LEGENDARY CIA COUNTERSPY JAMES JESUS ANGLETON DIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302310011-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: May 12, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/10/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302310011-4
ARTICLE APPMW
ON PAGE y WASHINGTON TIMES
12 May 1987
Legendary
counterspy
A James Jesus
Angleton dies
By Bill Gertz scribing the business of spy vs. spy
THC Nu 4 T/W --
James Jesus Angleton, celebrated
CIA masterspy and one of the most
colorful figures in U.S. intelligence,
died yesterday at Sibley Memorial
Hospital. He was 69.
Mr. Angleton, the first U.S. intelli-
gence official to reveal the Soviets'
use of strategic deception and "dis-
information," died at 10:23 a.m., ac-
cording to his daughter, Lucy An-
gleton. The death was attributed to
lung cancer, she said.
Mr. Angleton developed and later
ran the CIA's counterintelligence
section between 1954 and 1973, at a
time when counterintelligence - de-
tecting and exploiting enemy spies
--playe&a major role in U.S. intelli-
gence.
Former CIA Director Richard
Helms, who worked alongside Mr.
Angleton for many years, yesterday
praised the counterspy chief as "a
great patriot" who played a pivotal
role in the developing CIA cap-
abilities against hostile spying.
"James Angleton was to Amer-
ican counterespionage what Thomas
Edison was to the development of
electricity," Mr. Helms said.
At the CIA, agency spokeswoman
Kathy PhersoJ issued a statement
ca mg Mr. Angleton "a longtime in-
telligence professional, who gave
many years of service to his coun-
try."
"We regret his passing;' Ms. Pher-
son said.
N. Scot Miler, an Angleton protege
at t e un tl 1974, praised his
former boss as a "renaissance man"
who attempted to build a national
counterintelligence program in the
face of rigid bureaucratic resis-
tance.
"He was a global thinker, who was
the first to recognize the dangers of
Soviet disinformation," Mr. Miler
said in an interview. "From about
1965 on, he tried to educate people to
the fact that disinformation was
more than just propaganda: It is part
and parcel of the communist pro-
gram of political, strategic and mili-
tary subversion of the West.'
A major character in both con-
temporary spy fiction and
non-fiction, Mr. Angleton coined the
term "wilderness of mirrors" in de-
where perceptions and deceptions
were not be accepted at face value.
Tall and angular, Mr. Angleton de-
parted from the the agency in De-
cember 1974 following a clash with
William Colby, who was then direc-
tor of the CIA, over policies and ef-
forts to root out Soviet spies within
the agency and among Soviet bloc
defectors.
Mr. Angleton became the target of
agency opponents and critics who
opposed his counterintelligence
methods. He was investigated and
later cleared by the Senate Intelli-
gence Committee that probed CIA
activities in the mid-1970s.
Within a year of his departure
from the CIA, the counterintelli-
gence staff he built had been drasti-
cally reduced from about 300 spe-
cialists to about 80. According to
some intelligence professionals, the
reductions led to a government-wide
backlash against counterintelli-
gence that persists to this day.
Sen. Malcolm Wallop, Wyoming
Republican, called Mr. Angleton
"the architect of the best counter-
intelligence program the United
States ever had."
"In the mid-1970s, Mr. Angleton
went out of fashion, but he lived long
enough to see time and events vindi-
cate him and how little his accusers
understood the difficult and inher-
ently thankless business of counter-
intelligence;' Mr. Wallop said. "To-
day we can be grateful for the
lessons of skepticism and intellec-
tual honesty for which James An-
gleton should always be remem-
bered"
Mr. Angleton told friends
privately that the current Moscow
embassy scandal, involving U.S. Ma-
rine guards charged with allowing
Soviet agents inside secret sections
of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, was
a vindication of sorts since he be-
lieved it was a direct result of the
counterintelligence cutbacks of the
late 1970s.
He once described penetration
agents - "moles," spying covertly
for the Soviet Union from within the
U.S. government - as "a way of life"
for Soviet intelligence activities di-
rected against the West. He believed
five such moles were left in place
when he left the CIA.
He was born in Boise, Idaho, on
Dec. 9, 1917, and grew up in Milan,
Italy, where his father, Hugh An-
gleton, was a representative of the
National Cash Register Co. He re-
ceived his early education at Mal-
vern College in England before at-
tending Yale University, where he
graduated in 1941.
At Yale, Mr. Angleton edited a lit-
erary journal, Furioso, that was
known for publishing such poets as
Ezra Pound, William Carlos Wil-
liams, e.e. cummings and Archibald
MacLeish. Through his interest in
poetry he also came to know the
British poet T.S. Eliot.
He attended Harvard University
law school, was drafted into the
Army in 1943 and joined the Office
of Strategic Services, the wartime
predecessor of the CIA.
With the OSS, Mr. Angleton
learned the difficult task of counter-
intelligence, once described by a
practitioner "as the most difficult in-
telligence area since it deals with the
dark side of human nature - be-
trayal, revenge and lust."
He learned the counterspy busi-
ness in London under the Soviet
mole in British intelligence, H.A.R.
"Kim" Philby, who spied secretly for
the Soviets in Britain until he de-
fected to the Soviet Union in 1963. As
a second lieutenant, Mr. Angleton
was placed in charge of OSS coun-
terintelligence in Italy, where he
succeeded in exposing a double
agent spying inside the Vatican.
After the war, he continued in in-
telligence work as an operations ex-
ecutive until the CIA was formed in
1947, when he went to work in the
agency's counterintelligence sec-
tion.
Mr. Angleton spent his last years
in retirement defending former in-
telligence agents who were perse-
cuted by the U.S. govenment during
the anti-intelligence backlash of the
late 1970s. Along with other former
CIA officials, he established the Se-
curity and Intelligence Fund, ini-
tially a legal defense fund that be-
came the Security and Intelligence
Foundation.
At his Northern Virgina home,
Mr. Angleton raised orchids and har-
vested honey from a bee hive. He
was also known as a master fly fish-
erman and an avid duck hunter.
r,1d
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/10/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302310011-4
 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/10/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302310011-4
He is survived by his wife, Cicely
d'Autremont Angleton of Arlington;
a son, James Charles Angleton of
Los Angeles; two daughters, Guru
Sangat Kaur of Great Falls, Va., and
Lucy Angleton of New Mexico.
Funeral services will be held Fri-
day at 1:30 p.m. at Rock Spring
Church United Church of Christ,
5010 Little Falls Road, Arlington.
The family asks that expressions of
sympathy be in the form of contribu-
tions to the American Cancer Soci-
ety.
2.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/10/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302310011-4