5. LEGACY OF ASHES ~ CHAPTERS 13 - 15 (122 - 155) (01/31/11 - 02/06/11) ~ No spoilers, please

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

James Jesus Angleton (cont'd)

Regarding the first claim, Golitsyn had said from the beginning that the KGB would try to plant other defectors in an effort to discredit him. Regarding the second claim, Nosenko told his debriefers that he had been personally responsible for handling Oswald's case and that the KGB had judged Oswald unfit for service due to his mental instability.

Nosenko claimed that the KGB had not even attempted to debrief Oswald about his work on the U-2 spy plane during his service in the United States Marine Corps. Although other KGB sources corroborated Nosenko's story, he repeatedly failed lie detector tests. Judging the claim of not interrogating Oswald about the U-2 improbable, given Oswald's familiarity with the U-2 program, and faced with further challenges to Nosenko's credibility (he also falsely claimed to be a lieutenant colonel, a higher rank than he in fact held),

Angleton did not object when David Murphy, then head of the Soviet Russia Division, ordered Nosenko held in solitary confinement for approximately three-and-a-half years.

Contrary to some accounts, the detention of Nosenko was neither ordered by Angleton nor kept secret. Without naming Nosenko, the 1975 report of the Rockefeller Commission, also known as the President's Commission on CIA Activities within the United States, affirmed that the CIA's Office of Security, which is responsible for the safety of defectors, the Attorney General, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the United States Intelligence Board, and select members of Congress were all apprised of Nosenko's detention. Nosenko never changed his story.

James Angleton came to public attention in the United States when the Church Commission (formally known as the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities), following up on the Warren Commission, probed the CIA for information about the Kennedy assassination.

The Nosenko episode does not appear to have shaken Angleton's faith in Golitsyn, although Helms and J. Edgar Hoover took the contrary position. Hoover's objections are said to have been so vehement as to curtail severely counterintelligence cooperation between the FBI and CIA for the remainder of Hoover's service as the FBI's director.

As Golitsyn helped Angleton identify sections within the CIA's Soviet Russia Division that were leaking information to the Soviets, Angleton pressed Golitsyn on KGB techniques and strategy for planting information at the CIA. Golitsyn's indication was that the KGB was orchestrating a larger campaign to understand how the CIA analyzed information, supporting a larger goal of manipulating the CIA to unwittingly assist the KGB in its objectives.

Angleton extrapolated from this his theory of a "wilderness of mirrors" (the term is thought to be a reference to T. S. Eliot's poem "Gerontion"), which proposed that the KGB was capable of manipulating the CIA to believe what it desired, and that the CIA could neither identify nor defend itself from this manipulation. After Golitsyn convinced Angleton that KGB moles persisted in the Soviet Russia Division, Angleton effectively suspended the careers of multiple CIA officers who came under suspicion.

The Molehunt

Angleton became increasingly convinced that the CIA was compromised by the KGB. Golitsyn convinced him 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.

Hoover eventually curbed cooperation with the CIA because Angleton refused to relent on this hypothesis. Angleton also came into increasing conflict with the rest of the CIA, particularly with the Directorate of Operations, over the efficacy of their intelligence-gathering efforts, which he questioned without explaining his broader views on KGB strategy and organization.

DCI Helms was not willing to tolerate the resulting paralysis. Golitsyn, who was after all a major in the KGB and had defected years before, was able to marshal few facts to provide concrete support for his far-reaching theoretical views of the KGB. The senior leadership of the CIA came to this conclusion after a hearing in 1968, and Angleton was thereafter unable to draw directly upon Golitsyn.

In the period of the Vietnam War and Soviet-American détente, Angleton was convinced of the necessity of the war and believed that the strategic calculations underlying the resumption of relations with China were 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.

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. These types of activities were the very same that the CIA was fomenting in other countries, so it was not outlandish to presume the existence of foreign support and influence.

DCI William Colby reorganized the CIA in an effort to curb Angleton's influence, beginning by stripping him of control over the Israeli "account," which had the effect of weakening counter-intelligence. Colby then demanded Angleton's resignation, after

Seymour Hersh told Colby on December 20, 1974, that he was going to publish a story in The New York Times about domestic counter-intelligence activities under Angleton's direction against antiwar protesters and other domestic dissident organizations.

While Angleton's operations technically violated the CIA Charter and the National Security Act, which assigned all such domestic operations to the FBI, it was no secret to DCI Colby that Angleton and CIA counter-intelligence were carrying them out.

None of Angleton's supposed violations were documented in the subsequent Rockefeller Commission report.

These illegal surveillance activities resulted in the generation of 10,000 case files on American citizens and included such information-collection methods as opening mail (Angleton is rumoured to have maintained that practice since the 1950s, when he brought to Dulles's attention how the American Federation of Labor had directed funds diverted to them by the CIA).

