LONDON TRIAL HIGHLIGHTS ALLEGED SOVIET MEDDLING IN GREECE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403220024-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 24
• Publication Date: February 11, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403220024-8
ARTICLE APPEARED
ONPADEa77
WALL J LICLLL JUURiNHL
11 February 1987
London Trial Highlights Alleged Soviet
LONDON-Under the British legal sys-
tem publishers rarely fight libel suits when
a settlement is possible, for the laws put
the burden of proof on the newspaper ac-
cused of defamation. So when an organiza-
tion such as the Economist Newspapers
Ltd. goes to the mat on a libel action you
can expect the significance of the case
transcends the cash value of some
wounded ego. The trial of such a case has
begun this week before the High Court in
London. where George Bobolas, principal
owner of Ethnos, a mass-circulation left-
wing newspaper in Greece, is charging he
was libeled by a 1982 article in the Econo-
mist Foreign Report. The article stated
Europe
_7 By Peter Kere
that Mr. Bobolas had launched Ethnos with
Soviet money and implied that the paper
was a Soviet propaganda mouthpiece.
The Economist of course is expected to
defend the basic assertion in the Econo-
mist Intelligence Unit's Foreign Report
that Mr. Bobolas started Ethnos with a $1.8
million subsidy from the Soviet Union.
Furthermore, the British publisher should
be in a position to back up the broader im-
plications of the article that according to
Ethnos's own interpretation allege the
plaintiffs "were not part of a free press but
rather the mouthpiece of a communist and
totalitarian state's propaganda machine."
In this defense, articles in Ethnos could be
revealingly compared with those in official
and semiofficial Soviet organs.
The case represents the first opportu-
nity to examine Soviet methods of subver-
sion under the rigors of an open court in a
major Western democracy. The trial could
have implications for politics in Greece,
where the coming years are likely to see a
showdown between left and right. More
generally, the case. which is expected to
take six weeks, will be closely watched by
all in the West who are concerned with the
growing sophistication of the Soviet Un-
ion's propaganda offensive.
''If the Economist can prove its case, it
will he of major significance, because it
will throw wide open the study of Soviet in-
filtration of the Western press." says Paul
Anastasi, who has written a book on the
subject and has himself been involved in a
protracted litigation with Ethnos.
Striking parallels have long been appar-
ent between what the Soviet press prints
and what shows up in Ethnos. Ethnos regu-
larly disseminates articles that replicate
material in Soviet organs such as Izvestia,
Pravda, Tass and New Times. Some of
these articles are simply picked up and re-
printed without alteration or any attempt
to disguise the source. Others are pur-
ported to be written by "staff correspon-
dents" from various locations and contain
passages that duplicate material from the
Soviet press.
This mix has been packaged in a com-
mercially competitive format that has
boosted the paper's popularity. Since its
debut in 1981, Ethnos has soared to a circu-
lation of 180,000, the largest in Greece. Pat-
terned after the British tabloids, it com-
bines gossip, sports, sex, crime and color
pictures with the most outlandish anti-West
fabrications. Ethnos has charged, for ex-
ample, that the U.S. killed 2,000 people on
the first day of the Grenada invasion U.S.
figures for the total number of people
killed in the whole action: 45 Grenadians,
24 Cubans, 18 Americans) ; that the Afghan
rebels are "paid murderers who commit
horrendous crimes against the unarmed
Afghan people, crimes of which even the
Nazis at Auschwitz ... would be jealous,"
and that a Star Wars payload blew Chal-
lenger apart.
Ethnos, moreover, is different from the
rest of the Greek leftist press. Most leftist
Greek papers are primarily nationalistic;
the "Turkish threat" is always a big issue,
but the price of shoes and the numbers of
jobless also matter. In contrast. Ethnos ap-
pears to follow the Soviet lip even to the
point of ignoring Greece'3 socialist pre-
mier, Andreas Papandreou, when his
words or deeds seem to stray from the
Kremlin formula. Ethnos's competitors
don't follow its suggestions to either align
Greece with the Soviet bloc or Finlandize
it, nor do they buy its argument that the
Soviets and the Greeks together could con-
trol the Dardanelles.
Ethnos's staff of correspondents
(mostly non-Greek) includes a number
with a history of Soviet or communist
links. The paper's U.S. correspondent. Carl
Marzani, for example, is a former U.S.
State Department employee who served
three years in prison for not disclosing
communist activities in the 1940s in the
wartime OSS and the State Department;
Ethnos's U.K. correspondent, Stanley Har-
rison, was until 1981 chief sub-editor of the
Communist Party paper in Britain. the
Morning Star. Neither reads Greek.
Ethnos's foreign editor, Dinos Tsakotelis,
spent the worst of the Cold War years at
the Czechoslovak propaganda agency, Te-
lepress. Cyprus correspondent Akis Fantis
has been editing the pro-Soviet Cyprus
Communist Party paper.
The Ethnos affair goes back to June
1978, when Mr. Bobolas, a wealthy right-
winger who was once singled out by the
ruling colonels for an award, went to Mos-
cow with Greek Communist Yannis Yan-
ing in
nikos and future Ethnos editor Alexander
Filipopoulos. They met with the then So-
viet propaganda chief Konstantin Cher-
nenko and with copyright officials Boris
Pankin and Vasily Sitnikov. The latter two
have been identified in John Barron's 1974
book "KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet
Agents" and by other Western sources and
Soviet defectors as director and deputy di-
rector respectively of the KGB disinforma-
tion department. The two Greeks went
home with an agreement to publish the
"Great Soviet Encyclopedia" in Greece.
Mr. Yannikos has said that Ethnos was
launched using royalties from this venture
with the Soviets. Details of this financial
arrangement began to filter out when Mr.
Yannikos talked to Mr. Anastasi, a corre-
spondent for the London Daily Telegraph
and the New York Times. after Mr. Yan-
nikos was squeezed out of the venture.
Disclosures during the trial could prove
significant both for Greek public opinion
and for the country's image abroad. That
image has eroded under Mr. Papandreou's
radical Socialist rule, during which Greece
has sought to obstruct the interests of the
West in general and of the Atlantic alliance
in particular, while supporting Soviet for-
eign policy on issues ranging from Afghan-
istan to Poland to arms control. If the
Ethnos trial exposes Soviet infiltration of
the Greek press. Greeks and foreigners
may find the facts sobering.
Meanwhile, things are moving toward
the moderates in Greece. Mr. Papan-
dreou's Panhellenic Socialist Movement.
known as Pasok, performed poorly in Octo-
ber's local elections. The conservative New
Democracy Party won mayoralties in
Piraeus, Athens and Salonika. This un-
doubtedly was on the premier's mind when
he told Parliament last month that he was
ready to negotiate a new agreement for
American military bases in Greece and
that he now wants to stay in NATO-not,
mind you, to help defend the West but to
protect Greece from Turkey. Mr. Papan-
dreou has also recently expressed support
for Greece's membership in the European
Community. In the second shuffle of his
government since the elections. Mr. Pa-
pandreou last week dumped three left-
wingers from his cabinet. All of which sug-
gests that you still can't fool all of the poo-
ple-not all the time-even with a left-win,,,
newspaper.
Mr. Keresztes is depute editorial paoe
editor of The Wall Street Journal Eu-
rope.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403220024-8