Seraphim Canoutas and Christopher Columbus's Greek Connection

Christopher Columbus,
Admiral of the Ocean Sea

As far as we know, almost every time Christopher Columbus wrote the name of the Greek island Chios, he spelled it either Xio or Xió, something like the Greek way.  To this day, Greeks from Chios insist that Columbus was born on their island.  They’ll gamely show you his house and assure you that families named Kolomvos have lived on Chios since the 14th century.

And there is more.  Columbus’s writings mention a voyage to Chios.  Certain vegetation he saw in the Caribbean islands reminded him of the mastic trees of Chios.  And on his first voyage of discovery, didn’t he keep a secret log (in Greek, as some say) to keep his fearful crews from knowing exactly how far away from home they’d actually sailed?

Columbus's Cipher

And late in life, didn’t Columbus insist on using a strange Greco-Latin cipher -- Χρō-FERENS -- when signing his name?  And in 1937, didn’t Spyros Cateras sweep aside any doubt with a book whose ponderous title says it all: Christopher Columbus was a Greek Prince and His Real Name was Nikolaos Ypshilantis from the Greek Island of Chios?

Dare we think it?  Was Christopher Columbus a Greek from Chios?

Sadly, there’s not a shred of documentary proof that Columbus was from Chios.  And just like the Chiotes, who rely on legend and point to the indigenous Kolomvos family, people in at least five Italian cities (Genoa, Cuccaro, Cogoleto, Savona, and Piacenza) also point to long-established Colombo families as proof of Columbus’s birthplace.  Going the Chiotes one better, they’ll credulously show you not only the house where Columbus was born, but also the graves of his ancestors.

The Greeks and the Italians are both mistaken.  Columbus never used the surname Kolomvos or its Italian or Latin variants, Colombo and Columbus.  In fact, no record survives (apart from the cipher) of how Columbus referred to himself.  Castilian records of the 1480s and 1490s name him as Xpoval de Colomo, Cristóval Colomo, and Cristóbal Colón.  Some consider these surnames to be castilianizations of his proper (possibly Catalan) surname:  Colom.

Nor has a secret voyage log ever been found, let alone a Greek one.  And Spyros Cateras’s book simply doesn’t live up to its cocksure title.  Cateras's so-called proof was a metallic box once kept somewhere on Chios.  The box supposedly contained a record of Prince Nikolaos Ypshilantis, said to have been the real Columbus according to local legend.  But the box and its telltale contents disappeared after the massacre of 1822.  Such is the quality of Cateras's evidence.

And then there are the problematical 15th century Genoese legal documents.  They came to light during the Columbus quadricentennial and refer to a lanaiolo (a person in the wool business) named Cristoforo Colombo and his brothers Bartolomeo and Giacomo, residents of Genoa and nearby towns. These contemporaneous records, unquestionably genuine, support the traditional view, which is that this Genoese wool merchant is the same person who in 1492 “discovered” America and became the famous Admiral of the Ocean Sea.

But even if Columbus wasn’t from Chios and was in fact from Genoa or its neighborhood, isn’t it still possible that he had a Greek connection?  Xio and Χρō-FERENS still nag.  So does Columbus’s ignorance of Italian.  And these aren't the only things that don't fit comfortably with the idea of a Genoese lanaiolo.

Considering, for instance, the rigid social stratification of his time, how could a Genoese wool merchant become a Castilian admiral, and acquire as thorough an education as Columbus did, and become an accomplished seaman, and marry a noble Portuguese woman, and acquire royal patrons, and be at such apparent ease with kings and princes of every stripe?  After all, King João II of Portugal addressed Columbus in a letter of 1488 as “noso especial amigo” (our special friend); and when Columbus went to kiss the Spanish sovereigns’ hands on his return from the Caribbean in 1493, they stood up -- a most unusual concession to a common merchant.  These are only a few of the many well known and perplexing anomalies of the Columbus biography.

Columbus was notoriously reticent about his family background and place of birth.  Even his son and first biographer, Fernando (1488-1539), knew few details about his father’s origins.   The problem has plagued Columbus scholars for centuries.

*  *  *

Seraphim G. Canoutas (1874-1944)
[photo courtesy of The National Herald]

Seventy-one years ago, Seraphim G. Canoutas jumped squarely into the fray.  Deeply troubled by the improbability of a medieval wool merchant becoming an admiral, Canoutas spent eight years researching the Columbus question at libraries in New York, Washington, Paris, and Athens.  In 1943, with the skills of a lawyer and more dispassion than would ordinarily be expected of a Greek, he privately published the fruits of his meticulous study in Christopher Columbus – A Greek Nobleman (288 pages, including two bibliographies, three illustrations, seven appendices, copious endnotes, and an index).

The book aggressively challenged the traditional view that the Genoese wool merchant and the world-famous Admiral were the same person.  And beyond declaring who Columbus was not, Canoutas plausibly argued that Columbus was indeed a high-born Greek.  Canoutas died the year after publication, and his intriguing study went out of print.  Now it is all but forgotten.

Canoutas himself has also undeservedly faded from memory.  At the beginning of the 20th century, he was a pre-eminent leader in Greek American society and letters.  A prolific writer, beginning in 1908 he published the annual Greek American Guide and Business Directory, full of useful information for new immigrants, including Greek translations of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Naturalization Act.  He was the source of much of the information in Thomas Burgess’s Greeks in America (1913), the first serious study of Greek ethnicity in American society.  Much of Canoutas's information was gathered in a two-year canvass (1909-1910) of Greek communities in every state save Arizona and New Mexico.  His monograph on Columbus was just one of his many books, which included his own history of Hellenism in America (1918).  He also published two monthly newspapers and a magazine and wrote a column for a Greek American newspaper.  Toward the end of his life, he collaborated with two other authors on a text eventually published in book form as A History of the Greeks in the Americas:  1492-1938 (2002).

Born among the crags of Evrytania in tiny Nostimon, Canoutas walked three miles over a mountain twice each day for four years to attend elementary school in equally obscure Voutyron.  Being the best pupil, arrangements were made to continue his education in Proussos, where he boarded in the famous monastery.  Again finishing first, he walked for two days to Agrinion and continued his education at the gymnasion there and later in Lamia.  He went on to law school at the University of Athens, the first son of Evrytanian farmers ever to attend. After graduation, he practiced law in Athens and Constantinople for six years.

