JAMES ANGELTON, EX-CHIEF OF COUNTERINTELLIGENCE, DIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000604970001-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 4, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: May 12, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/04: CIA-RDP90-009658000604970001-8
OBITUARIES
12 May 1987
James Angleton, Ex-Chief
Of Counterintelligence, Dies
~??r"-By Richard-Pearson
Washingtoulost 5taff_Writor
James J. Angleton, 69, a retired
head of counterintelligence at the
CIA, where he gained a reputation
as a brilliant, tireless, single-
minded, and, even by agency stan-
dards, mysterious guardian of the
nation's secrets, died of cancer yes-
terday at Sibley Memorial Hospital.
Mr. Angleton joined the CIA
shortly after it was formed in 1947
and he helped organize its clandes-
tine side-the part that spies as
distinct from the part that gathers
intelligence from published sources
or by other overt means. In 1954,
he was named head of counterintel-
ligence-the part that protects the
organization and all its works from
hostile services. - He held that job
until early 1975, when he was
forced to resign.
In the course of his career, Mr.
Angleton became one of the most
celebrated intelligence officers of
his time. Stooped, lean, professorial
and chain-smoking, he wrote poetry
and grew orchids for relaxation.
And though his detractors were
numerous, no one denied that the
accomplishments of this secretive
man were extraordinary.
In the end, however, there were
those who, despite his achieve-
ments, appeared to believe that he
was becoming something of a lia-
bility to the agency to which he was
so clearly devoted. Intelligence
work is secret and so are attempts
to find out about it. It was Mr. An-
gleton's task to expose what is in a
certain sense unknowable. If he un-
covered many enemy spies-and he
did that-he could never be certain
that another had not escaped him.
His efforts to pierce this enigma
eventually caused such disruption in
the CIA that he fell from grace.
Mr. Angleton began to make his
reputation while he was still an
Army major serving in Italy in
World War II with the Office of
Strategic Services, the predecessor
of the CIA. He was credited with
helping establish what came to be
the CIA's "special relationship" with
Israel's secret service, the Mossad,
that resulted in the United States'
obtaining vast quantities of data on
Soviet military hardware and on
conditions in the Soviet Union.
He was credited by some with
helping expose Kim Philby, the for-
mer high official of Britain's M16
(Secret Service) who fled to Mos-
cow in 1963. Philby spied for the
Soviet Union for 30 years and he
was a colleague of Donald Maclean
and Guy Burgess, the famous Soviet
spies who fled the West in the early
1950s.
Mr. Angleton helped develop the
trail that led to Rudolf Abel, the
KGB colonel who was a major So-
viet spy in the United States in the
1950s. Abel was traded in 1961 for
Francis Gary Powers, the American
U2 pilot who had been shot down
while flying a spy plane mission
over the Soviet Union in May 1960.
And he helped uncover Soviet
spies who had penetrated intelli-
gence or security agencies in
France and West Germany.
Perhaps his best-known feat was
obtaining a copy of Soviet Premier
Nikita S. Khrushchev's secret
speech to the 20th Congress of the
Communist Party of the Soviet
Union in 1956. In that speech,
Krushchev denounced the late dic-
tator Josef Stalin. Almost a decade
earlier, Mr. Angleton obtained cor-
respondence between Yugoslav
leader Josip Broz Tito and Stalin
that foreshadowed Yugoslavia's de-
fection from Moscow in 1948, the
first historic rift in the communist
world.
Tom Braden, a journalist and for-
mer senior CIA official, wrote in
1974 that the CIA is the only major
intelligence service in the world
that has never employed a "mole,"
as deep-penetration agents were
dubbed by John Le Carre. High of-
ficials in the intelligence community
believe this is still true. This is a
measure of what Mr. Angleton ac-
complished.
But some thought the price was
too high. As Mr. Angleton cast a
wider and wider net of suspicion,
brilliant careers in the CIA itself
were blighted, according to former
high officials.
A famous incident involved Ana-
toli Golitsin, a Soviet defector who
in 1962 told Mr. Angleton that a
Soviet "mole" had infiltrated the
CIA and that a "false" defector
would soon arrive to discredit what
Golitsin had said. A year later, Yuri
Nosenko defected from the Soviets
and told the CIA that Golitsin could
not be trusted. Mr. Angleton chose
to believe Golitsin and so he kept
Nosenko in jail for three years while
he frantically and fruitlessly
searched for the "mole." Nosenko's
release finally was ordered by CIA
director Richard Helms.
Mr. Angleton's critics cited this
incident as an example of what they
believed to be counterproductive in
his work. There even were stories
that the counterintelligence chief
had been investigated as a possible
"mole" himself.
The criticism came to a head af-
ter William E. Colby, another ca-
reer officer of achievement, became
director of central intelligence in
1973. In his memoirs, "Honorable
Men," Colby wrote that after he
took office he "looked in vain for
some tangible results in the coun-
terintelligence field, and found little
or none. I did not suspect Angleton
and his staff of engaging in improp-
er activities. I just could not figure
out what they were all doing."
So Colby offered Mr. Angleton a
new job writing a manual on coun-
terintelligence work. Mr. Angleton
refused and his resignation fol-
lowed.
James Jesus Angleton was born in
Boise, Idaho. His father, James
Hugh Angleton, had chased Pancho
Villa into Mexico with Gen. John J.
(Black Jack) Pershing, and while in
Mexico, he had married a 17-year-
old woman. The Angleton family
traveled to Europe in the 1920s,
where the elder Angleton became
head of National Cash Register's
operations on that continent.
James Angleton was educated in
England. He then entered Yale Uni-
versity where he became a scholar
of Italian literature, specializing in
Dante, and gained a great reputa-
!/
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000604970001-8
 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000604970001-8
tion as a poet. He also was a fan of
horse-racing; a competent poker
player and an omnivorous reader.
He and his roommate, the poet
Reed Whittemore, founded the po-
etry quarterly "Furioso" while still
undergraduates. In addition to their
own work, the magazine published
poems by such figures as Ezra
Pound, e.e. Cummings, Archibald
MacLeish and William Carlos Wil-
liams. After Yale, Mr. Angleton
went to Harvard University, where
he studied law and business. In
1943, he went into the Army for
World War II service.
In his service in Italy, his intel-
ligence skills and distinctive airs
made an impression. Gen. William
(Wild Bill) Donovan, the head of the
OSS, called him the OSS's "most
professional counterintelligence
officer." Others told of coming upon
Mr. Angleton late at night reading
and writing poetry.
After the war, Mr. Angleton
stayed in the Army, attaining the
rank of major. He helped the Italian
Christian Democratic Party of Al-
cide de Gasperi turn back the com-
munists at the polls in 1948 in what
became known as "the miracle of
'48." It was during this period that
he made contacts with the Israelis
that later became a special intelli-
gence relationship. He then joined
the CIA.
Mr. Angleton, who lived in Ar-
lington, is survived by his wife, Ci-
cely d'Autremont Angleton; three
children, James Charles Angleton of
Los Angeles, Guru Sangat Kaur of
Great Falls, Va., and Lucy d'Autre-
mont Angleton of Albuquerque; one
brother, Hugh Angleton of Boise,
Idaho; two sisters, Carmen Angle-
ton of Rome, and Delores Guarnieri
of Florence, and two grandchildren.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000604970001-8