This year they thought they had found a bug on Rhodes (proverbial for cleanliness), and they were right. In fact they found three. It was just another proof of the truth of that ancient Greek maxim: “Keep you goals low and they are more likely to be achieved.”
Late in September the European Democratic Union (EDU) held its annual conference on Rhodes. It was the eleventh conference held by conservative governments and it had been organized by opposition party New Democracy under the careful supervision of Constantine Mitsotakis. The venue – fashionable Rhodos Beach Hotel – was given top-security treatment.
Five prime ministers checked in. Among 20 conservative governments represented at cabinet level, Mesut Yilmaz, foreign secretary of Turkey’s ruling Motherland party, came over by yacht from Marmaris. Glafkos Clerides arrived from Cyprus. There was also the executive secretary of EDU, Andreas Koll, and the two-day conference was chaired by the vice-chancellor and foreign minister of Austria, Alois Mock.
Even at the most sophisticated conferences there may be mechanical dysfunctions but in this case the hook-up was more thorough than anyone could imagine.
The first public announcement that a telephone was being tapped while the conference was in session behind closed doors came from that ever-ready, gung-ho, early-bird-gets-the-first-worm, state-run, super-utility, OTE, the Greek Telecommunications Company. OTE is so fast on the trigger that it disconnects phones for nonpayment of bills that it has not even mailed out yet. Its general director is Theofanis Tombras, the self-elected J. Edgar Hoover of the Levant.
In a midday statement on September 23, OTE said that a listening device had been planted in the conference room. OTE technicians had hooked up the phones, it went on to explain, but the equipment had been sent down from Athens by the organizers. Therefore, it implied, New Democracy had planted the bug.
Great weas the consternation of all freedom-loving peoples at this terrible revelation, but it was only part of the story. Just after 9:00 AM the same day when the press had left the conference hall, a secretary of Mr Roll’s was surprised to discover over a phone she picked up that she could clearly hear the proceedings of the meeting within. When those in camera were informed, a search led to the discovery of a listening device nestling in Mr Monk’s telephone. A big bug hunt which followed exposed two more. What the delegates thought of at this point no one in the outside world could know since the devices had already been disconnented, but delegates agreed with ND to keep the matter quiet, for the moment at least, in order to avoid disgracing the country.
Most likely something would have been said during the press conference called for at 4:00 PM but by that time OTE had already let the bug, as it were, out of the bag. How, it was wondered, could it ever have known that a phone was being tapped when no announcement had been made? Five prime ministers and representatives of 20 governments put ther formidable brains together and came to the sensational conclusion that it was the folks over at OTE who had planted it and been listening in – that is, until the device was removed. But why this should have led to the witless decision to announce the discovery prematurely, left many a conservative scratching his wise old head.
Of course the statement issued by the EDU said it had no proof that the Greek government was responsible for the bugging, but the incident took on the dimensions of an international scandal, especially because of the high-level delegation participating. “Telephone tapping,” said Mr Mock, “may happen in Moscow, Romania and Bulgaria, but nothing of this kind has happened in the 11 years of the EDU’s existence.”
OTE’s implication that ND was bugging its own conference aroused ridicule as well as contempt.
“In the land of Plato and Aristotle,” the Austrian Vice Chancellor added, “logic must prevail. How is it possible that New Democracy could possibly want to eavesdrop on discussions which it was fully recording?”
In a strongly-worded statement the EDU said that it expected the Greek government to commence a thorough legal investigation of the incident and properly punish those responsible for the crime. If satisfactory replies were not provided, it went on, the matter would be brought before the European Parliament.
The Greek government, however, dismissed the announcement as ‘insulting’ and claimed that the whole matter was staged by agents provocateurs working with ND to embarrass the government. It also regretted Mr Mock’s statement that a political crisis was continuing in Greece while it was holding the EC presidency.
“He should know,” said the government spokesman, “that our responsibilities towards the EC are being fulfilled in the most exemplary manner under the continuous supervision of Prime Minister and EC President Andreas Papandreou.”
Probably Mr Mock did not realize what constitute “the most exemplary manners” in the land of Plato and Aristotle today, let alone that telephone tapping is a popular sport at OTE whereby Mr Tombras can keep his hugely overstaffed, PASOK-voting employees entertained.
And, besides, Mr Roll’s secretary may not have realized herself that in this land formerly inhabited by Plato and Aristotle, where everyone every day charges everyone else with living ‘in a world of fantasy’, she was not hearing Mr Mitsotakis & Co. in camera but, over one of OTE’s invariably crossed lines, picking up ‘sweet nothings’ whispered by lovers over a house phone in Harefield Hospital, Uxbridge.
