The appointment of the strikingly beautiful Kimberly Guilfoyle as U.S. ambassador to Greece caused quite a stir. The criticisms against her were rife with disparaging remarks, scandalous insinuations, and titillating descriptions.

Perhaps this was because she is the first woman in this role on Queen Sophia Avenue. All her predecessors, for about 80 years, were exclusively men. Each left their own stamp on Greek-American diplomatic relations during their tenure.

Among them were hardliners, low-profile mediators, cynics, interventionists, decorative figures, and cultivated philhellenes, as well as colonial-style sheriffs.

Of the 24 Americans who have served as ambassadors in Athens since the early post-war years, several stand out.

For veterans of the diplomatic corps, two of them were considered the most qualified, capable, and effective in fostering smooth deepening of Greek-American cooperation over the past 25 years—a fact proven by their brilliant career advancements afterward.

Geoffrey Pyatt

From 2016 to 2022, Geoffrey Ross Pyatt served a rare five-year term in Greece, where U.S. ambassadorial postings typically last no more than three and a half years.

He was appointed to Athens during Greece’s domestic economic crisis by President Barack Obama and continued his service under President Donald Trump during the pandemic.

A career diplomat specializing in managing major crises, Pyatt had already proven his credentials during the so-called “Revolution of Dignity” in Ukraine in February 2014.

He had been serving as ambassador in Kyiv since 2013. In Athens, this blonde, blue-eyed Californian from San Diego, with a Master’s in International Relations from Yale University, showcased his diplomatic talent.

He proved to be a reliable interlocutor for Greek governments. He spearheaded Greece’s emergence as an energy hub for all of Southeastern Europe and actively participated in the signing of the upgraded Greek-American Agreement.

Pyatt’s Legacy

While in office, Pyatt supported the famous Prespa Agreement in 2018, of which he was a strong advocate. He notably stated, “History will be kind to Tsipras, who showed political courage to move forward with the agreement with North Macedonia.”

An athletic individual and cycling enthusiast, despite a 2019 accident in Mani, he frequently rode routes as far as Sounio.

He also skied in Metsovo’s Anilio, visited Syros with his wife Mary, photographed Santorini, and traveled to Crete, which he referred to as the “Texas of Greece.”

The Philhellene Burns

According to experienced officials at Greece’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Pyatt was an active global player with moral values, democratic beliefs, and a mild diplomatic profile.

Representing his country, he actively worked to establish Greece as a stable pillar of security in a complex region while expanding its economic relations with the U.S. Another dynamic American ambassador in Greece was Nicholas Burns, now the U.S. Ambassador to China.

Nicholas Burns (1997–2001)

Appointed to Athens by President Bill Clinton, Burns served from 1997 to 2001. During his tenure, he introduced the concept of “public diplomacy.”

He spoke openly, sometimes harshly, about Greek dysfunctions. He also criticized the theft of American intellectual property by various local television and radio stations. Highly energetic, he visited ministries and numerous cities across the country with his wife, Elizabeth Baylies.

Remarkably, he even visited the Souda military base and unexpectedly entered the Elena maternity hospital, adjacent to the ambassadorial residence, in what seemed like a hospital inspection.

Burns was the only U.S. ambassador until then who did not hesitate to address—and in some sense apologize for—the problematic choice of the Johnson and Nixon administrations to support the junta of coup-plotting colonels in Greece.

This blonde, slim diplomat with a Master’s in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University was a true philhellene—not by position, but by conviction.

He contributed to expanding Greece-U.S. defense cooperation, bolstered their mutual assistance in the Balkans, increased American investments in Greece, and helped enforce international law domestically. During his time in Greece, the terrorist organization “November 17” was dismantled.

The Anti-Communists

The times had dramatically changed since the era when U.S. ambassadors in Athens approached their post with the air of governors in an American state beyond the U.S. borders.

In the summer of 1948, amid a raging civil war, Henry Francis Grady arrived, armed with sweeping powers for compulsive interventions in Greek politics.

Born and raised in San Francisco, dean at the University of California, and a shipping executive, the Truman-appointed ambassador embraced his post with fervent patriotism. He became a herald of the blessed American way of life.

