James Jesus
Angleton (1917-1987) headed the CIA's Counterintelligence Staff from 1954
until he was forced into retirement by then-DCI Colby in 1974. James Jesus
Angleton (1917-1987) headed the CIA's Counterintelligence Staff from 1954
until he was forced into retirement by then-DCI Colby in 1974.
Angleton
had earlier served in the OSS and from late 1944 had been in charge of OSS
counterintelligence operations in Italy. He met and became friends with
Harold ("Kim") Philby, British intelligence officer and Soviet
penetration agent, during a stay in England in 1943. His personal and professional
relationship with Philby was continued when Philby later became the British
SIS liaison with the CIA and the FBI in Washington. Whether it was Angleton
or fellow CI officer, William K. Harvey, who first became suspicious of
Philby is one of the many aspects of Angleton's career that remains in dispute.
Much
about Angleton is controversial, but no aspect is more so than the "mole
hunt" that obsessed Angleton after the defection of Anatoliy Golitsyn
from the KGB in 1961.
A lively,
if opinionated, starting point is Cleveland C. Cram, Of Moles and Molehunters:
A Review of Counterintelligence Literature, 1977-1992, An Intelligence Monograph
(Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence
Agency, 1993).
See New
York Times, 12 May 1987, D31, for Angleton's obituary.
Materials
bearing directly on Angleton and his career are located in the "Works
on..." files: A-L and M-Z. Items specific to the Golitsyn-Nosenko debate are in separate "Related" A-E and F-Z files.
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