Thomas Michael Tolliver Niles, who served as US Ambassador to Greece from 1993 to 1997, passed away on April 30, 2025, at age 85, due to cancer, his brother John Edward Niles announced in a social media post.
During his tenure in Athens, Niles navigated a turbulent period marked by the Yugoslav breakup and escalating Greek-Turkish tensions, particularly the 1996 Imia crisis. The crisis erupted when a ship ran aground on one of the Imia islets near Turkey, prompting Turkey to challenge Greek sovereignty and assert claims of “gray zones” in the Aegean Sea. Greek and Turkish forces alternately occupied the islets, and a Greek Navy helicopter crash killed three officers. A broader conflict was averted through intense US diplomacy, including direct interventions by President Bill Clinton, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, and Niles, alongside other Clinton administration officials.
Reflecting on the crisis in a 1998 archived conversation, Niles criticized the US decision to remain neutral on the sovereignty issue, despite knowing Greece’s legal position was stronger. “We knew the Greeks were right on the sovereignty argument. The Turks knew that we knew their position was very weak,” he said. He argued that the US’s neutrality signaled tolerance of Turkey’s aggressive stance, exacerbating tensions and fueling further Turkish claims in the Aegean, which strained Greek-Turkish relations.
Niles also addressed Holbrooke’s remark that the European Union “slept” during the crisis while the US worked to resolve it, calling it “unkind, perhaps unnecessary, but true.” The comment drew ire from the British. Similarly, Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis, who assumed office days before the crisis, sparked domestic controversy by thanking the US in a parliamentary debate, drawing accusations of insufficient patriotism from Greek politicians.
Niles was born on September 22, 1939, in Lexington, Kentucky. He prepared at Westtown School in Westtown, Pennsylvania before earning an A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard College, where he was a member of Adams House and the Class of 1960, and an M.A. in International Affairs from the University of Kentucky in 1962.
After attending a presentation by a State Department recruiter at Harvard in the fall of 1959, he took the foreign service exam at Somerville (MA) High School … and the rest is history. His 36-year (1962-1998) career in the US Foreign Service included ambassadorial roles in Canada (1985-1989) and the European Union (1989-1991), as well as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs (1991-1993). Earlier, he served as a junior diplomat in Belgrade, Moscow (twice), Germany, and the US Mission to NATO in Brussels. Niles was succeeded in Athens by R. Nicholas Burns.
After his retirement from the foreign service, Niles worked for six years in New York as president and CEO of the United States Council for International Business (USCIB), a trade association that promotes liberalization of trade and investment flows.
Niles was married to Carroll C. Ehringhaus who predeceased him. They had two children, John T. (H’’92) and Mary C. … and five grandchildren.
