This volume in the Diplomats and Diplomacy series, sponsored by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST) and DACOR, Inc., features the firsthand account of a junior diplomat in the U.S. embassy in Athens in 1966–1968, Robert V. Keeley, who tried in vain to change the views of his superiors and thereby influence U.S. policy toward the military dictatorship imposed in April 1967 by Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos and his fellow conspirators. The book belongs in the history of the Cold War insofar as it illustrates the preconceptions and simplistic worldview shaping U.S. policy during that period. In a lengthy prologue to the book, the distinguished scholar John O. Iatrides surveys U.S.-Greek postwar relations and the role of the U.S. embassy in Athens until 1966.
It is strange and regrettable that this valuable memoir should appear in print so late—almost forty years after it was written in 1971–1972. No adequate...