be "endangered" during the operation. This analogy aside, Papadopoulos at least indicated his intention of ending military rule once the political system had recovered to his satisfaction and that the treatment would progress on some legal and political basis. In fact Papadopoulos had indicated as early as 1968 that he was eager for a reform process and even tried to contact Markezinis at the time. He then repeatedly attempted to initiate reforms in 1969 and 1970, only to be thwarted by the hardliners including Ioannides. In fact subsequent to his 1970 failed attempt at reform, he threatened to resign and was dissuaded only after the hardliners renewed their personal allegiance to him. In contrast, Ioannides did not talk to the press and did not offer any analogies for his proposed treatment. But through his actions one can determine that the cast analogy did not serve his purposes any longer. Ioannides therefore abandoned the patient in a cast analogy that Papadopoulos offered in order to make a political statement that no democratic transition would take place during his tenure in power. This also indicated that Ioannides was not concerned about legal formalities. He was a "ruthless dictator who toppled the [Papadopoulos] junta for being too liberal". Ioannidis was considered a "purist and a moralist, a type of Greek Gaddafi". At the time, Time magazine had described Ioannides as "a rigid, puritanical xenophobe – he has never been outside Greece or Cyprus – who might try to turn Greece into a European equivalent of Muammar Gaddafi's Libya." EAT/ESA torture of dissenters Ioannides's junta moved quickly to stifle any dissent, re-instituting and accelerating repressive measures such as censorship, expulsions, arbitrary detentions and torture, described as among the harshest ever imposed in Greece, and earning the junta an international reputation as a police state. Ioannides's main instrument of terror, was the Greek Military Police (EAT/ESA, Greek: ΕΑΤ/ΕΣΑ: Ειδικόν Ανακριτικόν Τμήμα Ελληνικής Στρατιωτικής Αστυνομίας translated as: Special Interrogation Section of the Greek Military Police). The EAT/ESA torture centre in Athens has been described as the "place that made Greece tremble". The EAT/ESA could arrest anyone, even superior officers, which generated the popular saying: "Any ESA man is equal to a major in the army". Even Papadopoulos, who in 1969 signed the law which gave "extraordinary legal powers" to ESA, had them used against him in 1973 during Ioannides's coup. Artists, painters, intellectuals who had publicly