JAMES ANGLETON, COUNTERINTELLIGENCE FIGURE, DIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201820004-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 20, 2012
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: May 12, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201820004-8
ARTICLE AF?EARf D
ON PAGE -P3 I
NEW YORK TIMES
12 May 1987
James Angleton, Counterintelligence Figure, Dies
By STEPHEN ENGELBERG
Special to The New Yott Time.
WASHINGTON, May 11 - James
Angleton, the erudite Central Intelli-
gence Agency officer whose search for
Soviet agents inside the Government
stirred an uproar in the murky worlds
of intelligence for a generation, died
here this morning of lung cancer. He
was 69 years old,
Mr. Angleton, who joined the C.I.A. at
its inception in 1947, served for more
than 20 years as head of its counterin-
telligence office. He was forced to re-
sign his post in 1974 by William E.
Colby, then Director of Central Intelli-
gence, who had become convinced that
Mr. Angleton's efforts were harming
the agency.
The tall, donnish intelligence official
remains one of the most fascinating
figures in the history of the C.I.A. His
counterintelligence office was consid-
ered one of the most secret in the agen-
cy, and the problems it analyzed
resembled the multidimensional chess
games depicted in the best espionage
fiction.
With his departure, the agency cut
the counterintelligence staff to 80 from
300, and turned away from some of the
techniques he had pioneered. Today,
some intelligence officials and mem-
bers of Congress say this may have
been an overreaction. They say that the
recent disclosures about highly damag-
ing Soviet espionage operations sug-
gest that Mr. Angleton was more accu-
rate in his suspicions than was once be-
lieved.
Distrust of Soviet Motives
Counterintelligence is one of the
most thankless jobs in spy craft. Its
practitioners think the unthinkable, ex-
amining each operation, recruit or de-
fector for the possibility that it may be
a deception. Counterintelligence agents
also try to recruit agents who work for
hostile intelligence services, hoping to
confuse opponents with cleverly pack-
aged false information.
Friends and associates agree that
Mr. Angleton, who wore glasses and
had a pronounced stoop, was ideally
suited for his life's work. His view of
the world was characterized by an
abiding suspicion - opponents called it
paranoia - about the Soviet Union's
motives and maneuvers.
When the Soviet Union and China
split in the early 1960's, Mr. Angleton
remained convinced that the widely re-
ported antagonism was a ruse con-
cocted by the two Communist powers.
The defection of Yuri Nosenko from
the Soviet Union in January 1964
prompted a prolonged investigation by
Mr. Angleton and hiq staff. Mr. No-
senko insisted that he had been the
Soviet case officer for Lee Harvey Os-
wald, the assassin of President Ken-
nedy.
Mr. Angleton was inclined to doubt
Mr. Nosenko's insistence that the
Soviet security agency, the #-G.B., had
no connection to the attack on the
President. Mr. Nosenko was released
after being interrogated for more than
three years, and the consensus at the
C.I.A. was that he had been a legiti-
mate defector. Mr. Nosenko was subse-
quently hired as a lecturer at courses
given by the agency.
Powerful Role In Agency
Mr. Angleton may have lost the bat-
tle over Mr. Nosenko, but he wielded
great power inside the agency for dec-
ades. His section had access to more in-
formation than virtually any other be-
cause it was permitted to examine vir-
tually all C.I.A. operations. The coun-
terintelligence staff under Mr. Angle-
ton could and did effectively end the ca-
reers of C.I.A. officers suspected of
working for the Soviet. Union. He often
declined to explain why a particular
officer had fallen under suspicion.
In addition, Mr. Angleton handled
one of the agency's most sensitive rela-
tionships with an allied intelligence
service, its ties to the Israelis. Mr. An-
gleton handled "the Israeli account" as
it was termed in C.I.A. argot, for more
than a decade. Indeed, Mr. Colby, the
agency director who forced his resig-
nation, earlier insisted that Mr. Angle
ton relinquish his control over Israeli
matters.
Even with the passage of decades, it
is difficult to compile a reasonably cer
tain account of Mr. Angleton's espio-
nage successes, which remain classi-
fied. For instance, by one account he
was instrumental in obtaining, the text
of Nikita S. Khrushchev's secret denun-
ciation of Stalin in 1956.
He was also said to have been deeply
involved in the unmasking of Kim
Philby, the British double -agent.
Others say that for a time, at least, Mr.
Angleton was deceived by Mr. Philby a
man who had come to be his friend.
James Jesus Angleton was born hi
1917, the year of the Russian Revolu-
tion, in Boise, Idaho. His father worked
for the National Cash Register Com-
pany in Italy, and James Angleton
spent summers in Italy while attending
Malvern College in England. In 1937, he
entered Yale University, where he
roomed with E. Reed Whittemore Jr.,
the poet. The two founded a literary
magazine, reflecting what would be
Mr. Angleton's lifelong interest in the
letters. His favorite poets, friends say,
were T.S. Eliot and E.E. Cummings,
and in Washington he was often found
at lectures on the writings of James
Joyce.
Two years after being graduated
from Yale, he was recruited by a pro-
fessor into the Office of Strategic Serv-
ices, the World War 11 intelligence
agency and forerunner to the C.I.A.
Senator Malcolm Wallop, a Wyoming
Republican who was a strong defender
of Mr. Angleton, said in a statement to-
day: "James Angleton lived long
enough to serve his country before,
during and after World war II. He was
the architect of the best counterintelli-
gence the United States ever had. In
the mid-1970's, Angleton went out of
fashion, but he lived long enough to see
time and events vindicate him and
show how little his accusers under-
stood of the difficult and inherently
thankless business of counterintelli-
gence .,
In World War II Mr. Angleton di-
rected agents working against Nazi
Germany. In 1944 he traveled to Rome
where he worked on operations aimed
at the Italian Fascist intelligence serv-
ice. After the war, he worked closely
with Italian counterintelligence to un-
cover reams of data about Soviet
operations.
When he returned to the United
States, he began to specialize in study-
ing the K.G.B. Mr. Angleton built huge
files on the espionage operations of the
Russians, and was authorized in 1954
by Allen W. Dulles, then the director of
agency, to setup its first counterintelli-
gence staff.
In 1975 Mr. Angleton was awarded
the C.I.A.'s highest award, the Distin-
guished Intelligence Medal.
Mr. Angleton has been sharply criti-
cized in recent years in the memoirs of
some intelligence officials, including
Adm. Stansfield Turner, the director of
Central Intelligence under President
Carter. Admiral Turner wrote that he
had got Congress to appropriate money
to compensate officers whose careers
had been ruined because they had
come under the suspicion of Mr. Angle-
ton.
"He was truly a Renaissance man, "
said N. Scott Miler, the chief of opera-
tions under Mr. Angleton. "He had a re-
markable amount of knowledge about
world events, art, literature. most re-
markable people I have ever known."
Mr. Angleton is survived by his wife,
Cicely d'Autremont; a son, James
Charles Angleton, of Los Angeles, and
two daughters, Guru Sangat Kaur, of
Great Falls, Va., and Lucy d'Autre-
mont Angleton, of New Mexico. He also
leaves a brother, Hugh Angleton of
Boise, and two sisters, Carmen Mer-
cedes
Angleton of Rome and Delores
Guarnieri of Florence, Italy.
Services will be held Friday, at Rock
Springs Church in Arlington, Va., and
the family asks that a donation to be
made to the American Cancer Society
In lieu of f ewers.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201820004-8