The invasion of Albanian territory by the US-supported Greek army, Wisner wrote, would rally popular support for the Hoxha regime, particularly in view of Albanians’ long standing fears about Greek claims in Northern Epirus. Such military actions would also lend credence and support to both Soviet and Albanian Communist propaganda themes that US imperialism is threatening the “people’s democracies” in the Balkans, particularly Albania. The greatest danger, however, was that the incursion might coincide with the last phase of the Albanian plan, the open insurgency against the Tirana government. In that case, the public would link the two events and place the onus for both operations on the US. This, Wisner warned, would give Kremlin a pretext for direct military intervention into the situation.
Wisner urged that the pursuit of guerrilla fighters must not be policy, either official or unofficial, of the Greek government or its army and asked the State Department and the US military mission in Greece to exercise strong pressure on the Greek government to prevent this.14 On the same day, Wisner sent a cable to Berry in Athens asking him to communicate these points to General James A. Van Fleet, the commander of the US military mission in Greece. Berry met with Van Fleet on July 25, and obtained his commitment to work with General Papagos to ensure that the GNA would not cross the Albanian frontier on a large scale during the upcoming operations.15
At the same time, Berry and Miner worked with their network of civilian Greek government officials to convey similar points. They met with the Greek vice minister for foreign affairs, Panayiotis Pipinelis, on July 26 to discuss concerns with editorials appearing in the Greek press and radio broadcasts urging the GNA to conduct military operations in Albania. Pipinelis provided assurances and stated categorically that the Greek army would undertake no military adventures in Albania. However, Greece hoped and expected that the Western allies would take measures to prevent Albania from continuing to serve as a refuge and base for guerrilla activity against Greece.
Berry then informed Pipinelis that a group of prominent Albanian exiles would soon announce the formation of a committee to work for the liberation of their country from the Communist regime. Pipinelis recognized this as a very important step that all the Balkan peoples would consider as the first move in a campaign to roll back the Iron Curtain. He urged that the committee not come under the domination of either King Zog or the Italians. The former he characterized as the most unreliable Albanian he had to deal with during his prewar mission in Albania. The ex-king had almost no influence in the country, he felt, but he was a force to be reckoned with because of his financial resources, political acumen, and ruthlessness. The Italians had already begun to renew their efforts in Albania and were working through the Independent Bloc, a group of former collaborationists headed by Vërlaci. He urged the exclusion of all collaborationists from any position on the committee, especially any persons who had cooperated with the Italians.
Berry worked with Pipinelis to draft a brief statement that the Greek prime minster, Alexandros Diomedes, would issue soon after the announcement of the committee, calling it a source of hope for the improvement of Greece’s relations with Albania. At the beginning of August, they took the statement to the prime minister, who approved it without altering a word.16
* * *
Mithat Frashëri announced the formation of the National Committee for Free Albania at a press conference in Paris on August 26, 1949. Frashëri issued the first proclamation of the committee describing its aims and responsibilities as follows:
A Committee for Free Albania is created to represent all those Albanians who wish to establish a government representative of the fundamental human rights in their country. The committee includes representatives of Albanian leaders in the social and political domain and will have its seat in New York. This committee is composed of two bodies. The Executive Committee includes:
Mithat Frashëri, Balli Kombëtar, Chairman
Abas Kupi, Legaliteti
Said Kryeziu, Independent
Zef Pali, Balli Kombëtar
Nuçi Kotta, Legaliteti
A General Committee that will assist the Executive Committee includes:
Halil Maçi, Balli Kombëtar
Abas Ermenji, Balli Kombëtar
Vasil Andoni, Balli Kombëtar
Gaqo Gogo, Legaliteti
Gani Tafili, Legaliteti
Asllan Zeineli, Legaliteti
Ihsan Toptani, Independent
Muharrem Bajraktari, Independent
Hysni Mulleti, Independent
Ekrem Telhai, Independent
The committee will pursue the following goals:
a) Guide and encourage our courageous people in their resistance against the cruel Communist tyranny and organize the Albanians abroad to aid effectively this resistance. Our people in Albania must know that the opposition to the Communist oppression is universal and that the power of the free and parliamentary nations is growing rapidly.
b) All activities of the committee aim at the restoration of the full independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Albanian nation.
c) The committee for Free Albania, cognizant of the great responsibility it has undertaken, requests the assistance of all the free peoples and free and democratic countries.17
The news of committee’s formation and supporting commentary were carried by the BBC (in their English- and Albanian-language programs) and by Voice of America in all broadcasts to Europe and the Near East. The Associated Press reported the pledge of the committee to the “complete restoration of independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Albanian nation.”18 Radio Tirana reacted vigorously to the announcement with denunciations of the committee members as “fascists, collaborators and war criminals.”19 After the announcement, a selected group of NCFA leaders embarked on a visit to London and the United States.