Reading of Franklin, Lincoln, and other self-made Americans, the U.S. became irresistible.  Arriving in 1905, Canoutas learned English and began publishing his useful books for Greek immigrants.  After becoming a naturalized citizen (1911), serving as Greece's vice-consul for the southern states (based in Nashville), and acquiring a U.S. law degree (1912), he settled in Boston, was admitted to the bar, and began his U.S. law practice, which he later transferred to New York City.  One of his bar sponsors testified to the “dignity and courtesy of his bearing and manners.”  He struck another as “an unusually intelligent man” and “the kind of man in whose statements I should place confidence.”  This sponsor also mentioned Canoutas’s “rather remarkable command of English.”

*  *  *

Fernando Colon (1488-1539)

According to Canoutas, Columbus’s Greek connection had nothing to do with his surname, or local legends, or how he wrote the word Chios.  Instead, it rested mainly on specific statements attributed to Columbus himself.  According to Fernando Colon (Columbus's son and first biographer), Columbus said that he was “not the first admiral of my family” and “was honorably descended, though his parents, through the peevishness of fortune were fallen into great poverty and want.”  Most importantly, Fernando recorded the crucial role played in Columbus’s early seagoing career by Colon the Younger, “a famous man of his [Columbus’s] name and family”:

“As concerning the cause of the Admiral’s coming into Spain, and his being addicted to sea affairs, the occasion of it was a famous man of his name and family, called Colon, renowned upon the sea, on account of the fleet he commanded against infidels . . ..  This man was called Colon the Younger, to distinguish him from another who was a great seaman before him. . . .   [T]he Admiral sailed with the aforesaid Colon the Younger . . . a long time . . ..”

Most scholars rejected these statements (and still do) as the pretentious fibs of a wool merchant trying to obscure his lowly station.  But Canoutas pointed out that Columbus had no reason to tell lies that could have been refuted easily during his lifetime.  More than that, Canoutas recognized that if Columbus’s claims were true, they explained the host of anomalies that either had to be ignored or attributed to error or falsehood in order for the wool merchant to be the same person as the Admiral. 

The key to the puzzle, argued Canoutas, was in the identity of “Colon the Younger,” whom Fernando’s biography did not identify, probably because Fernando did not know who he was.  His identity remained a mystery for the next 350 years, with scholars and biographers either just repeating (without further elaboration) the story of Columbus’s claim of kinship with Colon the Younger or rejecting it as another one of Columbus’s fables.

Henry Harrisse (1829-1910)

Then in 1874, the renowned Columbus scholar Henry Harrisse came upon information that began to shed light on the mystery of Colon the Younger.  Harrisse discovered two famous corsairs, one elder and one junior, both in the service of King Louis XI of France (1423-1483).  Corsairs were sea captains who had permission (usually from a king) to chase down and capture enemy ships.  Harrisse believed these corsairs were French, not Italian or Genoese.  The elder of the two, a vice-admiral, went by the name Coullon, which in the records was sometimes italianized into Colombo or hispanicized into Colón.  “Coullon” was his nom-de-guerre.  His real name was Guillaume de Casenove.

Guillaume de Casenove's "Coullon" signature
from a French document of 1481

Harrisse did not definitively identify the younger corsair.  But he speculated that he came to be known as "Colon the Younger" not because the two men were related, but because the two men were regular companions at sea.   Harrisse also discovered that the younger Colon was sometimes called Giorgio Griego, or Grecus, or Graecus.

Alberto Francesco Salvagnini
(1867-1947)

After Harrisse, Alberto Francesco Salvagnini made another important discovery.  Searching among the archives of Milan and Genoa, he brought to light more than a hundred 15th century records referring to these two famous corsairs of France and their numerous exploits.  In these documents the junior corsair was usually named Giorgio Greco, Georgius Graecus, Zorzi Greco, or the like.  In other words, George the Greek.

Finally, in 1905 another highly respected Columbus scholar, Henry Vignaud, after reviewing all the documents examined by Salvagnini, proved beyond any doubt that Colon the Younger was none other than Georges Paléologue de Bissipat, also called Georges le Grec.  He proved that this man was an expatriate Byzantine prince related to the imperial Palaiologos family, and that he held a high rank in the French navy, being the principal lieutenant of vice-admiral Guillaume de Casenove.  Vignaud’s opinion on these points, said Canoutas, was accepted by almost all subsequent Columbus scholars.

Henry Vignaud (1830-1922)

But even so, Vignaud and the others either never discovered or ignored the correct Greek version of this Byzantine prince’s name.  And, still convinced that Columbus was the wool merchant of Genoa, they rejected Columbus’s claim of kinship with Colon the Younger.  Canoutas, however, accepting the kinship claim as true, probed the Greek identity of the transplanted prince.  In a 1680 French compendium of the imperial families of Byzantium, Canoutas found that “de Bissipat” was the French corruption of George the Greek’s proper Greek surname: Dishypatos.  In other words, Colon the Younger was Georgios Palaiologos Dishypatos (Γεόργιος Παλαιολόγος Δισύπατος).

The Dishypatoi were among the most illustrious Byzantine families, recorded as far back as the 9th century.  From the 11th through the 15th centuries, the name appears again and again, often attached to prominent ecclesiastics.  In the early 15th century, Alexis Dishypatos was sent by emperor Manuel II Palaiologos as special ambassador to France to secure financial aid.  John Dishypatos, an officer of the imperial court, was twice sent by the emperor John VIII Palaiologos as ambassador to the Council of Basel and to the Papal court to negotiate in matters concerning the union of the Greek and Latin churches.  In 1434, the emperor sent two other Dishypatos brothers, Emanuel and George (not to be confused with Colon the Younger), on another mission to the Pope.  Somewhat later, this same George was dispatched to the Morea to reconcile the emperor’s quarreling brothers, Thomas and Demetrios Palaiologos.  So we can see, said Canoutas, that for centuries the Dishypatoi were great personages -- ecclesiastics, officers of the imperial court, diplomats -- and enjoyed the full confidence of the Byzantine emperors, who employed them on missions involving the most vital interests of the state and the church.

