Mailer’s story was based in fact. Bobby Kennedy did have such a conversation with McCone, the CIA director, in 1963.152
“I told that story to Hugh,” the narrator went on. “You know how rarely he laughs aloud. He actually struck his thigh. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘McCone was just the man to ask.’
“‘What,’ I asked him, ‘would you have answered?’”
The narrator then relates Montague’s reply: “‘I would have told Bobby that if the job was done properly, I would not be able to give a correct answer.’”
That was an Angletonian aperçu to educate innocent Americans. If the ambush in Dallas had been properly planned by CIA men, he advised, even other CIA men would not have been be able to figure out who had done it.
* * *
IN RETIREMENT ANGLETON STAYED in touch with Dick Helms.He raised money for the legal defense of two FBI officials charged with COINTELPRO-related crimes. He still expounded on the betrayal of U.S. counterintelligence and the sham of détente, but fewer reporters came calling.153 He had visits with his most loyal acolytes, Pete Bagley and Bill Hood.154 He even heard from the reclusive Anatoly Golitsyn, who had written an opus on Soviet deception operations entitled New Lies for Old. In 1984, Angleton helped him get it published and contributed a laudatory introduction.
Golitsyn explained, predictably, that signs of change in the Soviet Union in the 1980s were tactical ruses to advance the KGB plans first laid down in 1958. The Solidarity labor movement in Poland, Golitsyn argued, was created by Moscow “to convert the narrow elitist dictatorship of the party into a Leninist dictatorship.” It was an absurd description of an authentic social movement whose success in mobilizing Polish civil society foreshadowed the end of the Soviet Union itself.155
If the West succumbed to the blandishments of peaceful coexistence, Golitsyn wrote, a powerful, ideologically confident Soviet Union might soon dominate the world. Seven years later, the Soviet Union did not exist. By then, Angleton’s reputation as a geopolitical seer had long since expired.
The CIA, for its part, would decide that Yuri Nosenko was more credible than Anatoly Golitsyn. While Golitsyn lived out his life under an assumed name, avoiding all public contact, Nosenko remained a consultant for the CIA into the twenty-first century. In early 2001, Nosenko was invited to give a talk in the Agency’s auditorium about his experience handling the Oswald file for the KGB. The crowd of CIA employees listened with rapt attention and gave him a round of applause when he was done.156
* * *
IN 1986, ANGLETON WAS diagnosed with lung cancer and finally had to give up cigarettes. When he and Cicely had dinner with Dick Helms and his wife, Helms reported to John Hadden that Angleton “was in good fettle, has foresworn liquor and drinks cokes.”157
Guilty and grateful, Angleton appreciated Cicely’s loyalty. “I could never have gone through this without you,” he told his wife. He didn’t want his final days to burden her, he said. He wanted to “go into the woods on my own like an Indian and deal with the end of my life like an Apache.”158
He offered reflections, leavened with feelings of mortality, to a favored few.
“Fundamentally, the founding fathers of U.S. intelligence were liars,” he told Joseph Trento. “The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you were to be promoted. These people attracted and promoted each other. Outside of their duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power. I did things that, in looking back on my life, I regret. But I was part of it and loved being in it.… Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, Carmel Offie and Frank Wisner were the grand masters. If you were in a room with them, you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell.” He paused. “I guess I will see them there soon.”
He offered secrets, leavened with hints of wisdom, to his allies. He called up former White House aide Dick Cheney, now a Republican congressman from Wyoming, to set up a dinner. He said he had something he wanted very much to tell him. He never got the chance, and the future vice president was left to ponder what fantastic secrets Angleton might have imparted.159
Efraim Halevy came from Israel to say good-bye. They exchanged political gossip and greetings for their wives. They understood they would never see each other again. It was an emotional moment for two old friends, and Angleton met it with fortitude.
“He shook my hands,” Halevy recalled. “His eyes filled with tears and he gradually became calm. He said, ‘Keep the faith.’”160
Angleton grew more stoic as he contemplated what he regarded as his own failures. There was a farewell luncheon with former colleagues at the Officers’ Club at Fort Myer in Arlington, where he was given time to speak. When asked if he wanted to “come clean in the Philby case,” Angleton declined to voice any feelings of love or betrayal.
“There are some matters I shall have to take to the grave with me,” he said, heartbroken to the end, “and Kim is one of them.”161
JERUSALEM
JAMES ANGLETON DIED ON May 11, 1987. He was survived by his former mentor, friend, and enemy, Kim Philby, who would die in Moscow exactly one year later. The first memorial service for Angleton was held at Rock Spring Congregational Church, not far from the Angleton home. Dick Helms and Jim Schlesinger attended the service.
Reed Whittemore read T. S. Eliot’s “East Corker,” a poem that evoked the ambiguity of Angleton’s profession and his life.
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
The ceremony lasted less than an hour, and the crowd dispersed into another day in Washington.162 Angleton was buried in the same cemetery in Boise where his father had been interred.
