The reorganized committee would function as a cover, a source of propaganda, and a body of Albanians interested in the welfare of their nation. Under no circumstances would the new NCFA meddle in operational matters. The new committee would include functional subcommittees appointed from time to time and as situations arose to oversee propaganda, welfare, and other activities. The Americans suggested additional subcommittees to deal with future problems of Albania, but the British considered such sponsorship tantamount to unofficial recognition of the NCFA as a government in exile, which they would not countenance. Although the military junta would continue to exist as a clandestine and unpublicized offshoot of the NCFA, its members would be stripped of access to operational matters.
The discussion then moved to the operational and security aspects of the effort. Fiend’s summary of actions in 1951 included thirty-nine agents infiltrated, five leaflet drop missions, thirty-one covert flights totaling forty-six hours over Albanian territory, resupply drops totaling 8,200 pounds of arms and supplies, and twenty-three covert commo flights. Thirty-three of the thirty-nine agents infiltrated went by air. At the time of the meeting, twelve agents remained in Albania, organized in three teams, code names Pine, Chestnut, and Walnut, with at least one W/T operator in each team. Seventeen agents had exfiltrated successfully and seven had defected to Tito. The Sigurimi had captured four agents and put them on a public trial, which Radio Tirana had announced only a few days before the meeting, on October 10, 1951. They were Iliaz Toptani and Selim Daci from the November 1950 drop and Muhamet Hoxha and Kasem Shehu from the July 1951 drop. By way of buttressing the Albanian government’s claim that it was facing a coordinated international conspiracy, the list of the apprehended spies on trial also included two agents sent by the British, one by the Italians, four by the Yugoslavs, and three by the Greek.26
The British on their end had infiltrated nineteen agents, all by sea, between July and September, of which four were killed, one was wounded and captured, and fourteen made it out to Greece. One four-man team, code name Barley, remained twenty-four days in the Vlora-Gjirokastra area in the south and then exfiltrated to Greece after they were surrounded by Communist forces and lost their equipment. Two teams of four men each, Slipper and Ebony, destined for the central Kruja–Mati areas, were surprised by the pursuit forces five days after infiltration, lost their equipment, and made their way to Yugoslavia first and then Greece. They lost two members in Albania and one in Yugoslavia. Another five-man team had operated in Gramshi for thirteen days. They were in a position to prolong their stay but were ambushed by security forces on alert after the murder of Communist officials in their district by Matiani’s team. The team broke up, and only three surviving members were able to exfiltrate to Greece.27 When describing the experience of this last team, the British case officers said that it underscored the fact that Albania was a small country; a closer integration of Fiend and Valuable operations was necessary to preclude mission overlap and keep their respective agents from running into each other.
Both Fiend and Valuable officers felt that the amount of information brought back by the teams was minimal and the intelligence yield low. Everyone wholeheartedly agreed that the use of low-level agents in teams had been more harmful than useful and that most of the inadequacies of the 1951 teams stemmed almost directly from the low-quality agents the NCFA provided.
For 1952, Fiend intentions were to train eight to ten W/T operators by June 1, 1952, launch short-term missions only to contact known personalities in the Albanian government and army, establish permanent W/T stations, and effect special assignments such as defections, intelligence gathering, propaganda, and sabotage. Resupply and leaflet raids would continue. Yatsevitch said that he hoped to make 1952 operations decidedly covert. He considered the Labor Services Company in Germany and other sources of agents they had used thus far as thoroughly penetrated by the Sigurimi. They would cease immediately to recruit agents from these pools and focus efforts on identifying high-level assets for high payoff missions in Albania. When the British wondered where the Americans would find these high-level assets, Yatsevitch remained reticent, only indicating that they had something in the works but were not ready to share details at that point.
That gave the British an opening to press for closer and more detailed coordination of their respective operations. Perkins and Northrop argued that such coordination was essential in order to avoid situations where both the British and Americans tried to contact the same Albanian target or, worse, where the British might be trying to compromise a man whom the Americans were seeking to cultivate and vice versa. OPC representatives agreed that the exchange of operational information was highly desirable. They viewed the degree of coordination in the past as inadequate for the future, but at the same time felt that the policy of “operational disengagement” that governed the Valuable-Fiend relationship precluded closer coordination.
Both sides agreed that information leaks on operational activities had occurred because of poor security within the NCFA and because of the Albanian propensity for letter writing. The exchange of letters among members of the committee, Labor Services Company members selected by the committee for operational use, and agents undergoing training had resulted in security violations and the transmission of information to Greek, Italian, Yugoslav, and possibly German services through the interception of correspondence. As a corrective measure, they agreed to keep all operational intelligence from the NCFA and to cut the NCFA out of operations completely.
The training of agents required some adjustment as well. The meeting participants expressed concern at the ease with which the Sigurimi ambushed their field parties. There was a general feeling that they had overestimated the Albanian’s ability to move in his own country without capture.