On his mother’s side, Colon the Younger was related to the imperial Palaiologos and Laskaris families and, following the custom of the time, used both surnames.  Canoutas observed that between these two families there were at least five famous admirals, perhaps the ones to whom Columbus alluded when claiming he was not the first admiral in his family.

Canoutas then pointed out certain other details about the Palaiologos and Laskaris families that shed more light on Dishypatos and, hence, his putative kinsman Columbus.  For example, the House of Palaiologos was closely connected by blood or marriage to many of the ruling families of Italy, including those of Genoa and nearby Montferrat.  All the marquises of Montferrat were Palaiologoi, he pointed out, and one of them was invited in 1409 to take charge of the government of Genoa.  Such connections, he suggested, may explain why Columbus was thought to be Genoese or Ligurian.

He went further and proposed that if Columbus, as he claimed, went to sea at age fourteen and had spent forty years at sea by 1500 plus another seven years at the Spanish court, then he must have been born around 1438-1439, and he must have gone to sea around 1453.  This is when Canoutas thought Columbus began sailing with his famous kinsman, Colon the Younger.

A de Bissipat family tombstone
(Beauvais)

The château de Troissereux (Beauvais),
one of Georges de Bissipat's French estates

Canoutas found additional information about Colon the Younger in a late 19th century French history of the de Bissipat family.  From this, Canoutas learned that sometime after the fall of Constantinople (1453) Georges Paléologue de Bissipat was received in France by King Louis XI with great honors for his excellent military feats, the king referring to him in 1460 as “our noble man Georges le Grec, counselor and chamberlain of the King and viscount of Falaise.”  Eventually, de Bissipat became commander of the French fleet in the English Channel.  Louis XI granted him large estates in northern France, sent him on important missions, and naturalized him as a French subject.  De Bissipat’s royal favor continued with Louis XI’s son and successor, Charles VIII (1470-1498), who entrusted him with still more important missions, not the least of which was command of the French fleet against Italy in 1494.

The de Bissipat arms show a patriarchal cross, two Stars of David, and a crescent, symbols of the three great monotheistic religions known to the Byzantines.  Canoutas found the Stars of David of interest given that the Palaiologos family (to which Dishypatos was related on his mother’s side) claimed descent from the House of David.  Columbus, he observed, liked to compare himself to King David.

The crescent alludes to Islam.  According to recent scholarship, Dishypatos’s first cousin, known in the records only as Hüseyn, was an ambassador and intelligence agent of the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II (1447-1512), the son of Mehmet II (1432-1481), the Islamic conqueror of Byzantium.  In Allies with the Infidel:  The Ottoman and French Alliance in the Sixteenth Century (2011), Christine Isom-Verhaaren, an instructor of Middle East History at Benedictine University (Lisle, Ill.), cites a 1486 letter of French King Charles VIII granting Hüseyn safe passage to France as Bayezid’s ambassador.  Greek was Hüseyn’s native tongue, she says, and he had useful connections with Christians in the West, not least of whom was his first cousin Georges de Bissipat, by then one of Charles VIII’s most trusted advisors.

As Canoutas said, if we accept that Columbus was telling the truth when he claimed to have sailed for many years with his noble kinsman Colon the Younger, then “all the incidents of his complex life, all his lofty aspirations, all his talents and accomplishments, and all his peculiar characteristics, which hitherto seemed inexplicable, will be readily explained.  It will be easy for anyone to see how he had acquired his education, his religious mysticism, his exquisite manners, his daring courage and, above all, his preparation in seamanship; also how he was able to make all the voyages he claimed . . . ; and how he succeeded in commanding the respect of several kings and princes and of so many other great personages.”  Likewise, Columbus’s claim of kinship with Colon the Younger explained Columbus’s noble marriage and many other puzzling anomalies of his life.  In other words, if the claim were true, then Columbus could indeed have been a Byzantine nobleman, or at least related to one.

But what about the Genoese legal documents?  Canoutas addressed them at length, ultimately dismissing them as irrelevant.  He convincingly showed that they are irreconcilable with other genuine sources and cannot possibly describe the same person as the Admiral.

In the end, however, Canoutas’s case rests entirely on Columbus’s claim of kinship with Dishypatos, for which there is only one source:  Fernando’s biography.  If the kinship connection fails, Canoutas’s theory falls completely apart.

And even if the connection is sound, it does not necessarily mean that Columbus was Greek. He may have had Greek relatives, but given the fluidity of the times he may not have lived as a Greek in a Greek city or holding.  And while Canoutas gave us persuasive circumstantial reasons to accept that Columbus was related to Dishypatos, what was the relationship?  Was it on his father’s side or his mother’s?  Was it by blood or marriage?  And we still do not know who Columbus’s parents were or where he was born.

*  *  *

One reason why Canoutas's thesis is practically unknown is that he was robbed of the chance to have his book published by the Columbia University Press.

Nicholas Murray Butler
(1862-1947)

In the summer of 1942, with the 450th anniversary of the "Discovery" just months away, Canoutas's project gained the endorsement of Columbia University's renowned president, Nicholas Murray Butler, who foresaw that press coverage of the coming anniversary would be "good advertising" for a new book about Columbus.  In late August, Butler's enthusiastic push propelled Canoutas's 539-page typewritten manuscript onto the desk of Charles G. Proffitt, the CUP's associate director.

Proffitt and others at the press did not share the university president's enthusiasm and sniffed at a book by a Greek claiming Columbus was Greek.  Without plausible cover, however, they could not simply ignore Butler's initiative.  Their solution was to by-pass the CUP's publication committee and solicit an opinion from an outside reviewer.

Eugene H. Byrne, a University of Wisconsin specialist in medieval commerce with extensive experience in the archives of Genoa and Marseilles, delivered the opinion they sought.  Giving Canoutas's manuscript just a single day's consideration, and without addressing any of Canoutas's facts or arguments, Byrne branded him a "crackpot" and dismissed the book as "an illogical, uncontrolled masterpiece of nonsense."  Byrne's one-page rant summarily killed any hope of publication by the CUP.