Touring provincial towns—some devastated by the Occupation, others languishing from the Civil War—he “preached” the invaluable value of Marshall Plan aid and zealously “educated” the citizens on the virtues of democracy.

His goal was to actively counter the then-armed communist threat and prevent Soviet influence in the country, as the ominous dawn of the Cold War loomed.

Replacing Grady, the notorious John Emil Peurifoy took over the ambassadorship in Athens.

John Emil Peurifoy

A native of South Carolina, streetwise with a strong posture, he worked his way up from an errand boy and elevator operator to a department store clerk and night school student. A lifelong Democrat, he had also clashed with Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy over their shared anti-communism fervor.

In reality, Peurifoy was an ambitious climber of power. Diagnosed as exceptionally effective in executing orders, he swiftly rose to the rank of Under Secretary of State.

He arrived in Athens in 1950, wearing a long coat with wide lapels and a fedora atop his cropped hair. His priority was to ensure Greece stayed under the protective wings of the U.S., aligning it with broader strategic goals.

Almost immediately upon his arrival, seated casually in a plush armchair without a jacket but in short sleeves—formal protocol be damned—he wagged his finger admonishingly at the impeccably dressed Prime Minister Sophokles Venizelos. The latter stared at him in shock, if not terror.

Later, Venizelos would liken him to a “gauleiter,” while Peurifoy referred to him as a “short bastard.” The mutual insults carried no weight during a period when the ambassador held immense sway over Greek politics.

From the U.S. embassy’s base in an old neoclassical four-story building (later demolished), Peurifoy orchestrated the formation of a single-party conservative government under his favored Field Marshal Papagos.

Though distrusted by the royal palace of King Paul and Queen Frederica and despised by the British for his patriotic stance on the Cyprus issue, Peurifoy ensured Papagos’s premiership through any means necessary.

He exploited the superstition of then-ailing Prime Minister Nikolaos Plastiras, who trusted a fortune teller as a political adviser.

Cleverly, the ambassador hired the medium to convince Plastiras to accept a majority electoral system in Parliament, paving the way for Papagos’s overwhelming victory in the 1952 elections.

This intervention not only exacerbated political polarization in post-war Greece but also entrenched divisions within its society.

Peurifoy left Greece in 1953 for Guatemala, where he allegedly helped organize the infamous “banana coup” in collaboration with the CIA. Acting on behalf of the United Fruit Company, he toppled a reformist government and installed a brutal military dictatorship.

Before dying in a car accident in Bangkok in 1955, Peurifoy had already earned a place in the shadowy annals of history.

The Inauguration of the Embassy

Over the years, the rigid behavior of ambassadors, who seemed to address others as if they were subordinates, gradually softened. The political approach of “speak softly and carry a big stick,” introduced in the early 20th century by President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt for foreign affairs, was progressively tempered.

Even though the Cold War had reached a crescendo, the American ambassadors arriving in Athens now wore more smiles than grimaces that bared their teeth. On July 4, 1961, the seasoned ambassador Ellis Omsby Briggs inaugurated the new building of the American Embassy in Athens.

An architectural work by Walter Gropius, the founder of Bauhaus, the building added modernist touches to the capital. The country anticipated a corresponding modern style in the political behavior of the top occupants of the U.S. Embassy. By then, the presidency of John F. Kennedy had dawned.

However, the bespectacled Briggs, with his horn-rimmed glasses and wide mustache, was a diplomat of the old school. Snobbish and bored after serving in seven embassies, he often had a half-extinguished cigar in his mouth, showcasing his eccentricities. While his instincts generally guided him politically correctly, he couldn’t hold his tongue. Surprisingly for a diplomat, he spoke plainly and unfiltered.

A unique figure during the turbulent years of Greek democracy in the mid-60s—up until its overthrow by the junta—was Ambassador Henry Joseph Tasca.

Tasca arrived in Athens in 1969 with his wife, Natalina Federici, whom he had met and married during his tenure in Rome. He was no extraordinary diplomat.