The intelligence so gathered was said to have been reported directly to DCI Helms.

It has been claimed that Angleton directed CIA assistance to the Israeli nuclear weapons program.

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 to be agents of the Soviet Union.

In 1964, under pressure from Angleton, the RCMP detained John Watkins, a close friend of Pearson and formerly Canadian Ambassador to the Soviet Union; Watkins died during interrogation by the RCMP and the CIA, and was subsequently cleared of suspicion.

Angleton accused Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, and British Prime Minister Harold Wilson of using their access to NATO secrets to benefit the USSR. Brandt resigned in 1974, after one of his aides was found to be a mole from the East German secret police.

Angleton came to suspect Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who commented wryly that even the most brilliant and loyal officers should not spend their entire career in such pressurized and paranoid fields.

Angleton also privately accused numerous members of Congress and President Gerald Ford of treason. Angleton's notorious pursuit of the "5th Man", who he believed had penetrated a secret agency in Washington, was solved, he believed, when DCI William Colby fired him.

No one was above suspicion, and even Angleton himself was accused by others of working for the Soviets.

Resignation

Angleton's resignation was announced on Christmas Eve of 1975, just as President Ford demanded that Colby report on the allegations and as various Congressional committees announced that they would launch their own inquiries.

Angleton was never prosecuted for his involvement in the surveillance of antiwar protesters and domestic dissidents. Three of Angleton's senior aides in counter-intelligence, his deputy Raymond Rocca, executive officer of the counter-intelligence division William J. Hood, and Angleton's chief of operations Newton S. Miller, were coaxed into retirement within a week of Angleton's resignation after it was made clear that they would be transferred elsewhere in the agency rather than promoted, and the counter-intelligence staff was reduced from 300 people to 80 people.

Hersh reported that Angleton subsequently called him to claim that Angleton's wife, Cicely, had left him as a result of the story. A friend of Hersh's immediately laughed off this claim, telling Hersh that Angleton's wife had left him years ago and had since returned—and knew well enough that Angleton worked for the CIA.

Indeed, they remained friendly for years after they began living apart, and yearly took a vacation together to his beloved fishing spot. Here he was known as a fisherman and a documentor of the river, but not for his profession, although it was quietly known.

Rumours swirled around Washington thereafter that Colby was himself the KGB mole, but these were never conclusively attributed to Angleton. Angleton was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the CIA's second highest honor, in 1975.

Golitsyn was considered discredited within the CIA even before Angleton's ousting, but the two did not appear to have lost their faith in one another. They sought the assistance of William F. Buckley, Jr. (himself once a CIA man) in authoring New Lies for Old, which advanced the argument that the USSR planned to fake its collapse to lull its enemies into a false sense of victory. Buckley refused but later went on to write a novel about Angleton, Spytime: The Undoing of James Jesus Angleton.

Source: Wikipedia

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

James Jesus Angleton (continued)

Legacy

Angleton's tour of duty in Italy as an intelligence officer is regarded as a critical turn not only in his professional life, wherein he helped recover Nazi looted treasures from other European countries and Africa, but also for the Agency itself.

Angleton's personal liaisons with Italian Mafia figures helped the CIA in the immediate period after World War II. Angleton took charge of the CIA's effort to subvert Italian elections to prevent communist and communist-related parties from gaining political leverage in the parliament.

In time, Angleton's zeal and paranoia came to be regarded as counter-productive, if not destructive, for the CIA. In the wake of his departure, counter-intelligence efforts were undertaken with far less enthusiasm. Some believe this overcompensation responsible for oversights which allowed Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen, and many others to compromise the CIA, the FBI, and other agencies long after Angleton's resignation. Although the American intelligence community quickly bounced back from the embarrassments of the Church Committee, it found itself uncharacteristically incapable of policing itself after Angleton's departure.

Edward Jay Epstein is among those who have 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.

The 1970s were generally a period of upheaval for the CIA. During George H. W. Bush's tenure as DCI, President Ford authorized the creation of a "Team B" under the aegis of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. This group (in fact, groups) concluded that the Agency and the intelligence community had, in particular, seriously underestimated Soviet strategic nuclear strength in Central Europe in their National Intelligence Estimate. The Church Commission itself brought no small number of skeletons out of the Agency's closet. The organization inherited by Admiral Stansfield Turner on his appointment as DCI by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 was shortly to face further cuts, and Turner used Angleton as a whipping boy for the excesses in the Agency that he hoped to curb, both during his service and in his memoirs.