The obituaries in The New York Times and The Washington Post cast him as a flawed man with vision, a man who was betrayed by Kim Philby and disgraced by spying scandals but never discredited and often admired. Angleton was fortunate that so much of his legacy was unknown or classified at the time of his death.
Angleton ably served the United States of America for the first half of his career, and escaped accountability for the rest. He has been condemned for his mole hunt, but he was only doing his job as he saw fit—and his superiors approved. The mole hunt was theoretically defensible. His flouting of U.S. nuclear security policies on behalf of Israel was not. He was never held accountable for suborning justice in the investigation of John Kennedy’s assassination. He lost his job for spying on tens of thousands of Americans, but he never had to defend his deeds in a court of law. He often acted outside the law and the Constitution, and, for the most part, he got away with it. He died in his own bed, a lifetime burning to the end.
* * *
SEVEN MONTHS AFTER HIS death, Angleton was honored again, this time in Israel. It was in early December 1987. On the side of a winding road in the hills west of Jerusalem, several dozen people gathered, most of them Israeli. They came to remember their good and loyal friend in Washington. Cicely Angleton was there, escorted by deputy Mossad chief Efraim Halevy, one of the organizers. Cicely was accompanied by her daughter Guru Sangat Kaur Khalsa and her granddaughter, Sadhana Kaur. Both wore the splendid all-white garb of Sikh believers, which contrasted vividly with the informal Israeli attire of the rest.
The crowd gathered around a black stone, set in white marble, built into a rocky outcropping. It was engraved with tributes in Hebrew and English.
IN MEMORY OF
A DEAR FRIEND
JAMES J. ANGLETON
1917–1987
Among the celebrants were four past or future chiefs of Mossad, his friends Meir Amit and Amos Manor, and the upper echelon of Amal, the Israeli military intelligence service.163 These w
ere the men and women who had built the Zionist enterprise, who had transformed the homeland of the Jewish people from an embattled settler state into a strategic ally of the world’s greatest superpower. They all wanted to pay their respects to the man who, more than any other American, had made it possible.
“He was a friend you could trust on a personal basis,” said Yitzhak Rabin, now the country’s defense minister.164
Later that afternoon, the same group of people gathered again, converging on a picturesque spot near the King David Hotel.165 Angleton called it his “observation point,” a park bench with an unobstructed view of the teethed ramparts of the Old City. On this spot, with his widow and daughter looking on, Angleton was again eulogized, first by the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Tom Pickering, and then by Teddy Kollek, the mayor of Jerusalem.
“We commemorate a great friend who saw Israel-U.S. relations though their most difficult period in the forty years of Israel’s existence,” Kollek declared.166
Cicely Angleton unveiled another black stone carved in English, Hebrew, and Arabic.
IN MEMORY OF A DEAR FRIEND
JAMES (JIM) ANGLETON
Angleton was buried in Boise, but his spirit came to rest here, far from the American democracy he had served and failed.
Thirty years later, the Angleton stone is still there, still maintained by his admirers, a modest monument unknown to American visitors and unmentioned in the guidebooks of all nations. Angleton’s legacy is hidden in plain sight.
Origins
James Angleton grew up in a modest house in Boise, Idaho. (Google Maps)
Angleton enrolled at Yale in 1937 and graduated in 1941. (Manuscripts & Archives, Yale University)
While attending Harvard Law School, he met his future wife, Cicely D’Autremont, Vassar Class of 1944. (Vassar Yearbook 1944)
His family prospered when his father launched a business in Italy and they moved into a grand building in Milan. (Giovann Dall’Orto)
Education
He helped launch a literary magazine called Furioso. (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University)
As coeditor of Furioso, Angleton befriended the poet Ezra Pound and other famous writers. (Carl Mydans/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)
(Manuscripts & Archives, Yale University)
Angleton (back row, second from right) pursued his interests in poetry on the staff of the Yale Literary Magazine. (Board of Editors of the Yale Literary Magazine: Yale Banner. Manuscripts & Archives, Yale University.)
Rome
Relaxing with an OSS and future CIA colleague, Win Scott. (Michael Scott)
Angleton recruited fascist Eugen Dollman as a source. Dollman was a translator, seen here with Germany’s Adolf Hitler and Italy’s Galeazzo Ciano. (Photo by Heinrich Hoffmann/ullstein bild via Getty Images)
After joining the Office of Strategic Services, Angleton was sent to Rome where he worked out of an office on the Via Sicilia. (Google Maps)
Angleton also saved the life of Prince Valerio Borghese, a leading fascist military commander. (Mondodori Portfolio / Getty Images)
Washington
In 1949, Jim and Cicely Angleton bought a house in Arlington, Virginia. (private source with permission)
As a top official in the newly created CIA, Angleton grew close to Kim Philby, the senior British intelligence officer in the capital. (Keystone Pictures USA/Alamy Stock Photo)
(National Security Archive)
Philby was a KGB spy and so was his housemate, the openly gay Guy Burgess. (PA Images/Alamy Stock Photo)
When Carmel Offie, a CIA colleague, was accused of being homosexual, Angleton offered him a job. (John Phillips/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)
CIA
In the 1950s, Angleton was personally close to CIA director Allen Dulles and social friends with Senator John F. Kennedy. (AP Photo/WCC)
In 1961, the Agency moved into its new headquarters in Langley, Virginia. (Bettman/Getty)
Among Angleton’s closest friends were Cord Meyer, also a top CIA official, and his ex-wife Mary. (Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty)
Mary had an affair with JFK starting in 1961. After she was murdered in 1964, her diary was delivered to Angleton. (Robert Knudsen, White House/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)
In 1967, Angleton helped his friend Richard Helms, CIA director from 1966-1973, win the confidence of President Lyndon Johnson. (Everett Collection Historical / Alamy Stock Photo)
Oswald
In the summer of 1963 ex-Marine Lee Oswald leafleted in support of Cuban president Fidel Castro, then went to Mexico City where he contacted the Cuban and Soviet embassies. Angleton’s staff was notified.
