Operation Valuable Fiend

by Albert Lulushi

  Ray Thurston, deputy chief of the East European division at the State Department, chaired the working group, which over the next several months developed serious reservations about the feasibility of detaching Albania from the Soviet orbit in the immediately foreseeable future. Thurston himself had a very dim view of the subject. The chief aim of American policy in Southeastern Europe at the moment was to bring about some sort of working agreement between Yugoslavia and Italy on the matter of Trieste. He feared that exacerbation of the Albanian problem would increase tensions between those two countries, while at the same time reviving Greek irredentism with respect to Northern Epirus. He doubted that the balance of forces in the Balkans at that time was stable enough to permit success.19

  CHAPTER 17

  The American Backers Are Obliged to Withdraw

  The US operations in Albania in 1953 were dominated by the loss of the Apple team, which was a huge blow to the CIA plans. Apple was comprised of the highest caliber agents ever fielded by the CIA. Matiani was probably the best of their Albanian field agents because of his fame, experience, and influence. Zenel Shehi, too, was considered an unusually intelligent and experienced leader.

  Two more teams of five men each, code names Willow and Fig, had been able to complete one overland infiltration mission each. On a second mission, Fig was betrayed by a contact and forced to fight its way to Greece through two ambushes of Communist pursuers. A third team of two men had infiltrated and exfiltrated intact, but they had yielded so little intelligence that the mission didn’t justify the cost and effort expanded in mounting it. During 1953, the operation suffered a 50 percent loss rate, including the agents killed, captured, and missing. The CIA had no agents operational inside Albania by the end of the year. Summarizing the situation at the end of 1953, the CIA’s chief of the Southeast European branch, Jocko Richardson, wrote: “Although the casualties and disappointments of this operational season have been considerable, they are not out of line with the overall statistics of past OBOPUS [CIA’s cryptonym for the Albanian operation since 1953] operations. We have attempted to counter the increasing effectiveness of Albanian security forces with the infiltration of higher caliber and more thoroughly trained agents. Although we will continue to attempt to improve our assets we must accept the fact that the price of a so-called simmering pot in Albania is high.”1

  The failure of 1953 activities triggered a critical review of past operations and the capabilities of the Albanian security forces, which served as a guide in planning future operations. Richardson reached the conclusion that:

  the main effort should no longer be directed at mounting of groups whose purpose is a) to enter an area and organize resistance nets, and b) to remain in the area as long as possible while maintaining W/T contact with the base and being resupplied from the air. The three and half operational seasons which have been devoted largely to this type of activity have produced few permanent assets and have brought heavy losses in men and equipment.2

  The new guidance was to focus operational activities toward keeping groups as small as possible and reducing the time they spent in hostile territory to the minimum required to perform their new missions. The scope of the missions was redefined to include initially only contacting specific individuals who had prospects for developing positive intelligence or recruit officials in the political, security, and police apparatus. When contact had been established, attempts would be made to recruit these individuals as resident agents. Permanent communication links in the form of dead letter drops near the southern border would be established to enable these agents to send information out of the country. Such a scheme would allow CIA runners from Greece to be infiltrated for brief duration, no more than a day or two, in order to service the drops and maintain contacts with the resident agents.

  The problem was that there were very few trained and experienced agents left. As a security precaution after the Sigurimi had folded the Apple operation, the CIA had discharged dozens of agents who had been named in the trials or were known by members of the Apple team. With the few remaining agents left in spring 1954, the CIA could cover only one out of ten areas of the country for which it had received intelligence requirements from its customers in the State Department, NATO, and US Army European Command.3 The pools of potential agents had dried out in Rome, Athens, and at the Labor Service Company in Germany. Trieste and Istanbul had a handful of Albanian refugees who were screened but did not yield any suitable candidates for agent material. That left Zog and his entourage, but given the wholesale neutralization of all his agents in the previous operations and his entanglements with the Egyptian government at the time, it was decided to leave him alone “until the dust had settled.”4