He resembled more of an economic expert. A native of Rhode Island, the smallest state in the U.S., he had served as a naval lieutenant during World War II and had taken some courses at the London School of Economics.

Henry Tasca, 1970–1974
Tasca was a supporter of the junta, and his role regarding the 1974 Cyprus invasion remains controversial.

He had come to Greece to replace his predecessor, Ambassador Phillips Talbot, who had made a mess of things. Talbot acted as an accomplice to the colonels’ coup.

He supposedly followed the pragmatic line of the Lyndon Johnson administration, which considered the junta a bulwark against communism in the region.

Not that Tasca had a different perspective. To him, the dictatorship aligned with the vital security interests of the U.S. in Greece. He became an effective supporter of the junta, establishing connections with the treacherous officers who violated democracy and trampled individual freedoms.

Tom Pappas
Tasca’s relationships with the junta, as well as with the White House, were facilitated behind the scenes by his close friend, Greek-American oil refinery businessman Tom Pappas from Filiatra.

After officially welcoming Vice President Spiro Agnew (of Gargalianoi origin) to Athens in 1973 with a glossy top hat and tuxedo, Pappas continued to whitewash the image of the junta. He only despised Ioannidis, whom he compared to his hated Gaddafi.

Eventually, Tasca clashed with U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The flashpoint was the overthrow of Archbishop Makarios in Cyprus in 1974. Tasca proposed that the 6th Fleet intervene to prevent the Turkish invasion.

He believed that Kissinger’s policies would dismantle NATO’s southeastern flank. His suggestions were ignored, resulting in the Cypriot tragedy. He resigned from his post in 1974.

During that time, he expressed a desire to publish a book naming CIA officials who had encouraged Ioannidis to overthrow Papadopoulos. Two years later, in a U.S. House of Representatives committee, he confirmed that the Greek junta had contributed to Nixon and Agnew’s campaign funds.

Tasca never wrote a single revealing word. He died in August 1979 in a mysterious car accident near Mont Pèlerin in Lausanne. Eight years later, his son insisted that the fatal, suspicious crash had been orchestrated by Kissinger “to silence him.”

The Post-Junta Period
After the restoration of democracy, a smoother and deeper diplomatic channel of moderate balance opened between Athens and Washington.

In the spring of 1981, newly elected U.S. President Ronald Reagan appointed Montague Stearns as ambassador to Athens. This was a period of distrust in Greek-American relations, with the contentious issue being the removal or retention of American bases in Greece.

At a time when the Cold War was at its peak, Andreas Papandreou took over the country’s governance with his dynamic “Change” movement.

Stearns, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a Columbia University graduate, had the advantage of extensive experience in Greece. He had served twice at the U.S. Embassy in Athens, from 1958 to 1962 and from 1974 to 1977.

His more discreet yet impressive asset was his direct connection with Andreas. The young Papandreou and Stearns couples had known each other from their days as neighbors on Nikolaou Gyzis Street in Palaio Psychiko.

In the early 1960s, they would meet when Andreas and Margarita called each other “Andy” and “Maggie.” It was almost predestined that with his American academic stature, impeccable English, and prior social relationship with Papandreou, Stearns would find common ground with “Monty.” And so, the bases that were supposed to leave… stayed.

Montigl Sterns 1981-1985
With perhaps the most significant advantage being his close relationship with Andreas Papandreou, a golden middle ground was found, and so the slogan “Out with the bases” was never implemented.

Sterns was succeeded from 1985 to 1989 by Robert Kelley, a man with a deep understanding of Greek reality. The diplomat, who spent eight of his 36 years in the service in Athens, had his warm relationship with Greece begin when he was six years old, in 1936, when his career-diplomat father, James Kelley, served as consul in pre-war Thessaloniki.

In the 1960s, Robert served as a junior officer at the U.S. embassy in Athens. A Democrat, he developed anti-imperialist stances, as much as his position as an American diplomat allowed.

An iconoclast, both he and his wife Louise were perhaps the only Americans in Athens who supported the Papandreou family when Andreas was a “red rag” for the American embassy from the mid-1960s onward.