* * *
In advance of the announcement of the NCFA, Wisner had drafted a dispatch that the State Department sent to diplomatic missions in key countries in Europe and the Balkans, with guidance on what they should and should not say concerning Albanian developments. The official line was to express the US government’s satisfaction with formation of such an émigré Albanian committee but to point out that it did not regard the committee as a government-in-exile. It hoped that the committee might prove useful as a rallying point in event of collapse of the Hoxha regime. Wisner asked the diplomats to be careful to avoid any discussion beyond these lines, which might imply that the United States was more involved in the NCFA. For information only, he shared that the United States would give considerable moral support to the committee in the hope that these Albanians would be able to accomplish some constructive results.20
On August 29, the Greek prime minister made public his statement regarding the formation of the Albanian committee that Berry and Pipinelis had prepared for him. It was the culmination of a number of official and semi-official statements by the Greek government in favor of the committee.
The Greek Government has taken cognizance of the setting up of a Committee for Free Albania, aiming at the establishment of representative government in that country.
We are not surprised at these endeavors to accord liberty to the Albanian people, who are a proud people that have struggled for centuries to preserve their independence.
The long history of our two neighboring countries has proved that an understanding with the Albanian people is perfectly possible.
Having drawn from our history and from the present situation in the Balkans valuable lessons, we shall always be ready to seek the friendliest possible development of our relations with the Albanian people.
If a regime truly representative of the Albanian people is brought into being, we shall be ready to cooperate with it earnestly and with the friendliest feelings. Our claims and differences would not be an obstacle. We will press any claims only by peaceful means and within the framework of the United Nations.21
McCargar wanted the members of the
NCFA Executive Committee to issue a public statement expressing their gratitude for the statements of the Greek government, and welcoming the Greek prime minister’s statement that Greece would press any claims against Albania only by peaceful means and within the framework of the United Nations.22 He cabled the request to Joe Bryan, the OPC psychological warfare chief who was accompanying the NCFA leaders on their visit to London and assisting them with press releases for their public launching.23 There is no record that Bryan was successful in convincing the NCFA leaders to issue such a press statement; rather, Bryan found ongoing arguments among the Albanians so acrimonious that he considered the trip wasted.24
The executive committee arrived in London on September 4 and stayed at the Berkeley Hotel. They visited the studios of the BBC World Service, where Mithat Frashëri recorded a fifteen-minute broadcast to Albania that went on the air at 4:00 p.m., Albanian time. Very few heard the message in the country, because the authorities in Albania did not switch the electricity on until six.25
* * *
On September 14, 1949, the NCFA Executive Committee members arrived in New York after a last-minute scramble by the US consulate in London to issue them visas. Only Mithat Frashëri and Abas Kupi carried valid passports issued by the Albanian royal legation in Cairo; Said Kryeziu and Zef Pali had Italian emergency identity certificates; Nuçi Kotta and Petrit Kupi had refugee passports. Petrit Kupi was Abas Kupi’s son who served as his father’s translator. He spoke quite good French having studied at a young age in the French lyceum at Korça, where, by a strange irony, Enver Hoxha had been his teacher.26
An operations officer received them at the airport, arranged for transportation in the city, and helped them settle in the hotel. Robert Low met them in the afternoon and gave a dinner for them that evening, which also included Harry T. Fultz and Reuben H. Markham. The OPC had asked Fultz to serve as a guide to the committee for the duration of the trip in the United States. Markham, the Balkans and Central European correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, assisted with the interface between the committee and the National Committee for Free Europe. At the end of the dinner, Low gave each committee member five hundred dollars to cover any incidental expenses during their stay in the US.
The Americans wanted to impress the committee by assigning Fultz as an unofficial guide, certain that they would spread the word in the Albanian community of the great support they had received in the United States. Fultz enjoyed a special status among Albanians, due to his long history of involvement with Albania and Albanian affairs. He was the first director of the American Vocational School set up by the American Red Cross in Tirana during 1921 to 1933. Fultz had been forced to leave Albania in 1933 when Zog closed or nationalized all foreign and religious educational institutions that were, in the opinion of his minister of education, Mirash Ivanaj, sources of foreign political agitation and espionage. Subsequently, he became adviser on Balkan problems to the Department of State.27 During World War II, he coordinated the Office of Strategic Services Albanian operations as head of the Albanian desk in Bari. After the war, he was second-in-command in the American mission sent to Albania in early 1945 and until its withdrawal in November 1946.
Fultz agreed to act as an escort to the committee but insisted on staying in the background and avoiding any publicity linking his name to it. He feared that if the government in Albania learned that he was associated in any way with the committee, they would clamp down on any persons who were American-educated, and particularly on his former students.28
Fultz took the members of the executive committee around New York and to Washington, covered their expenses for the trip out of OPC funds, and in general “played nursemaid for them during their stay in the US.”29 They attended meetings with officials in the Committee for Free Europe and the Department of State and exchanged views in multiple instances with representatives of the Albanian American community in the US. At the end of September, Frashëri and Kotta returned to New York City to establish the committee’s headquarters; the other members of the delegation returned to Italy. Fultz observed the Albanian leaders closely during the visit and compiled a detailed report for Wisner and the Office of Special Operations that included his impressions about them and a detailed accounting of their interactions.30
* * *
In the early morning of October 3, Mithat Frashëri was found dead in his room at the Winthrop Hotel, 351 Lexington Avenue in New York,31 where he had taken up residence since his arrival in the United States three weeks earlier with the other members of the NCFA Executive Committee. A medical doctor declared the cause of death a heart attack brought upon the seventy-year-old Frashëri by the hardships and the fatigue of the past few years. However, eyewitnesses who had met with Frashëri during his visit to the United States described him as a vivacious and energetic man.
