these moves was that, contrary to the intention of broadening the base of government, all significant powers were consolidated in Papadopoulos' hands, producing a one-man dictatorship of the Latin American style. He became Prime Minister, Defense Minister, Foreign Minister and Minister of Government Policy. On March 22, 1972, after a row with Zoitakis, he also became Regent. The regime was stagnant. Gradually, it began to crumble under the weight of its own inertia.