Proffitt's ensuing rejection letter (falsely issued in the name of the publication committee) dissembled about the over-burden of existing publishing commitments and cited the committee's (non-existent) decision to curtail Canoutas's book along with numerous others.  Ignorant of the CUP's game, Canoutas's champion (Greece's consul-general in New York, Nicholas J. Lely) pressed Proffitt for details about the publication committee's reasons for rejection.  After all, Lely urged, the Macmillan publishing house had recommended the book for publication by an academic press; and several scholars were favorably impressed.  (Proffit independently knew that Clarence Manning, a Columbia University slavicist, had seen the manuscript the previous winter and was "very favorably impressed.")

Proffitt's short response to Lely merely embellished his earlier fabrications.  The publication committee had considered Lely's request, he fibbed, but could not break a "long-standing rule" that prohibited the release of the requested details.

Overall, the CUP correspondence smacks of professional arrogance seasoned with a good dose of ethnic prejudice.  Days before actually seeing Canoutas's manuscript, Byrne flippantly pre-judged it:  "This Columbus question bobs up eternally, and I am naturally suspicious of a book by a Greek contending that Christopher was also a Greek.  He was once supposed to have sailed past Ireland on a voyage to Iceland, but so far as I know no one has yet claimed he was an Irishman."  Starting from such bias, it was short work for the professional historian to condemn Canoutas's bulky manuscript as the misguided ramblings of an amateur, a foreigner no less.

With help from the Greek American newspaper Atlantis, Canoutas privately published his book the following year (1943) through the St. Marks Press, a New York job printer.  When judged without prejudice, the book fared well.  William Jerome Wilson, an expert cataloguer of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, reviewing the book for the Hispanic American Historical Review (1945), concluded that it “presents a case which students of the vexed ‘Columbus question’ must consider with the utmost care."

[Update (5/12/16):  Henri Grégoire, the renowned byzantinist and Canoutas's friend, unfavorably reviewed Canoutas's book in the journal Byzantion (1945).  Essentially, he faulted Canoutas for ignoring the testimony of Columbus's contemporary, the Genoese chronicler Antonio Gallo, who was among the first to say that, before achieving fame as a Castilian admiral, Columbus had been a Genoese wool merchant.  In fact, Canoutas addressed Gallo's evidence at length and, in my view, persuasively refuted it.]

*  *  *

The professional's disdain for the amateur continues.  Earlier this year I approached Thierry Ganchou with questions about Canoutas's theory.  Ganchou is a French historian whose research interests include the convergence of Byzantium and the West.  My overture elicited a scathing reply.  I must "be very stupid and/or very rich," he said, to waste my time with the Dishypatos-Columbus relationship, which any "serious scholar" knows is "completely irrelevant."  Picking on my presumed incompetence to read 15th century documents, he admonished me not to join "this long cohort of pseudo-historians with a cracked brain who are writing every day so many stupid and illiterate inventions about Columbus."

Ganchou's excoriation was just like Byrne's in 1942.  They both peremptorily condemned Canoutas's thesis without addressing -- let alone challenging -- a single fact or argument.

*  *  *

As far as I can tell, after Wilson's and Grégoire's 1945 book reviews the only non-Greek scholar to have addressed Canoutas's theory directly is Charles J. Merrill, formerly a professor of foreign languages at Mount Saint Mary's University (Emmitsburg, Md.).  In Colom of Catalonia:  Origins of Christopher Columbus Revealed (2008), Merrill posited the Admiral's noble Catalonian origins.  To Merrill's credit, before presenting the Catalonian case he reviewed the other major claims (both traditional and non-traditional) for Columbus's origins.

Merrill dispensed with Canoutas by observing (correctly) that Canoutas's thesis hangs on the assertion (in Fernando's biography) of Columbus's kinship with Colon the Younger and on Colon the Younger's being the same person as Dishypatos.  Canoutas's error, Merrill contended, was to overlook evidence of the Admiral's kinship with the elder Colon (Guillaume de Casenove), whose roots were in Catalonia.  Because there is no comparable written evidence of the Admiral's kinship with Colon the Younger, Merrill lumped Canoutas with others whose arguments were driven by ethnic partisanship rather than hard proof.  As for the portions of Fernando's biography on which Canoutas relied, Merrill deemed them to have been doctored to cover up Columbus's true Aragonese/Catalan roots, which (for reasons too complex to summarize here) were politically embarrassing for his sponsor, King Ferdinand of Aragon, who required Columbus to assume an ambiguous (vaguely Genoese) heritage, a ruse Columbus is said to have played along with for self-serving reasons.

Merrill's thesis, while complex, is well argued and has the advantage of apparent (if only partial) support from 15th century documents.  By contrast, there is no denying that Canoutas's thesis lacks documentary corroboration.  The only evidence for Columbus's kinship with Colon the Younger (Dishypatos) is Fernando's biographical hearsay.

Even so, Merrill did not disprove Canoutas's theory.  He merely offered a plausible alternative one.

*  *  *

 
For traditionalists, the premises underlying Canoutas's and Merrill's competing theories -- Columbus's kinship with one or the other of the two seagoing Colons -- are equally anathema.  Even worse for Canoutas's theory, it invites the Academy's reflexive scorn for ideas that originate from outside the walls (witness the intemperate recoil by Byrne and Ganchou).  But until the claim of kinship with Dishypatos is definitively disproved, any judgment about Canoutas's thesis -- indeed, any judgment about Columbus's origins -- that fails to address the kinship claim head-on is dubious a priori.  Merrill's willingness to confront the claim is evidence of his intellectual candor.

Seraphim Canoutas blazed an intriguing new path for exploring the "vexed" Columbus question.  His thesis is plausible and needs to be better known and further developed.  Picking up where Canoutas left off, others may someday discover the true nature of Columbus’s Greek connection.

This post originated in an address I gave to the Hellenic Society "Prometheas" in Bethesda, Maryland, on October 3, 2008 (http://www.prometheas.org/Events_flyers/Christopher_Columbus.pdf), portions of which have since appeared on the internet without authorization or attribution.  With my permission, portions of this post were published in The National Herald (Oct. 12-18, 2013).

Nixon's (and Cyprus's) Bad Summer

The President addressing the Nation
(August 8, 1974, 9:00 p.m.)