While he may have simply succumbed to fatigue, there exists a possibility that Frashëri was poisoned by or at the behest of the Albanian secret police, the Drejtoria e Sigurimit të Shtetit (Directorate of State Security) or Sigurimi, as it was most commonly known. The Sigurimi had a direct interest in eliminating Frashëri, but at the time they most likely did not have the means and resources for a sophisticated hit such as this one in the heart of New York City. It isn’t far-fetched to hypothesize that they requested and received assistance from their Soviet allies, who had carried out similar actions against other Communist opponents.
Frashëri’s death brought to light a rift that had simmered for a while within the Balli Kombëtar, the organization he had founded and led since 1942. On one side were the conservative members led by Ali Klissura and Nuredin Vlora; on the other side were liberal members headed by Frashëri himself and including Hasan Dosti, Abas Ermenji, Vasil Andoni, Halil Maçi, and Zef Pali. Frashëri’s age, wisdom, and stature had contributed to both sides maintaining an appearance of unity, which broke down on his death. Dosti, who had the majority of support among the BK rank and file, moved to claim the position of leader of the party and by implication, assume the position of president of the NCFA.
Dosti’s selection as president of the NCFA encountered the strong resistance of Abas Kupi, a political and personal opponent of both the Balli Kombëtar and of Dosti himself. Kupi felt the post ought to go to him as the most senior member with highest standing in the executive committee. Zog weighed in from Egypt, strongly opposing the nomination of another member of BK as president. That would suggest that the BK ran everything, he said at a meeting on November 1 with American and British representatives. Once again, Zog advocated broadening of the executive committee to include Gjon Markagjoni and Ismail Vërlaci.32
The Joint Policy Committee, which provided overall guidance and coordinated the activities on Project Fiend, met in Washington on November 3 to discuss the issue and to prepare a set of directives for Low in Rome. In attendance were only the American members, including Robert Joyce of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff and liaison to the OPC, McCargar, and Kermit (Kim) Roosevelt, one of Wisner’s key aides. They agreed that as a matter of principle the presidency of the NCFA would go to Balli Kombëtar, which was the only party in exile with a sizable following in Albania. “BK has the chairmanship as a right,” said Roosevelt. Joyce added that they should not allow Kupi to think any other solution existed than a BK chairman. McCargar suggested they might have to cut Kupi out of the operation if he resisted, but everyone agreed that they ought to avoid splitting the committee. They directed Low to assess Kupi’s objection to Dosti and, using a conciliatory tone, advise Kupi to accept Dosti if possible. If Kupi remained entrenched in his objections, then they should consider another BK member, in which case Low should work with Dosti and convince him to accept the alternative.33
On Saturday morning, November 12, George Jellicoe, third secretary of the British embassy in Washington and representative of the Foreign Office in the Joint Policy Committee, called Joyce for an urgent appointment to discuss Operation Fiend. Carmel Offie, Wisner’s s
pecial assistant, Joyce, and Jellicoe met at noon. As an icebreaker, Jellicoe began the meeting with a brief exchange of views on the situation in Yugoslavia and the ongoing spat between Tito and the Cominform. Then Jellicoe quickly moved to the real reason why he had asked for the meeting, the question of the successor to Mithat Frashëri as head of the NCFA. He said that the British did not relish the prospect of Hasan Dosti as chairman of the committee and strongly favored the election of Abas Kupi.
Offie explained at length the official American view in the matter. He called the experience trying to create the committee earlier in 1949 as “not particularly inspiring or pleasant.” When Frashëri died, the OPC had decided not to get involved in a “head-beating, gold-piece haggling, character assassination role” in connection with the election of Frashëri’s successor. They had decided that the Albanians themselves should select their candidate without outside interference. Offie said he understood the British relationship and position vis-à-vis Abas Kupi and would have no objection to Kupi as the head of the Albanian committee, reiterating the US intention not to interfere in any way with negotiations. Offie noted that if the Albanians weren’t able to agree on a chairman, then it might be appropriate to reconsider the position and agree to reenter the picture in an advisory role. Jellicoe stated he thought the American position was reasonable and that he would inform London.34
As the meeting broke up, Offie told Jellicoe that he didn’t consider it necessary or desirable to antagonize a lot of people or stir up a battle over the matter. It was a subtle but clear message to the British to stop boosting their favorite candidate, Abas Kupi, for the presidency of the NCFA. Coupled with the firm guidance sent to Low in Rome to insist on the election of a BK leader, preferably Dosti, the American insistence seemed to have broken the impasse.
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