James Jesus Angleton

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Template:Short description Template:Requested move notice Template:More footnotes needed Template:Use mdy dates Template:Use American English Template:Infobox spy James Jesus Angleton (December 9, 1917 – May 11, 1987)<ref name="EncColdWar">Template:Cite book</ref> was an American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer who served as chief of the counterintelligence department of the CIA from 1954 to 1975. According to director of central intelligence Richard Helms, Angleton was "recognized as the dominant counterintelligence figure in the non-communist world".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Angleton served in the Office of Strategic Services, a wartime predecessor to the CIA, in Italy and London during World War II. After the war, he returned to Washington, D.C. to become one of the founding officers of the CIA. He was initially responsible for the collection of foreign intelligence and liaison with counterpart organizations in allied countries. In 1954, Allen Dulles promoted Angleton to chief of the Counterintelligence Staff. As chief, Angleton was significantly involved in the defection of Soviet KGB agents Anatoliy Golitsyn and Yuri Nosenko. Through Golitsyn, Angleton became convinced the CIA harbored a high-ranking Soviet mole and engaged in an intensive search. Whether this was a highly destructive witch hunt or appropriate caution remains a subject of intense historical debate.<ref>Template:Cite bookTemplate:Self-published source</ref>

Investigative journalist Edward Jay Epstein agrees with the high regard in which Angleton was held by his colleagues in the intelligence business, and adds that Angleton earned the "trust of six CIA directors—including Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, Allen W. Dulles and Richard Helms. They kept Angleton in key positions and valued his work."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Early and personal life

James Jesus Angleton was born December 9, 1917, in Boise, Idaho, the eldest of four children of James Hugh Angleton (1888–1973) and Carmen Mercedes Moreno (1898–1985).<ref name="EncColdWar" /><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> His parents met in Nogales, Arizona, while his father was a United States Army cavalry officer serving under General John Pershing. Carmen Moreno was born in Mexico, but was already a naturalized American citizen before she married James H. Angleton in December 1916.<ref name=":0" />

James Hugh Angleton joined the National Cash Register Corporation, rising through its ranks until in the early 1930s he purchased the NCR franchise in Italy. In Italy, he became head of the American Chamber of Commerce.<ref name="EncColdWar" /> Despite holding "ultra-conservative" views, according to OSS officer Max Corvo, James Hugh informed the State Department on fascist activities, and would later work for the OSS during the Second World War.<ref name=":3">Template:Cite journal</ref> Because of his father's work, Angleton's boyhood was spent in Milan, Italy. He studied as a boarder at Malvern College in England before attending Yale University.

Template:AnchorAs a Yale undergraduate and amateur poet, Angleton edited the Yale literary magazine Furioso with Reed Whittemore. Furioso published many of the best-known poets of the interwar period, including William Carlos Williams, E. E. Cummings and Ezra Pound.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Angleton carried on an extensive correspondence with Pound, Cummings and T. S. Eliot, among others, and was particularly influenced by William Empson, author of Seven Types of Ambiguity.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He also visited Pound at his home in Rapallo, and arranged for a 1939 American tour by him, the only such tour in Pound's "fascist period".<ref name=":3" /> Angleton was trained in the New Criticism at Yale by Maynard Mack and others, chiefly Norman Holmes Pearson, a founder of American Studies.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Despite his intellectual activities, Angleton graduated from Yale in the bottom quarter of his class.<ref name=":2" /> After his first application to study law at Harvard was rejected, he was let in on the recommendation of Pearson, but did not graduate.<ref name=":4">Template:Cite book</ref>

World War II

In 1943, Angleton joined the U.S. Army. During World War II, Angleton was recruited into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) by Norman Holmes Pearson, first being posted to London in the OSS's X-2 Counter Espionage Branch.<ref name=EncColdWar/> By February 1944, he was chief of the Italy desk for X-2 in London. While in London, Angleton became acquainted with Kim Philby, his liaison contact with MI6.