A handful of CIA employees had their careers frozen after coming under the suspicion of Angleton and his staff. The CIA later paid out compensation to three to whom no reasonable explanation could be offered in mitigation of actions taken affecting their careers, under what Agency employees termed the "Mole Relief Act". One hundred twenty employees are said to have been placed on review, fifty investigated, and sixteen considered serious suspects by Angleton's staff.

When Golitsyn defected, he claimed that the CIA had a mole who had been stationed in West Germany, was of Slavic descent, had a last name which may have ended in "sky" and definitely began with a "K", and operated under the KGB codename "Sasha". Angleton believed this claim, with the result that anyone who approximated this description fell under his suspicion.

Despite misgivings over his uncompromising and often obsessive approach to his profession, Angleton is highly regarded by his peers in the intelligence business. Former Shin Bet chief Amos Manor, in an interview in Ha'aretz, revealed his fascination for the man during Angleton's essential 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 to him was actually to investigate Manor himself, being an Eastern European Jewish immigrant, for James Angleton thought that it would be prudent to "sanitize" the U.S.-Israeli bridge before a more formal intelligence relationship was established.

The term Angletonian is an adjective used to describe something conspiratorial, overly paranoid, bizarre, eerie or arcane.

CIA Family Jewels

The recently released internal CIA investigation prompted by the 1970s Church Committee 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.

In popular culture

Norman Mailer loosely based the character of Hugh Montague (or Harlot) in Harlot's Ghost on Angleton.

Likewise, the mysterious spymaster Eliot, in David Morrell's novel The Brotherhood of the Rose, is clearly based on Angleton, as is the character "Mother" in Orchids for Mother by Aaron Latham.

Angleton appears in Chris Petit's novel, The Passenger.

The 2006 film The Good Shepherd is loosely based on Angleton's life and his role in the formation of the CIA.

Angleton features heavily in the 2006 fictional espionage thriller The Passenger by Chris Petit which focuses on the events preceding the 1988 terrorist attack on a Pan-American airplane that exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland.

The three part 2007 TNT Network television miniseries The Company features Angleton (portrayed by actor Michael Keaton) and his failure to recognize Kim Philby as a Soviet spy and his subsequent over-compensating mole-hunting paranoia.

James Jesus Angleton is the name of the main character in The Fatima Mansions' "Brunceling's Song" on their 1995 album Lost in the Former West.

The 2003 BBC TV production of Cambridge Spies includes several scenes with a young James Jesus Angleton depicted as being assigned to Kim Philby during the war.

The Bob Howard-Laundry Series of Charles Stross features a senior Laundry agent whose nom de guerre is James Angleton after the CIA chief. (Stross, Charles. "Down on the Farm". Retrieved 2009-12-27.)

The phrase "wilderness of mirrors" appears in a 1994 song by the Canadian rock trio Rush. Lyricist/Drummer Neil Peart used the phrase in the song "Double Agent", and cites both Angleton and T. S. Eliot in the liner notes as sources of the phrase.

James Jesus Angleton pops up often, as an entry and elsewhere, in Conspiracies, Cults and Cover-ups by Robert Anton Wilson.

Eric Flint's fantasy novel The Philosophical Strangler features an intelligence officer named "The Angel Jimmy Jesus".

Angleton is mentioned several times in Stieg Larsson's "Millennium series" as a model for Swedish counter-espionage.

Source: Wikipedia

Here is the link to the above three posts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Je...

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

More on Angleton:

Allegiance:
United States

Service:
CIA; United States Army

Rank:
Counter Intelligence (CI) Chief

Operation(s):
a) Enigma Code
b) Manhattan Project
c) Operation CHAOS
d) CHAOS Program

Award(s): Distinguished Intelligence Medal

Born: December 9, 1917
Died: May 12, 1987 (aged 69)
Nationality: American
Alma mater: Yale University, Harvard Law School

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

James J. Angleton and William J. Casey



A Younger Angleton



Source: Life.com for the first photo; unsure of source for the second: possibly Absolute Astronomy - not sure

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

William F. Buckley Jr.

The above is FICTIONAL SPY NOVEL.

Tom Mangold

Michael Holzman

Christopher Petit

The above is a novel - fiction.

Stieg Larsson

Mentioned as a model of Swedish Intelligence in the books.

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

I found this video on James Angleton: (interesting)

Source: Howstuff Works Video:

CIA: America's Secret Warriors: James Angleton

On Discovery Channel's "CIA: America's Secret Warriors," learn about James Angleton, chief of the CIA's counter-intelligence, who proved himself to be a skilled player of the espionage game during the beginning of the Cold War.

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/disco...

Other Source: Discovery Channel

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Folks, I will continually be adding to the Index thread which will have links to sources throughout these threads, folders and our site.

Here is the index thread's link:

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/4...