He was the brother of the scholar, poet, and prominent translator Edmund Kelley, the famous Hellenist and professor at Princeton University, who contributed greatly to bringing Greek poetry to the international audience.

With such a dignified philhellene, the relationship between the American embassy and the Greek government remained uninterrupted, during a time when political events were intensifying, both domestically with the beginning of the “dirty ’89” and internationally with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Thomas Niles 1992-1996
He arrived during a period of tension due to the Imia Crisis in 1996 and the collapse of Yugoslavia, but proved to be the coolest figure ever to pass through the embassy.

Speaking of philhellene American ambassadors, Thomas Niles from Lexington, Kentucky, stood out. A Harvard graduate and a reliable 30-year veteran of the State Department, he came to the country in 1992 during the presidency of Bill Clinton.

He arrived in Athens during a sensitive period of tension in the region due to the collapse of Yugoslavia and the fierce hostilities at the brink of ethnic cleansing on all its fronts. He was the ambassador serving in Greece during the Imia Crisis, which he would recount: “I remember staying awake all night! Because I had talks with the State Department, we had the U.S. president on the phone almost all night. By the end of the talks, things started to calm down, Turkish aircraft withdrew, there were no more overflights over Imia, of course there were serious differences and still are over territorial waters, rights for research, and all those complex issues.”

The Night of Imia
“Yes, we feared that the worst-case scenario would be an actual battle between the Greek and Turkish armed forces, as a large military force had gathered in a very small area, and movements were being made through the night, planes were flying overhead, and there was a great chance something could go wrong, but fortunately, it didn’t.”

He proved to be the coolest figure ever to serve at the embassy. A passionate and sensitive animal lover, he would visit the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs with his beloved dog, Wheats, never leaving its side.

He once spent a night in a hammock outside the Iviron Monastery on Mount Athos because he refused to part with his dog when the monks forbade him from bringing it into the monastic cell. At the “Amalia” hotel in Methoni, he would feed his dog the first spoonful of food from his plate and then eat from the same spoon himself.

The same went for a boat trip on Lake Kastoria, where he never let his dog out of his embrace. A staunch admirer of ancient history, during his tenure, he wore a chlamys and carried a torch at a provincial reenactment of ancient games in Nemea. With his unique eccentricity, he will remain unforgettable in diplomatic history.

The Greek-American Ambassadors
However, the Greek-American ambassadors in Greece will remain unforgettable. The first was Michael Soterchos, a personal friend of President George H. W. Bush. He came to Greece at the age of 61 in September 1989, with his wife Estelle. A true New Yorker, a businessman with strong ties to the Greek-American community and deep connections with the Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America.

Born to Greek immigrants who had moved to the U.S. in 1923, George Soterchos from Kythera and Aikaterini Mich. Aivalioti from Triovasalos in Milos. An unparalleled public relations expert, he was active in art exhibitions, cultural events, visiting municipalities and communities, and attending numerous theater performances. He even found himself in the Harilaou Stadium in September 1991 for a football match between Aris and Olympiakos.

Michael Soterchos 1989-1993
The Greek-American ambassador was very active and social but always restrained so that the State Department would not perceive him as openly supporting Greece due to his heritage.

However, he was always careful not to appear as openly supporting Greece because of his origins. In a more modern version, the current ambassador, George Tsounis from Queens, New York, did not have the same anxieties that Soterchos had 25 years ago. He is not a career diplomat, but he managed to leave the best impressions on all levels during his time in our country.

George Tsounis 2022 – present
Ambassador George Tsounis is not a career diplomat, but he has managed to leave the best impressions on all levels during his time in Greece. In the photo with his wife, Olga Andzouli.

He also did not forget the homeland of his first-generation immigrant parents, James and Eleni, from Platanos in the mountainous Nafpaktia, making his own return to the roots. At the same time, he embraced Greek humor, informing the public that “souvlaki is souvlaki, not kalamaki,” and contributed greatly to further enhancing Greek-American relations.

It is clear that Trump’s choice for the new U.S. ambassador to Greece, 55-year-old Kimberly Guilfoyle, comes well-prepared with the history of her predecessors.