By the end of the war, Angleton was head of X-2 for all of Italy. Angleton was not well-liked, and was thought of by some officers as "arrogant"; nonetheless, he went about his work with vigor. Initially, X-2 still reported to MI6, but it had begun to assert itself against the British. The OSS's goals in Italy included re-establishing the Italian intelligence services, undermining pro-monarchist British influence, and supporting non-communist centrist parties, especially the Christian Democratic Party.<ref name=":5">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=":0" /> The OSS's anti-British, anti-communist objectives led Angleton to make personal liaisons with Italian Mafia figures.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Angleton also helped prevent the execution of Italian naval commander Junio Valerio Borghese, whose elite unit Decima MAS had collaborated with the Schutzstaffel during the war.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Angleton was interested in the defense of installations such as ports and bridges and offered Borghese a fair trial in return for his collaboration.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He dressed him up in an American uniform and drove him from Milan to Rome for interrogation by the Allies.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Central Intelligence Agency

Template:More citations needed section Upon his return to Washington after World War II, Angleton was employed by the various successor organizations to the OSS and eventually became one of the founding officers of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947.<ref name="EncColdWar" /><ref name=":2">Template:Cite journal</ref>

In May 1949, he was made head of Staff A of the Office of Special Operations, where he was responsible for the collection of foreign intelligence and liaising with counterpart intelligence organizations in foreign countries.Template:Citation needed

Beginning in 1951, Angleton was responsible for "the Israel desk" as liaison with Israel's Mossad and Shin Bet agencies.<ref name=":0" /> Angleton retained an active interest in Israeli intelligence and maintained connections there throughout his career, believing that émigrés to Israel from the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact nations could be a valuable source of information on their countries of origin. He also believed that Israeli foreign intelligence services could be used for proxy operations in third countries. For instance, Shin Bet was crucial in obtaining a transcript of Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 speech to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Congress that denounced Joseph Stalin.<ref>Haaretz, 11/3/2006</ref>Template:Full citation needed Author Samuel Katz has claimed that Angleton directed CIA assistance to the Israeli nuclear weapons program.<ref>See Samuel Katz, Soldier Spies, 1992.</ref>Template:Full citation needed

Angleton (right) with head of Mossad Global Operations Meir Amit (1966).

As head of Staff A, Angleton worked particularly closely with Kim Philby, the apparent future head of MI6, who was also in Washington.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> The Israeli intelligence officer Teddy Kollek claimed years later that in 1950 he warned Angleton that Philby had been a Soviet agent in the 30s.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In 1951, Philby's colleagues Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean defected to Moscow. Philby was expelled from Washington, suspected of having tipped them off based on decoded Soviet communications from the Venona project. Philby was confirmed to be a Soviet mole but eluded those sent to arrest him. He defected to Moscow in 1963. Philby called Angleton "a brilliant opponent" and a "fascinating" friend who seemed to be "catching on" before his defection. CIA employee William King Harvey, a former FBI agent, had voiced his suspicions regarding Philby and others Angleton suspected were Soviet agents.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 1953, Allen Dulles became Director of Central Intelligence. He soon named Angleton chief of the Counterintelligence Staff, in which position Angleton served for the remainder of his career.<ref name="EncColdWar" />

As chief of Counterintelligence, Angleton oversaw a ring of informants organized by Jay Lovestone, a trade union leader and former head of the Communist Party of the United States. It was informally called the "Lovestone Empire". Lovestone worked with foreign unions and used covert funds to establish a global system of anti-communist union organizers.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Pages needed

During the Vietnam War and Soviet-American détente, Angleton remained convinced of the necessity of the war. During this period, Angleton's counter-intelligence staff undertook a most comprehensive domestic covert surveillance project (called Operation CHAOS) under the direction of President Lyndon Johnson. The prevailing belief at the time was that the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s had foreign funding and support. None was found by them, although the Soviet Union did influence the movements.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Additional citation needed

Angleton also believed that the strategic calculations underlying the resumption of relations with China were flawed based on a deceptive KGB staging of the Sino-Soviet split. He went so far as to speculate that Henry Kissinger might be under KGB influence.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Suspicion of infiltration

Angleton's view was influenced by his direct experience with the manipulation of German intelligence during World War II, the Cambridge Five, and the success of American infiltration efforts in the Third World. In particular, Angleton's close association with Philby heightened Angleton's suspicions and led him to double-check "potential problems".Template:Citation needed Angleton's position in the CIA and his close relationship with Director Richard Helms in particular expanded his influence, and as it grew, the CIA split between Angletonians and anti-Angletonians.Template:Citation needed This conflict rose in particular regard to Anatoliy Golitsyn and Yuri Nosenko, who defected from the Soviet Union to the United States in 1961 and 1964, respectively.