Forty summers ago on the evening of August 8, I watched the awful spectacle of the President of the United States announcing (live on network television) that he would resign from office at noon the next day.  Delivered with stoic calm, Richard Nixon's unprecedented speech lasted less than fifteen minutes.

Presidents left office by completing their elected terms, or by failing to be re-elected, or by deciding not to run for re-election, or by dying (either of natural causes or by assassination).  But until that evening, they did not resign.

August 9, 1974

At the time, the President and I happened to be sitting about 3½ miles apart, he behind his Oval Office desk and I in an upholstered swivel chair in my aunt Nicoletta's tidy Washington apartment.  I was living with her that summer (between my sophomore and junior years of college) while interning in the Capitol Hill office of Donald J. Mitchell, my hometown congressman.  Mitchell had unexpectedly offered me the job as consolation for accidentally spilling coffee on my raincoat during a visit to his office earlier that year.

What a summer to be working on the Hill!

The atmosphere was electric.  For two years, the suspicion had steadily grown that President Nixon had covered up his knowledge of attempts in June 1972 to burgle the Washington offices of the Democratic National Committee for purposes of installing listening devices and searching for evidence that might prove useful in the upcoming presidential election.

The Watergate Complex, Washington, D.C.

The DNC offices were in the "Watergate," a sleek new high-priced complex of apartments and offices overlooking the Potomac River.  The burglars turned out to be operatives known as the "Plumbers."  They were working for CREEP, the ill-named Committee for the Re-Election of the President.  Exactly what they were looking for remains controversial.

Nixon's secret tape-recordings of Oval Office conversations had come to light in the summer of 1973, followed by high drama in the fall.  In quick succession on a single October day (in what the press promptly dubbed the "Saturday Night Massacre"), both the Attorney General and his deputy resigned, and the Justice Department's special counsel (appointed to investigate the growing scandal) was fired, all for refusing to drop the subpoena requiring the President to turn over the tapes.  A month later, intensifying public pressure to release the tapes elicited Nixon's angry and distinctly un-presidential retort:  "I'm not a crook."

In late April 1974, not long after Congressman Mitchell spilled his coffee onto my raincoat, the White House released expurgated transcripts of the tapes.  The transcripts withheld extensive passages (said to bear on national security) on grounds of executive privilege.  The release gained Nixon little favor.  Even expurgated, the transcripts revealed a crass, devious, and vengeful President.  The frequent words "expletive deleted," substituting for Nixon's habitual vulgarities, littered the pages and became a national joke.

Beginning in May, the three major television networks took turns covering the congressional Watergate hearings live each day and re-broadcasting them each evening.  As the summer wore on, I became riveted to them.  So, it seemed, did most of the nation.

Senators Baker and Ervin
during the Watergate hearings

In the Senate, the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities pressed for evidence in answer to the portentous question asked the previous summer by the committee's ranking member, Republican Howard Baker:  "What did the President know, and when did he know it?"  And Democrat Sam Ervin, the committee's avuncular chairman, known mostly as an unabashed segregationist, was proving to be a disarmingly cunning interrogator.  His penetrating questions -- delivered in a folksy Tidewater drawl, sometimes with the arch disclaimer that he was "just a country lawyer" -- were making witnesses squirm and turning him into a pop celebrity.

House Judiciary Committee deliberating on articles
of presidential impeachment for the first time since 1868 

On the House side, the Committee on the Judiciary debated whether the available evidence amounted to "High crimes and Misdemeanors," the slippery phrase at the heart of the Constitution's presidential impeachment clause.  The debates were astoundingly level-headed, erudite, and devoid of party rancor.  The advocacy was forceful on both sides, but was conducted with dignity and restraint.  No living person had operated the fearsome machinery of presidential impeachment, so the Judiciary Committee was making sure to engage the gears gently and open the throttle slowly.

In the courts, the legal battle over whether Nixon would have to honor the subpoena and surrender the secret tapes was rushed along through motions and appeals.  Nixon lost, and in late July the White House began complying with a court order to make full disclosure.

Nixon's secretary, Rosemary Woods,
demonstrating how an erasure of the
Oval Office tapes could have occurred

The tapes contained the "smoking gun," conversations soon after the burglaries showing that Nixon had early knowledge of hush-money payments to the Watergate burglars by members of his immediate staff, and that he concurred in efforts to block investigations into the burglaries.  The evidence of Nixon's complicity in the cover-up was no longer circumstantial.

The tapes also had a mysterious 18½-minute silence, which the White House claimed was accidental.  But a widely circulated photo showing the ungainly posture Nixon's secretary would have had to hold to make an "accidental" erasure destroyed any remaining White House credibility.

In the House, even the staunchest hold-outs against impeachment relented.  The Judiciary Committee proposed and adopted three articles of impeachment.  Before they could be voted on by the full House, where they were certain to carry by a large margin, Nixon resigned, sparing the nation from an unseemly trial in the Senate.

The President's resignation letter

For two years until Nixon's momentous announcement on August 8, all three branches of government vigorously checked and balanced their way through a protracted high-stakes drama that played out in the glare of intense public scrutiny.  In another country, such prolonged political tension and uncertainty would have convulsed society and sent tanks rumbling through the streets.  But here, a sitting President could be ousted from office without the discharge of a single bullet or even a shudder of social upheaval.

The entire episode was a civics lesson like no other, and for its last two months I had a ringside seat.  For a constitutional law junkie, which I most certainly was at the time, the summer of 1974 was pretty much a non-stop rush.

*  *  *

Which is pretty much why I all but ignored other events that unfolded that summer, including events that shook -- and continue to shake -- the Greek world.

On July 20, 1974, regular army troops of the Republic of Turkey commenced an amphibious and airborne invasion of Turkey’s next-door neighbor, the island Republic of Cyprus.  Since ancient times, Cyprus (slightly smaller than Rhode Island) has been populated by Greeks.  Beginning in the late 16th century, when the island came under Ottoman sway, Cyprus acquired a Turkish minority.  Until the 20th century, the two ethnicities freely intermingled and lived together peaceably.

