A journalist remembered

Amidst the Athens Games lies the grave of a heroic American reporter

The Wednesday edition of the International Herald Tribune celebrated the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Paris by the allied forces. Several of the stories in that section were excerpted from the New York Herald Tribune, a great newspaper that died too soon, and one was written by George Polk, a great journalist who died too soon.

Polk is buried in a beautiful, shady cemetery in Athens, on the Greek soil where he was murdered 56 years ago, a shameful and largely forgotten moment in American political history. One of journalism's most prestigious awards is named after Polk, a newspaperman turned CBS correspondent, but few remember the sordid details of his death in May of 1948 in the northern port of Salonika.

Anyone interested in Polk or these tortured times should read The Polk Conspiracy, a book by another respected journalist, Kati Marton. I picked it up on my way to Athens, finished it in one marathon session and was haunted by it during the month I've spent in this strange and wonderful country. I can't begin to do justice to Marton's work in this space, but here is a summary of what happened to Polk.

By 1948 Polk had moved from newspapers to CBS as part of the stable of distinguished broadcast journalists that included Edward R. Murrow. As CBS's chief Middle East correspondent, Polk traveled widely and reported often from Greece, then under the hold of a right-wing monarchical government propped up by the United States and Great Britain. It was during the post-World-War II years when America was beginning its fervent anti-Communist policy, defined by The Truman Doctrine. It's only a slight oversimplification to define the doctrine thusly: We will support any government but a Communist government, a policy we later followed in Latin America and one that led us ultimately into Vietnam.

Polk was a thorn in the side of the Greek monarchy -- and by extension the U.S. and the Brits -- because he reported honestly. Though he was labeled, predictably, pro-Communist, Polk was in fact a patriot, a war hero who survived a bloody battle on Guadalcanal, shot down 11 Japanese planes and came home with a purple heart, numerous other citations and a constitution wracked by malaria. He was just one of these professionals who did his job well, and the essence of his job was telling both sides of the story.

On any number of occasions Polk embarrassed the Greeks by reporting on the cruel, repressive and vacuous men in power, but what apparently sealed his fate was a story he was researching on Constantine Tsaldaris, Greece's corrupt foreign minister, the head of the Royalist Party and probably the most powerful politician in Athens and a man that our government wanted to keep in power. Polk had learned that Tsaldaris had deposited about $25,000 into an account at Chase Bank in the United States at a time when it was a crime to send currency out of the country. He confronted Tsaldaris about it and 72 hours later he was dead.

Immediately after his interview with Tsaldaris, Polk traveled north to Salonika, trying to make a connection to interview one of the Communist insurgents. It was a story he had been trying to get for months, as had many other journalists. Days later, Polk's body was discovered in Salonika Bay. His arms and legs had been bound and a bullet fired point-blank had ripped apart his skull. "I am surprised he lived for three days after that interview," his Greek-born wife, Rea, said.

With the full knowledge of the American and British governments, as well as the indifference of American reporters, many of whom knew and respected Polk, the Greeks conducted a sham investigation, followed by a sham arrest of a hapless reporter named Gregory Staktopoulos, followed by a sham trial in which Staktopoulos was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Eventually everything changed, as it always does. Tsaldaris and the monarchists were swept of power, Staktopoulos was released from prison, and the U.S. found other fronts in their battle to stop Communism. But the real murderers were never brought to justice -- Marton's book points the finger at a conspiracy that reached the highest level of the Greek government -- and Polk was dead at the age of 34, "the first victim of the Cold War," as the journalist I.F. Stone put it.

While the Games went on all around me, I took a day to visit Polk's gold-inscribed marble tomb. "George W. Polk, Lieutenant, U.S. Navy" reads the inscription. Marton writes that Polk would've preferred "George Polk, Reporter." That's what he was, that's why he died, and he shouldn't be forgotten.