Golitsyn defected via Helsinki on December 15, 1961. He and his family flew with a CIA escort to Sweden and then to the United States, where he was interviewed by Angleton personally.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Mitrokhin2">Template:Cite book</ref> Golitsyn limited his initial debriefing to a review of photographs to identify KGB officers and refused to discuss KGB strategy. After Golitsyn raised the possibility of serious infiltration with MI5 in a subsequent debriefing, MI5 shared the concern with Angleton. He responded by asking Helms to allow him to take responsibility for Golitsyn and his further debriefing. Golitsyn ultimately informed on many famous Soviet agents, including the Cambridge Five, which led to their apprehension.<ref name="Mitrokhin2" /> Angleton identified Golitsyn as "the most valuable defector ever to reach the West".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Nosenko2">Template:Cite news</ref>

However, other allegations Golitsyn made, including that Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Harold Wilson was a Soviet agent and that the Sino-Soviet split was a "charade," were ultimately found to be false.<ref name="Mitrokhin2" /> Golitsyn also claimed that a mole who had been stationed in West Germany, was of Slavic descent, had a last name that might end in "sky" and definitely began with a "K", and operated under the KGB codename "Sasha".<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Angleton believed this claim, with the result that anyone who approximated this description fell under his suspicion.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Angleton became increasingly convinced that the CIA was compromised by the KGB.<ref name="BeardenRisen2003">Template:Cite book</ref> Golitsyn convinced Angleton that the KGB had reorganized in 1958 and 1959 to consist mostly of a shell, incorporating only those agents whom the CIA and the FBI were recruiting, directed by a small cabal of puppet masters who doubled those agents to manipulate their Western counterparts. Although Golitsyn was a questionable source, Angleton accepted significant information obtained from his debriefing by the CIA.<ref name=":2" />

In 1964, Yuri Nosenko, a KGB officer based in Geneva, insisted he needed to defect to the United States because his role as a double agent had been discovered, and he was being recalled to Moscow.<ref name=":1">Template:Harvnb</ref>Template:Pages needed Nosenko was allowed to defect, although the CIA was unable to verify a KGB recall order. Golitsyn had said from the beginning that the KGB would try to plant defectors in an effort to discredit him. Under great duress, Nosenko failed two highly questionable lie detector tests but passed a third test monitored by several Agency departments.Template:Sfn Judging his claim (as well as additional claims regarding Lee Harvey Oswald) to be improbable, Angleton permitted David Murphy, head of the Soviet Russia Division, to hold Nosenko in solitary confinement for over three years. This confinement included 16 months in a small attic with no windows, furniture, heat or air conditioning. Human contact was completely banned. Nosenko was given a shower once a week and had no television, reading material, radio, exercise, or toothbrush. Interrogations were frequent and intensive. Nosenko spent an additional four months in a ten-foot by ten-foot concrete bunker in Camp Peary.<ref name="Nosenko2" /> He was told that this condition would continue for 25 years unless he confessed to being a Soviet spy.Template:Sfn Nosenko did not appear to have shaken Angleton's faith in Golitsyn, although Helms and J. Edgar Hoover thought otherwise. Hoover's objections are said to have been so vehement as to severely curtail counterintelligence cooperation between the FBI and CIA for the remainder of Hoover's service as FBI director. Nosenko was found to be a legitimate defector, a lieutenant colonel. He became a consultant to the CIA.<ref name="Nosenko2" /> Golitsyn, who had defected years before, was unable to provide concrete support for his views of the KGB.

Angleton came into increasing conflict with the rest of the Agency, particularly the Directorate of Operations, over the efficacy of their intelligence-gathering efforts. He questioned this without explaining his broader views on KGB strategy and organization.Template:Citation needed

In his 2022 book, Uncovering Popov's Mole, researcher John M. Newman argues that Bruce Solie of the Office of Security was very probably the mole and that he misled Angleton, his protégé, into believing the traitor was in the Soviet Russia Division.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Suspicion of foreign leaders

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Angleton privately accused various foreign leaders of being Soviet spies. He twice informed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that he believed Prime Minister Lester Pearson and his successor Pierre Trudeau were agents of the Soviet Union. Angleton accused Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, and British Prime Minister Harold Wilson of being assets for the Soviet Union.<ref name=":1" />