Nikos Sampson (1935-2001)

Turkey invaded in response to a political coup on the island five days earlier, a stupendously ill-advised initiative of the military dictatorship then governing Greece.  The coup was led by Nikos Sampson, a thuggish ultra-right Greek Cypriot politician.  Its object was to assassinate Cyprus's elected president, Archbishop Makarios, topple his government, and install Sampson at the head of a right-wing regime that would unite Cyprus with Greece.

Cyprus President
Archbishop Makarios III (1913-1977)

President Makarios dodged the assassination attempt and fled the country.  But on July 20, five days after the Sampson coup, Turkey invaded Cyprus on the pretext that the coup put Turkish Cypriots in danger, triggering Turkey's right to take action under the 1960 treaty that made Turkey, Greece, and Great Britain co-guarantors of Cyprus’s independence.

Turkish Cypriots were actually in no danger, as their community leader, Rauf Denktash, recognized at the time.  On the day of the coup, he declared the matter was between Greek Cypriots and urged Turkish Cypriots not to interfere.

The entire world recognized that Turkey’s treaty-based justification for invading was a sham.  The UN and most major nations immediately condemned the invasion as illegal.  It violated the UN charter, which forbids aggression by one member against another.  It also violated the NATO charter, which incorporates the non-aggression principles of the UN Charter.

Initially, the Turkish army gained control of about 4% of the island, easily overwhelming the small Greek Cypriot militia.  Untold numbers of Greek Cypriot defenders were killed and wounded.

Two days later, Greece and Turkey agreed to a UN-sponsored cease-fire.  The next day (July 23), the seven-year-old Greek military dictatorship that had sponsored the ill-advised Sampson coup collapsed.  So did the eight-day-old Sampson coup itself, and the legitimate government of Cyprus was restored to power, with Glafcos Clerides, Speaker of the House of Representatives, taking control until president Makarios could return.

Peace negotiations took place in Geneva in late July and early August as the U.S. changed Presidents.  In Cyprus, a UN peace-keeping force tried to establish a buffer zone between the Turkish army and the Cypriot National Guard.  But during the negotiations Turkey continued to expand its area of control, requiring the UN force to retreat.

On August 14 -- despite (1) the failure of the Sampson coup, (2) the fall of the Greek dictatorship that had backed the coup, (3) restoration of the legitimate Cyprus government, (4) the cease-fire agreement, (5) the ongoing negotiations in Geneva, and (6) a UN Security Council resolution calling for an end to all fighting -- Turkey began a second major military offensive.  In a three-day blitzkrieg, Turkey expanded its control to 37% of the island.  On August 16, the Turkish army halted its advance and ceased firing.

That's where matters came to rest in the summer of 1974.

*  *  *

And forty summers later, it's where they still remain.

The UN Buffer Zone

Along the cease-fire line, a Turkish-built barbed-wire fence and a 112-mile-long UN-patrolled buffer zone divide Cyprus between a Turkish-backed puppet regime in the north (the so-called Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus) and the Republic of Cyprus, which controls the territory in the south and is recognized by all the world (save Turkey and the TRNC) as the entire island's legitimate government.

The mountainside flag of the
"Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus"

The island's capital, Nicosia, is a divided city, the only one in the world.  Every day (except during rare bad weather), Greek Cypriots in Nicosia have to look at an enormous TRNC flag permanently engraved onto a south-facing mountain slope, their every northward glance unavoidably refreshing the insult to their nation's sovereignty in 1974.

Fleeing Turkey's assaults that summer, one in four Greek Cypriots (about 160,000 people) became refugees in their own country.  (A comparable calamity in the U.S. would have produced roughly seventy-five million refugees.)  They had so little notice that some came south in bathing suits.

Two years after the invasion, the European Commission on Human Rights found that the Turkish army had killed innocent civilians on a substantial scale, had raped women between the ages of 12 and 71, had inhumanely treated prisoners and detainees, had looted and robbed on an extensive scale, and was guilty of other violations of the European Convention on Human Rights.  There are practically no ethnic Greeks left in the north.  Nearly 1,500 Greek Cypriots are still missing, as well as five American citizens.  All are presumed dead.

Into abandoned Greek Cypriot homes and farms in the north, Turkey promptly began installing tens of thousands of settlers from Anatolia, the Turkish heartland, in order to permanently change the demographics of the island.  This was a blatant violation of the 1949 Geneva Convention, which forbids an occupying power from transferring parts of its civilian population into occupied territory.  Within a year of the invasion, Anatolian settlers were arriving at the rate of 1,500 a week.  Eventually, some 160,000 mainland Turks colonized the occupied territory.  The Turkish demographic assault has completely succeeded:  the illegal settlers and their descendants now out-number native-born Turkish Cypriots nearly two-to-one.

Monastery Church (1518)
of Aghia Paraskevi (Vasilia)

Cemetery (Lefkoniko)

Everywhere in the occupied zone, Greek Orthodox cemeteries have been desecrated.  Monasteries and churches (many of great antiquity and cultural importance) have been vandalised and now serve as goatpens and storage barns.  Precious artwork looted from them periodically appears for sale on the international art market.

Since 2004, the Republic of Cyprus has been a full member of the European Union.  But because 35,000-40,000 regular army troops of the Republic of Turkey -- a major U.S. ally and fellow NATO member -- still illegally occupy more than one-third of this EU nation, application of the EU's acquis communautaire (EU law) is suspended in the occupied territory.

No one -- save Turkey and its client-regime in the north of the island -- seriously disputes that the Turkish invasion and continuing occupation are illegal.  But the U.S., which styles itself as an “honest broker” trying to seek a solution to the Cyprus problem, has never publicly acknowledged any illegality on Turkey’s part.  In public discourse, U.S. diplomats are instructed to refer not to the Turkish "invasion" but to the Turkish "intervention."

*  *  *

Cypriot and Greek Americans protesting in
Washington after Turkey's invasion of Cyprus

During the summer of 1974, I was almost completely oblivious to the Cyprus events.  I saw large Greek American demonstrations outside the White House, and I knew they had something to do with Cyprus.  The demonstrators chanted "Killer Kissinger!"  "Killer Kissinger!" in an angry non-stop pentameter.  But I was preoccupied with the unfolding impeachment drama.  I had no idea what Henry Kissinger, President Nixon's brilliant national security adviser and Secretary of State, had to do with Cyprus, and I didn't care.