The meeting concluded with an exchange of views on handling the disposal of agents. The SIS considered all their operators “blown” and intended to discharge every Albanian with whom they had worked in the past. The CIA wouldn’t go that far, but they also needed to dispose of agents who dropped out of training or were no longer needed operationally. Up until then, they had sent these agents to International Relief Organization refugee camps in Greece, Italy, and other countries, but these camps were going to close in 1952 because the IRO favored resettling and integrating refugees in the society and economy of host countries.28 Americans planned to send the agents who were not suitable for clandestine work to the Labor Service Company in Germany. The British were making good use of a similar service in the UK, which located displaced people as tenants on British farms that needed labor.
Someone brought up the idea of purchasing a plantation or some colonial property in a remote part of the world where agents “could be put out to pasture.” The arrangement required an initial outlay of capital but would allow the Albanians to contribute to their support or even become self-supporting. Some discussion ensued, at the end of which all parties agreed that the idea was worth investigating further,29 although no trace exists in the record to indicate that anyone followed up to develop the scheme any further.
* * *
On October 24, the same day that the case officers of Fiend and Valuable wrapped up their meeting in Rome, Radio Tirana reported the “annihilation of thirteen spies dropped by parachute on Albanian territory by United States Espionage Services.” Of the eight agents mentioned by name, the broadcast identified seven members of OPC teams. They were the leader of the Chestnut team, Hysen Sallku, dropped in the Peshkopi area; two members of the Olive team dropped in Delvina, Fido Veliu and Riza Zyberi; and the entire Oak team dropped east of Shkoder, Rifat Zyberi, Ded Hila, Azis Rusta, and Hamid Toshi.30
The Oak team had come under fire immediately upon landing. Zyberi was gravely wounded and committed suicide in order not to be taken alive. The other three team members were able to escape the initial ambush and head east toward the highlands of Dukagjini. They managed to reach the house of Ded Hila only to be betrayed by a local villager
who alerted the Sigurimi forces. Rusta, Toshi, and Hila died after exchanging fire for eight hours with their pursuers on August 16, 1951. When Hila’s family asked for the bodies, the Communist commander consented upon condition that they be buried anonymously. Rusta, Toshi, and Hila remained in unmarked graves until 1991, when family members exhumed their remains and reburied them not far from where they died.31
The next day, October 25, Radio Tirana reported the elimination of “seven spies and diversionists parachuted into Albania by the British Intelligence Services. They had been specially trained in espionage by the British Intelligence services in Greece and Malta, and taken to Albania by sea and by air to carry out espionage and diversionary activities for the British Intelligence Service.”32
The Radio Tirana radio broadcast and testimony at the Tirana trials of the captured agents that they had trained at the “Munich United States Espionage Center” suggested that the Communists had pinpointed the Murnau estate covert training site for Albanian and Bulgarian agents. The OPC moved immediately to abandon the training site as a security precaution. The Loeb estate, which the CIA had considered purchasing outright only a few months before, was turned over to the owner and the lease was terminated in May 1952.33
CIA map indicating the status of teams in Albania by the end of October 1951
By the end of October, it was clear that the Albanian security forces had effectively countered the OPC’s increased tempo of operations in the summer and fall of 1951. Out of forty-nine Fiend agents infiltrated in Albania since November 1950, only two were still alive in Albania and in communication with the Athens control center. Seven agents were confirmed dead and one was presumed dead; four were captured, tried, and convicted as spies; another nine were of status unknown but very much suspected of having perished, given Radio Tirana reports of additional unidentified agents killed; six agents had defected to Yugoslavia. From the ten agents who had been able to survive and exfiltrate to Greece, one four-man team, Cypress, had been practically on the run the whole time and, for lack of food, was forced to leave without accomplishing any of their mission objectives. Only Hamit Matiani at the head of his six-man team had shown the ability to move inside Albania and produce operational results.
The Office of Special Operations had experienced similar disappointing results with their teams and had decided to curtail their operations in 1952. As the head of the OSO Albanian project explained at the time: “No service could expect to any longer receive the outright support and cooperation of the Albanian people in the face of the reprisal measures adopted by the Sigurimi.”34
These disastrous results, described benignly as “adverse developments in the infiltration program” in the Fiend status report for October 1951,35 nevertheless triggered a complete review of the infiltration methods and objectives. The OPC dismissed all agents already trained but not infiltrated as a security precaution. They decided to build a new training center in Greece for future agents, located under the cover of a radar station on the Kalanisia Islands, just a few miles from Corinth.36
Other security measures discussed at the joint Fiend-Valuable meeting in Rome on October 22–24 went into effect immediately, including the complete separation of the project’s operational planning from NCFA influence and assistance. Moving forward, the CIA would rely principally on agents supplied from a new source that Yatsevitch had cultivated over the past few months, King Zog of Albania.