Australian journalist Brian Toohey claimed that Angleton considered Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam a "serious threat" to the US. Angleton was concerned after the Commonwealth police raided ASIO headquarters in Melbourne in 1973 at the direction of Attorney General Lionel Murphy. In 1974, Angleton sought to instigate the removal of Whitlam from office by having CIA station chief in Canberra, John Walker, ask Peter Barbour, then head of ASIO, to make a false declaration that Whitlam had lied about the raid in Parliament. Barbour refused to make the statement.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Church Committee and resignation

In 1973, William Colby was named Director of Central Intelligence by Richard Nixon. Colby reorganized the CIA in an effort to curb Angleton's influence and weaken the Counterintelligence branch, beginning by stripping him of control over the Israel desk. Colby demanded Angleton's resignation.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Angleton came to public attention when the Church Committee (formally the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) probed the CIA for information on domestic surveillance, specifically the operation known as HT Lingual, as well as assassination plots and the death of John F. Kennedy.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In December 1974, Seymour Hersh published a story in The New York Times about domestic counter-intelligence activities against anti-war protesters and other domestic dissidents. Angleton's resignation was announced on Christmas Eve 1974, just as President Gerald Ford demanded Director Colby report on the allegations and various congressional committees announced that they would launch their own inquiries. Angleton told reporters from United Press International that he was resigning because "my usefulness has ended" and the CIA was getting involved in "police state activities".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Three of Angleton's senior aides retired within a week after it was made clear that they would be transferred elsewhere in the Agency rather than promoted. The counterintelligence staff was reduced from 300 to 80 people.

In 1975, Angleton was awarded the CIA's Distinguished Intelligence Medal.<ref name="The New York Times; May 12, 1987">Template:Cite news</ref> By this time, Angleton had been quietly rehired by the CIA at his old salary through a secret contract. Until September 1975, "operational issues remained solely the preserve of Angleton".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Aftermath

The late 1970s were generally a period of upheaval for the CIA. During George H. W. Bush's tenure as Director, President Ford authorized the creation of Team B, a project concluding that the Agency and the intelligence community had seriously underestimated Soviet strategic nuclear strength in Central Europe. Admiral Stansfield Turner, on his appointment as DCI by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, used Angleton as an example of the excesses in the Agency that he hoped to curb. He referred to this during his service and in his memoirs.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Because of their suspicions, Angleton and his staff ultimately impeded the career advancement of numerous CIA employees. Forty employees are said to have been investigated and fourteen were considered serious suspects by Angleton's staff. The CIA paid compensation to three under what Agency employees termed the "Mole Relief Act".Template:Sfn

With Golitsyn, Angleton continued to seek out moles. They sought the assistance of William F. Buckley, Jr. (himself a former CIA asset) to write New Lies for Old, which argued that the Soviet Union planned to fake a collapse to lull its enemies into a false sense of victory, but Buckley refused. In his 1994 book Wedge: The Secret War between the FBI and CIA, author Mark Riebling claimed that of 194 predictions made in New Lies For Old, 139 had been fulfilled by 1993, nine seemed "clearly wrong", and the other 46 were "not soon falsifiable".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Personal life and death

Angleton met Cicely Harriet d'Autremont, a Vassar alumna from Tucson, Arizona and granddaughter of Chester Adgate Congdon, at Harvard in 1941.<ref name=":1" /> They married on 17 July 1943, shortly after he enlisted in the Army. Together, they had three children:

  • James C. Angleton;<ref name="washpostpoet"/>
  • Guru Sangat Kaur Khalsa (formerly Truffy Angleton);<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and
  • Siri Hari Kaur Angleton-Khalsa (formerly Lucy d'Autremont Angleton)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The Angletons lived in the Rock Spring neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia until Angleton's death.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="washpostpoet">Template:Cite news</ref> The Angletons had a tumultuous marriage at times,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> nearly divorcing in 1946,<ref name=":5" /> but developed a varied social set in Washington, including professional acquaintances in intelligence, poets, painters and journalists.<ref name=":6">Template:Cite book</ref> The Angletons maintained a friendship with E.E. Cummings and his wife, Marion, until the Cummings' deaths,<ref name=":4" /> and Angleton was a regular golf partner of James Laughlin.<ref name=":3" /> Angleton's hobbies included orchid cultivation (he built a hothouse in his backyard, and developed a hybrid named after his wife), fly fishing, and gemology.<ref name=":6" /> Angleton also wrote poetry and was an amateur photographer.<ref name=":4" />