On October 10, 1963, five of his subordinates, shown below, drafted and approved a cable about Oswald. Six weeks later, Oswald allegedly killed JFK.
Jane Roman (Smith Yearbook 1936), Elizabeth Egerter (Croton-on-Hudson News, Croton Historical Society), John Whitten (identified as “Scelso”) (Courtesy of the author)
Tom Karamessines (Keystone USA via ZUMA)
William J. Hood (© Harvey Stein 2013)
Israel:
Angleton forged friendships with top officers in the Israeli Mossad, including Efraim Halevy. (private source with permission)
Isser Harel, Mossad chief in the 1950s. (Israeli Intelligence Heritage Center)
Meir Amit, Mossad chief in the 1960s. (Pictorial parade / Staff / Getty Images)
Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor. (Reuters / Alamy Stock Photo)
Tel Aviv station chief John Hadden concluded Israel stole fissile material for its nuclear arsenal from the United States. (Courtesy of author)
Fall
CIA director William Colby fired Angleton in December 1974. (Keystone Pictures USA / Alamy Stock Photo)
With the approval of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and President Richard Nixon, Angleton sought to expand domestic spying in America. (SCU Archives/Everett Collection/ALAMY)
Accused mole Yuri Nosenko was later cleared by the CIA. (private source with permission)
Former KGB officer Anatoly Golitsyn’s accusations fueled Angleton’s mole hunt. (unknown source)
Angleton’s career ended on national TV in December 1974. (Vanderbilt Television News Archive)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indebted to John Newman. I did not know it at the time, but my research for this book began in November 1994, when John and I interviewed Jane Roman at her home in Washington. John’s seminal work in Oswald and the CIA gave me the tools to trace Angleton’s role in the JFK assassination story.
Bill Simpich, civil liberties litigator and laugh-a-minute agitator, has spent many nights poring over declassified CIA records. As a result, we have a much deeper and more granular understanding of U.S. spying operations in Mexico City that involved Lee Oswald. Bill introduced me to the previously unknown story of Angleton’s mole hunt in Mexico.
Rex Bradford is the genial proprietor of the online archive of the Mary Ferrell Foundation. Without the thousands of documents I retrieved from the Mary Ferrell Web site, I could not have written this book. All historians of the Cold War and the Kennedy presidency who do online research are in Rex’s debt.
The aptly named Malcolm Blunt is a wise and funny friend, and he supplied me with many documents and insights about the inner workings of the CIA that I never would have obtained otherwise. Malcolm’s generosity reaffirms the truth of Toqueville’s observation that there are some things Americans can only learn from foreigners.
My agent, Ron Goldfarb, merely came up with the idea for this book.
Many people gave generously of their time and thoughts about Angleton. They include Michael Scott, Renata Adler, Joseph Augustyn, John Dean, Ed Epstein, William Gowen, John Hadden, Dennis Helms, Tom Hughes, Peter Janney, David Ignatius, China Jessup, Ted Jessup, Aaron Latham, Simon Lavee, David Martin, Matitiahu Mayzel, Vince Mor, Steven Murphy, Nachik Navot, Tom Pickering, Nancy Reynolds, a
nd Peter Sichel.
Others who shared relevant expertise include Avner Cohen, Peter Fenn, Cliff Karchmer, Roger Mattson, Tim Naftali, John Prados, and Grant Smith.
I’m always impressed by the alacrity with which my fellow journalists share timely tips, useful phone numbers, neglected documents, tantalizing leads, and unexpurgated gossip. Among the guilty are Ronen Bergman, Nina Burleigh, Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, Yossi Melman, Ron Rosenbaum, Elaine Shannon, and Jeff Stein.
Tim Weiner was a constant source of encouragement—as in giving courage. I saw how Tim dealt with the CIA, and I did the same, though not nearly so well. Tim also secured a place for me in the unique nonfiction writers’ residency program at the Carey Institute for Global Good in Rensselaerville, New York, where I wrote the first draft of this book.
Carol Ash, Gareth Crawford, Josh Friedman, and Sue Shufeldt made my two stays at Carey Institute delightful. I was content to gain weight eating the fine meals prepared by John Murray and the staff of the Carriage House.
The Ghost Page 30