CHAPTER 13
A Bucket of Diamonds and Rubies
After the lukewarm support that King Zog had provided to the National Committee for Free Albania in its early days, the CIA case officers had more or less sidelined him from the Fiend operation. That had not stopped Zog from staying current with the developments and receiving regular updates from his supporters inside the NCFA. He was aware of the unfortunate outcome of the initial infiltrations into Albania and the frictions that had developed between the Americans and the NCFA leaders. He judged the summer of 1951 an opportune time to offer the Americans an alternative. While in the past he had offered his services via letters delivered to US diplomats in Cairo, this time Zog decided to travel to the United States and deliver his pitch in person. He felt the trip was urgent enough to warrant a transatlantic flight, a novelty in those days when ocean liners were still the default mode of travel between Europe and the United States.
On July 26, 1951, King Zog arrived by plane from Paris at New York International Airport, known as Idlewild Airport at the time and until 1963, when it was renamed after John F. Kennedy. To the waiting journalists, he declared: “I come from a country that has had six thousand years of civilization to this country to see modern civilization. My trip is strictly private and is only to see the United States.”1
While in New York, Zog stayed at the Ritz Tower in Manhattan. He hired Baron William Frary von Blomberg, a public relations man from Boston who specialized in catering to European and Middle East royalty, to help him buy property in the United States and “to aid in meeting State Department officials and others who might be ‘helpful’ to the monarch in exile.”2 According to a registration that von Blomberg filed later with the Justice Department, Zog paid six hundred dollars for his services.3 As he began calling officials in Washington on behalf of his client, von Blomberg expressed Zog’s preference that as head of the Albanian state he should first present his card to President Truman and then to Secretary of State Acheson. Any officials of lower rank who wished to meet with him should call upon him. However, the State Department made it clear that the United States government did not recognize Zog in any official capacity. In the end, Zog had to settle for a meeting with officials from the European division at the State Department on August 8, 1951.4
Von Blomberg reached out to his contacts in the CIA to arrange a meeting between Zog and the director. Both the Office of Policy Coordination and the Office of Special Operations were interested in understanding Zog’s potential to contribute to their operational and intelligence gathering efforts in Albania. On August 15, 1951, Colonel Yatsevitch of the OPC and his OSO counterpart met with King Zog at his suite at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. Zog received them very cordially and spoke with what both of them perceived to be complete candor. The conversation lasted approximately an hour and a half.
Zog began by saying that his main reason for visiting the United States was to find a suitable preparatory school somewhere in the general area of Washington and New York for his son, who was then twelve and a half years of age and whom he wished to bring up in the United States. Then the conversation moved to Queen Geraldine, who hadn’t accompanied him because she was visiting the Levant, the eastern Mediterranean coastal region that comprises today’s Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Palestine. Zog reminisced about his boyhood in Istanbul and trips he had taken himself in the Levant to see numerous historical ruins of interest.
After this social conversation, Yatsevitch conveyed Director Smith’s compliments to the king and his regrets that he was unable to see him. “General Smith has instructed me to talk about any matters that Your Majesty might wish to bring up,” Yatsevitch said.
Zog began by expressing uneasiness with regard to the political position of Yugoslavia, which, in his opinion, hadn’t taken decisive steps to commit itself to a partnership with the West. “Something needs to be done,” he said, “to force Yugoslavia to take a stand on one side or the other.” Early action in Albania to overthrow the Hoxha regime would serve such a purpose, Zog believed. An added advantage of destroying the Communist regime in Albania would be the encouragement it would give to other satellite countries to revolt against Soviet domination.
With regard to Albania, the king made four points that he considered of particular importance from the American and Western perspective and indicated the necessity for early action in Albania. “Please bring these points directly to General Smith’s attention,” Zog said.
First, a Soviet-controlled Albania constituted a potential threat of 100,000 armed men
behind Yugoslavia’s back, and second, the Soviets were enlarging and improving several airfields and other air facilities in Albania clearly directed toward the Mediterranean and the US bases being established in the region. His third and fourth points concerned the Bay of Vlora and the Island of Sazani, which provided facilities for a naval and submarine base that the Soviets could use to paralyze shipping in the Mediterranean and the Adriatic.
“The first step in any plan of action against Albania,” Zog continued, “is a declaration from the US in the immediate future that it stand firmly for the preservation of the territorial integrity of Albania.” The US should also induce Greece, Yugoslavia, and Italy to declare that they wouldn’t seek any Albanian territory by force of arms and they would pursue any territorial claims they might have through the United Nations. These two steps, Zog said, would hearten and strengthen the position of the anti-Communist Albanians and make it difficult for the Albanian regime to pose as the sole champion of Albanian territorial integrity.
With regards to actual operations in Albania, the king saw three possible courses of action. The first one, an invasion of Albania by the United States, he dismissed as unrealistic and impractical. The second option was the invasion of Albania by an Albanian force assembled and led by the king. He could bring together up to ten thousand men, recruited from among the various Albanian groups scattered around the world. However, the countries that would support the assembly, equipment, and training of the invasion elements wouldn’t be able to hide their support and would be vulnerable to Soviet retaliations. The most feasible and desirable option was to overthrow the Communist regime by an insurrection developed within the country under the king’s leadership. Because the action would have all the earmarks of a spontaneous Albanian activity, it would be harder for the Soviets to frame it as an act of foreign intervention or aggression.
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