Now I know, and I deeply regret that I didn't join in those demonstrations.

The sad truth is that the U.S. played a crucial role in the terrible events that divided Cyprus in the summer of 1974 and keep it divided today.  Our government had advance knowledge of Turkey's plan to acquire one third of the island through military action and partition it into an autonomous Turkish zone.  We secretly favored the plan.  When the Turkish attack came, we deliberately let it run its course, looking the other way as Turkey violated international law and sliced a sovereign nation in two.  In the intervening years, we have applied no public pressure on Turkey to rectify its egregious crimes.

*  *  *

Executive branch officials had seen the crisis coming.  A day after the Sampson coup, Pentagon officials were aware that Turkish troops were being massed on the coast near Cyprus.

Henry A. Kissinger
56th Secretary of State (1973-1977)
Assistant to the President
for National Security Affairs (1969-1975)

At the State Department, Nixon's preoccupation with Watergate had left Kissinger completely in charge of U.S. foreign policy.  Kissinger was rejecting the appeals of regional specialists to stand by Cyprus’s elected president (Makarios) and publicly condemn the Greece-sponsored coup as illegal.  So the U.S. said nothing.

Behind the scenes, the U.S. was manipulating events in Turkey’s favor.  Kissinger instructed our UN ambassador to postpone the Security Council’s emergency meeting on Cyprus from Monday night, July 15, to Friday, July 19.  This gave Turkey four additional days to prepare for invasion.  On Wednesday, July 17, Kissinger leaked to the New York Times that the State Department was leaning toward supporting Sampson.  This magnified the Sampson bogey-man, Turkey’s pretext for invading, and tacitly invited Turkey to act.  Three days later (July 20), Turkey accepted.

Just as the U.S. cleared the way for the initial invasion, it also deliberately stood aside for the Turkish army’s second major offensive on August 14.

The day before, at the Geneva peace talks, the Turkish foreign minister peremptorily demanded a Cypriot confederation involving six autonomous cantons for the Turkish Cypriot minority.  The six cantons would give 34% of the island to the then-existing 18% Turkish Cypriot minority. 

On its face, the State Department's August 13 position statement, responding to events in Geneva, disapproved of further military action.  But it implicitly invited another Turkish offensive by declaring that “we recognize the Turkish community on Cyprus requires considerable improvement and protection.”  This was false.  There was no evidence that the Turkish Cypriot community was in any danger.

The position statement also promoted Turkish Cypriot autonomy by implicitly endorsing the Turkish demand made earlier that day in Geneva, declaring:   “We have supported a greater degree of autonomy for [the Turkish Cypriot community].  The parties are negotiating on one or more Turkish autonomous areas.”

The last statement was false again.  There had been no such negotiations.  The Turkish demand for autonomous areas had caught the Greek and British negotiators in Geneva by surprise and was met by their request for thirty-six hours to consult their respective governments.  Turkey refused.

Kissinger himself made no public statement, but he was fully aware of what was happening.  The U.S. was playing an active role in the Geneva negotiations, and Kissinger had been in telephone contact with Turkish prime minister Bulent Ecevit four times in the preceding twenty-four hours.  In particular, Kissinger knew that Turkey was planning another military assault to acquire the six cantons demanded in Geneva -- and he fully endorsed it.

The proof is in Kissinger's Oval Office briefing of Nixon's successor (former Vice President Gerald Ford) about the Cyprus situation at 9:00 a.m. on August 13.  As the briefing began, Ford had been President for less than four days following Nixon's resignation.  (The memorandum of the briefing was not published by the State Department until 2007.)

As Kissinger framed "the problem in Geneva," it was that the peace negotiations were in the way of further Turkish military action:  "The problem in Geneva is that the Turks see that the more the negotiations are protracted the more difficult the unilateral military move becomes."  Greece, he told the new President, was "procrastinating" in asking for thirty-six hours to consider Turkey's Geneva demand.

Kissinger did not want to see Greece pushed into war with Turkey, but he fully approved of Turkey's grab-now-talk-later tactics:  "[T]he Turkish tactics are right -- grab what they want and then negotiate on the basis of possession."  And if it came to war between Greece and Turkey, he told Ford, "Turkey is more important to us . . .."

Kissinger predicted that "[i]f the Turks move to take what they want" they would be condemned in the UN Security Council and severely chastised by the Soviet Union.  But these outcomes were irrelevant in Kissinger's icy calculus.  His advice to the new President that morning could not have been clearer:  "There is no American reason why the Turks should not have one-third of Cyprus."

The next day (August 14), the Turkish army began its intense second offensive.  Two days later, with 37% of the island in hand, Turkey was ready to resume negotiations.  Still, Kissinger remained publicly silent.

Helmut Sonnenfeldt (1926-2012)
("Kissinger's Kissinger")
Senior Staff Member,
National Security Council (1969-1974)
State Department Counselor (1974-1977)

His silence was deliberate.  This is shown by a declassified August 14 "Secret/Eyes Only" State Department memorandum responding to Kissinger's request for "some brief ideas on what we do next."  The memo's author, State Department Counselor Helmut Sonnenfeldt, declared that, "as has always been true, the only conceivable modus vivendi" for Cyprus was a de facto division, "whatever the form."  He urged Kissinger to "not get involved directly till the fighting stops."  After Turkey achieved its military goals (quickly, Sonnenfeldt hoped), then the U.S. "should privately assure the Turks we will get them [a] solution involving one-third of [the] island, with some kind of federal arrangement.”

Kissinger's position on Cyprus was part of his Cold War realpolitik, which required appeasing Turkey at any cost.  In his view, the U.S.'s alliance with Turkey was a crucial component in the balance of power against the Soviet Union, which Turkey directly bordered.  Turkey hosted important U.S. listening posts and a major U.S. air base.

Cyprus, on the other hand, was expendable.  Beyond being a small inconsequential country with no important resources, it was suspect in Kissinger's eyes for its Cold War policy of non-alignment.

Greece, like Turkey, was our Cold War NATO ally.  But in Kissinger's analysis, Greece's interests had no chance if they conflicted with those of Turkey, our "more important" ally.