Angleton's wife and his daughters explored Sikhism,<ref name="washpostpoet"/> and both of Angleton's daughters became followers of Harbhajan Singh Khalsa.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Angleton died from cancer in Washington, D.C., on 11 May 1987.<ref name="EncColdWar" />

Legacy

Angleton's responsibilities as chief of Counterintelligence have given rise to a considerable literature focused on his efforts to identify Soviet or Eastern Bloc agents working in American secret intelligence agencies.

In time, Angleton's zeal and suspicions came to be regarded as counterproductive, if not destructive. In the wake of his departure, counterintelligence efforts were undertaken with far less enthusiasm. SomeTemplate:Who believe this overcompensation was responsible for oversights which allowed Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen and others to compromise American intelligence agencies after Angleton's resignation. Although the American intelligence community quickly recovered from the Church Committee, it found itself uncharacteristically incapable of policing itself after Angleton's departure. Edward Jay Epstein has argued that the positions of Ames and Hanssen—both well-placed Soviet counter-intelligence agents, in the CIA and FBI respectively—would enable the KGB to deceive the American intelligence community, in the manner that Angleton hypothesized.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Despite misgivings over his uncompromising and often obsessive approach to his profession, Angleton is highly regarded by a number of his peers in the intelligence business. Former Shin Bet chief Amos Manor, in an interview in Ha'aretz, revealed his fascination with the man during Angleton's work to forge the U.S.–Israel liaison in the early 1950s. Manor described Angleton as "fanatic about everything", with a "tendency towards mystification". Manor discovered decades later that the real reason for Angleton's visit was to investigate Manor, being an Eastern European Jewish immigrant, for Angleton thought that it would be prudent to "sanitize" the U.S.–Israeli bridge before a more formal intelligence relationship was established.<ref>Template:Cite news Alt URL Template:Webarchive</ref>

Three books dealing with Angleton take foreign intelligence activities, counterintelligence and domestic intelligence activities as their central theme: Tom Mangold's Cold Warrior, David C. Martin's Wilderness of Mirrors, and David Wise's Molehunt. Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes paints Angleton as an incompetent alcoholic.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

These views have been challenged by Tennent H. Bagley in his 2007 book, Spy Wars, and Mark Riebling in his 1994 book, Wedge. John M. Newman, in his 2022 book, Uncovering Popov's Mole, characterizes Angleton as a man lacking self-confidence and who required a father figure. Newman claims that Angleton was duped by at least two KGB moles: Kim Philby in MI6 and Bruce Solie in the Office of Security. Newman also suggests that Leonard V. McCoy in the Soviet Russia Division's Reports & Requirements section may have been a mole.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

CIA Family Jewels

Template:Main A set of highly sensitive Agency documents, referred to as the "Family Jewels," was publicly released on June 25, 2007, after more than three decades of secrecy.<ref name="WaPoJun27">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="NYTJun26">Template:Cite news Template:Dead link.</ref> The release was prompted by an internal CIA investigation of the 1970s Church Committee which verified the far-ranging power and influence that Angleton wielded during his long tenure as counter-intelligence czar. The exposé revealed that Angleton-planned infiltration of law enforcement and military organizations in other countries was used to increase the influence of the United States. It also confirmed past rumors that it was Angleton who was in charge of the domestic spying activities of the CIA under Operation CHAOS.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

2025 JFK document release

Angleton's heavily-redacted testimony before the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities in 1975 was finally released on March 18, 2025. The 50-year-old Top Secret report covers several topics, particularly clandestine, intelligence-sharing agreements with Israel, nuclear secrets, Yuri Nosenko, George Blake, signals intelligence, Anatoliy Golitsyn, the Warren Commission, and Lee Harvey Oswald. The 113-page fully unredacted document discloses several matters, including leaks to newsmen Seymour Hersh and Tad Szulc and their information about Watergate, Cuba, Project Azorian, and Sidney Gottlieb.<ref name=JFK157>Template:Cite web</ref>

In the previously-redacted sections, the document is full of NBR markings from the Assassination Records Review Board, meaning Not Believed Relevant.

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