Highly oriented pyrolitic graphite (HOPG) was irradiated with 1.8 MeV electrons at 45° and near grazing (86°) angles of incidence. For doses up to 1016 cm−2 the surface for the case of 45° incidence, observed by scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM), remained the same as the original sample showing only the usual periodic atomic corrugation. For near grazing incidence, at a dose of 5×10−2 cm−2, nm-hillocks are observed, some elongated along the direction of the beam incidence. These are attributed to the effects of single electron-carbon interactions in the top surface layers. At a dose of 5×1014 cm−2 (near grazing incidence) STM observations show an anomalously large (period 2.5 to 17 nm) superperiodicity superimposed on the normal 0.246 nm atomic spacing of graphite. This Moiré-like pattern suggests that the corrugations are electronic as well as topographic in origin. We propose that near grazing incidence electron irradiation causes a break-up of the surface layers into fragments, largely retaining the six-fold atomic rings, that rotate by a small angle resulting in the observed pattern by interaction with the deeper bulkstructure layers.