*  *  *

The legislative branch had a much different view of the proper U.S. response to what was happening in Cyprus.  Congressional leaders immediately saw that Turkey’s invasion was a pretext for dividing the island.  They also recognized the State Department’s complicity in Turkey’s partition efforts through Kissinger’s deliberate silence.

Galvanized by vocal elements of the Greek American community, Congress focused on Turkey’s violations of U.S. law -- specifically the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Foreign Military Sales Act and bilateral agreements under those laws.  These laws and agreements unambiguously forbade the use of U.S. arms and equipment for acts of aggression against other countries.  Turkey had unquestionably violated these laws.  So Congress sprang into action with what came to be known as the “Rule of Law” initiative to halt military assistance to Turkey.

The press also saw through Kissinger’s cynical strategy.  On September 14, the New York Times accused the State Department of “clearly stalling” and bluntly charged that the U.S.’s unwillingness to condemn the Sampson coup had “encouraged Turkey to intervene on the island.”

Following Kissinger’s lead, the Ford administration vigorously opposed congressional efforts to apply the rule of law to stop aid to Turkey.   The administration claimed that stopping aid would adversely affect an important U.S. ally and was counter-productive to Kissinger’s mediation efforts.  Kissinger himself called the arms cut-off a “tragedy that will not help negotiations in Cyprus and will weaken the defense of the West.”  According to a New York Times article, Kissinger had privately told legislators that U.S. interests were above the law.

But Congress would not relent.  The battle between the executive and legislative branches continued through the fall of 1974.  Finally, in late December, after seventeen congressional votes on legislation aimed toward stopping aid to Turkey, President Ford signed the measure known as the “Rule of Law Arms Embargo.”  It would suspend all military assistance and sales to Turkey as of February 5, 1975, if no solution was reached by then.  At the time, the Defense Department had plans to sell Turkey nearly $300 million in arms.

A Cyprus settlement was not achieved by Congress’s deadline.  So at midnight on February 4, 1975, the Rule of Law Arms Embargo went into effect, cutting off all U.S. military aid to Turkey until substantial progress could be made on a Cyprus settlement and Turkey had come into compliance with law.  But as time wore on without a Cyprus solution, intense administration pressure gradually loosened the U.S. embargo.  President Carter lifted what remained of it in late 1978.

*  *  *

In succeeding years, while publicly claiming "honest broker" status and purporting not to recognize the illegal regime in the occupied north, the U.S. has privately facilitated Cyprus's partition by:

• failing to fulfill pledges to support UN resolutions calling for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Cyprus
• failing to condition billions of dollars of aid to Turkey on its withdrawal of troops from Cyprus
• failing to denounce the declared "independence" of the pseudo-state in the occupied zone (1983)
• failing to reconsider Turkey's illegal invasion of Cyprus in the same light as Iraq's illegal invasion of Kuwait (1991)
• ignoring Cypriot law by authorizing U.S. government employees to fly directly into the occupied zone to clear the way for direct trade with the illegal regime (2004)
• supporting the UN's "Annan Plan" for a Cyprus settlement, which, among other unacceptable terms, would have allowed the Turkish Cypriot minority to veto all key legislative and executive actions proposed by the Greek Cypriot majority (2004)
• inviting the illegal regime's leader to Washington for a formal visit (2005)

*  *  *

Over the years, settlement discussions have proceeded in fits and starts, usually under UN auspices.  Their goal, at least from the Greek Cypriot side, is some kind of bi-zonal, bi-communal federation based on existing UN resolutions.

The negotiations are prone to failure, however, because the Turkish Cypriots can't speak for themselves.  If they could -- especially since 2004 -- they might sensibly opt for solutions that give them the benefits of EU law.  But the choice is not theirs.  Turkey speaks for them, and Turkey has been unwilling to make the major concessions necessary to reach a just and viable solution, such as removing its army from the occupied zone. 

Since 2011, however, a new factor has given all parties an incentive to renew discussions.  The new factor is undersea natural gas -- huge quantities of it -- discovered within a maritime zone that all nations (except Turkey, of course) agree belongs to the Republic of Cyprus.

The prospect of offshore riches gives all parties a new reason to try to break the decades-old stalemate -- even the U.S., which knows how to insinuate itself when hydrocarbons are in play.  (Houston-based Noble Energy has won some of the concessions to explore the gas fields for development.)  But by disputing the boundaries of Cyprus's maritime zone, Turkey skillfully plays the spoiler in deciding how the gas will be shared out.  So a solution to the forty-year standoff remains elusive.

 *  *  *

Would Cyprus's history have been any different had Nixon not been forced from office forty summers ago?  Probably not.  He typically deferred to Kissinger on foreign policy matters.  There's little reason to think he would have acted differently in Cyprus's case.

But maybe he would have.  Had Nixon not been preoccupied with Watergate, decisions about Cyprus would have been his to make, not Kissinger's.  Maybe Nixon would have seen the justice of appeasing Congress rather than Turkey.  Maybe he would have felt the sting of the media's near unanimous condemnation of the Sampson coup and Turkey's illegal use of U.S. arms.

Upholding the rule of law would probably not have weighed heavily in Nixon's analysis.  But he was intensely political, and intense political pressure was being brought to bear.   If Nixon had yielded to the pressure and the U.S. -- like the UN, Great Britain, France, and other nations -- had promptly and publicly condemned the Sampson coup, Turkey would have had little pretext for an invasion.  And sticking to a public condemnation would have kept pressure on Turkey to stand down.

That's idle speculation, of course.  In fact, Nixon had a really bad summer, and so did Cyprus.  The difference is that Nixon had one bad summer, but Cyprus has had forty -- and is still counting.

Much of the Cyprus-related portion of this post is based on research I did for a script I wrote in 2008 for a documentary film about the U.S.'s role in the Cyprus tragedy.  The documentary was the initiative of the American Hellenic Institute, of which I served as chairman from 1997 to 2008.  My script was not used, but an hour-long documentary, Cyprus Still Divided: A U.S. Foreign Policy Failure, was eventually produced under AHI's auspices late in 2010.  It aired on Maryland Public Television the following year.