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.