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Here is a snippet on Aldrich Ames:

Source: Howstuff Works Video:

He was a traitor to the CIA for Russia.

CIA: America's Secret Warriors: Aldrich Ames

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/disco...

Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldrich_...

Another video:

CIA: America's Secret Warriors: Aldrich Ames and KGB

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/disco...

CIA: America's Secret Warriors: Ames and the Soviets

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/disco...

CIA: America's Secret Warriors: Ames and the CIA

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/disco...

CIA: America's Secret Warriors: Ames and the UN

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/disco...

CIA: America's Secret Warriors: CIA Traitor

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/disco...

CIA: America's Secret Warriors: Aldrich Ames Caught

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/disco...

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Here is a snippet on the Cuban Missile Crisis:

Source: Howstuff Works Video:

CIA: America's Secret Warriors: Cuban Missile Crisis

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/disco...

[Vheissu]

I strongly recommend to the group the Church Committee Reports, which remain the best and most authoritative investigation of American foreign intelligence.

Among its General Findings are these:

"...Congress has failed to provide the necessary statutory guidelines to ensure that intelligence agencies carry out their missions in accord with constitutional processes..."

"...presidents and administrations have made excessive, and at times self-defeating, use of covert operations. In addition, covert operation has become a routine program with a bureaucratic momentum of its own..."

"...Congress' failure as a whole to monitor the intelligence agencies budgets has been a major element in ineffective legislative oversight of the intelligence community..."

"...the operations of an extensive and necessarily secret intelligence systems places acute strains on the nation's constitutional government..."

Church Committee

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Thank you Vhiessu for the post. I guess already I could say - check, check, check to the first three and surmise from the first three that the fourth finding was a given. With all of the money that has been wasted on these operations; what a great way by canceling the blank check to pay down our deficit and not cut out programs beneficial to the American citizens.

I think this organization (as it is being described so far in this book and obviously in the Church Senate report)is exactly the type of organization that the founding fathers were afraid of. And they love to parade out Washington as using intelligence gathering; of course he did to ascertain troop location and strength, and strategy; but not for covert operations to assassinate a regime or someone he did not like. I think what Washington was doing at a time of war was valuable and necessary; but what I am reading now about regime change; trying to topple governments, etc. makes one worried indeed. The CIA has affected our standing in the world even to this day from things they did 40 or 50 years ago. I wonder how much this organization costs the American people every year and how much it costs for these covert operations that Congress never sees any line item expenditure for. What an eye opener that would be.

Also, another sad aspect is that the date on the Church Committee Reports and their findings was published as 1976! In 35 years, nothing has happened. And some of the dirty tricks described in chapters 13 - 15 sound very familiar to what has happened in the last 10 years. Now I will always wonder whenever there is an uprising any place in the world, what is our CIA doing right now.

One thing that is a real shame so far in our reading are the numbers of brave American men and women who have died for valiant reasons and for the cause of freedom; yet these folks like Dulles and others were calling the shots and were so disconnected from the front lines themselves. Also what is sad were the numbers of folks fighting for freedom at the time of the Soviet occupations of their countries who also seemed to be sacrificed.

I guess if we could see what is on the plus side of the ledger and how many folks have been saved in these countries that might make the situation more understandable (or maybe the word is bearable); what is understandable though is why there is such discord still in some of these parts of the world and what the history actually was. I guess some would say it is a dog eat dog world and that is probably true too.

I have attached a link to the wikipedia article which discusses the Church Committee, who served on this committee and a variety of other details.

However, be advised that this may have some spoiler information in it so I have placed this in the glossary which is a spoiler thread. This thread is a non spoiler.

[Vincent]

Leon Panetta will be interviewed about his CIA time as below for those interested

TimesTalks - A Conversation with CIA Director Leon Panetta

Monday, February 28 at 7:00PM

at TheTimesCenter
242 West 41st Street
New York, NY 10018


No refunds. Service fees and sales tax apply. Seating is limited and on a first-come, first-served basis. TimesTalks programs and speakers are subject to change.


Two years into his tenure as CIA director, as the United States confronts an evolving threat from al Qaeda, a standoff over Iran's nuclear program and tensions on the Korean peninsula, Leon Panetta joins New York Times chief Washington correspondent, David E. Sanger, to discuss CIA efforts around the world and the challenges facing the American intelligence community.

In collaboration with Aspen Security Forum

website to buy tickets is www.timestalk.com

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Thank you Vince for your heads up but the link doesn't seem to apply.

I think this link will work for folks.

http://nytimes.whsites.net/timestalks/

Also, the event will be streamed live from the internet:

Here is some info on how you can watch it in streaming video: (live)

http://aspensecurityforum.org/Website...