  For all these reasons, by the end of summer 1954, the CIA virtually abandoned all infiltration operations in Albania and dismissed the handful of Albanian agents still on its rolls in Greece. Those agents who wished to emigrate to other countries were given assistance and letters of recommendations. At the exit interview, an agent received six million Greek drachmas, approximately two hundred dollars, as severance pay after signing the following quitclaim form:

  I, [Name of Agent], do hereby release the United States of America, its agents and representatives from all manner of money, claims and demands which I now have or which my heirs, executors, and administrators could, would or might have against the United States of America, its agents or representatives for any reason whatsoever up to the date of this statement.

  I further agree never to tell anyone, orally or in writing, about the work I have done or the work it was planned that I do, nor will I tell anyone about the activities of the people for/and with whom I have worked.

  I fully understand that any violation of the foregoing agreement about the preservation of full secrecy will subject me to judgment and punishment according to applicable espionage law.5

  * * *

  The retreat was not just at the operational level but also on the policy and strategic levels. The Psychological Strategy Board formally rejected the plan to detach Albania from the Soviet orbit on August 25, 1954, almost a year after the CIA had submitted it for a decision. The reason for the rejection was that the ongoing negotiations over Trieste were the primary concern of US foreign policy in the region at the time. Actions for the liberation of Albania could interfere with these negotiations and should be postponed until the Trieste problem was satisfactorily resolved. In the future the State Department would broker an agreement covering the future status of Albania among the neighboring states of Yugoslavia, Greece, and Italy before any action for liberation would be undertaken.6 The policy guidance for the CIA was to keep the situation in Albania under continuing surveillance, “with a view to the possibility of detachment of that country from the Soviet bloc at such time as its detachment might be judged to serve the overall US interest.”7

  The defunding for the Albanian program between 1953 and 1955 tells the story of its rapid disintegration. In fiscal year (FY) 1953 (July 1, 1952–June 30, 1953) the funds approved included $402,000 for personnel requirements, $30,000 of which was for the upkeep of thirty Albanian agents and the balance for thirty-six CIA staff employees, agents, and contractors.8 In FY 1954 funding for personnel requirements dropped to $258,000 causing a sharp reduction in staff resources to only twenty-two staff employees, agents, and contractors.9 The CIA diverted its resources to projects that promised higher returns for their investment, in places like Iran and Guatemala.

  FY 1955 operations involved only twelve CIA staff employees, agents, and contractors; spending for the administration of the program and for the psychological warfare components of the program was cut to half the size of the previous year’s spending ($69,000 for administration, $40,000 for radio Voice of Free Albania operations, $61,000 for NCFA support, and $62,600 for propaganda drops).12 Completely eliminated in the FY 1955 budget were $300,000 that were spent in FY 1954 for agent land and air infiltration operations based out of Greece.

  *
* *

  The budget cuts reduced significantly the money available to support the National Committee for Free Albania, which, despite its political infighting and acrimonious relations with its US and British sponsors, had provided adequate cover for CIA’s clandestine operations over the years. Reprioritizing the NCFA efforts to fit the new budget realities offered an opportunity to restructure the NCFA itself to reflect better the new CIA priorities. The restructuring effort resulted in the expansion of the NCFA to include right-of-center political groupings and individuals who until then had been unable to participate in the organization. As a byproduct of this expansion, left-of-center elements of the NCFA broke away.

  At the time of its formation, the NCFA was regarded by the Albanian refugee circles as a representative, democratic body that would further the interests of all anti-Communist Albanians. By November 1950, Balli Kombëtar, one of the major political parties represented in the NCFA, had split apart, with the conservative elements led by Ali Klissura forming the Balli Kombëtar Organization (BKO), while Hasan Dosti’s followers and left-leaning elements led by Abas Ermenji and Zef Pali regrouped under the name of Balli Kombëtar Agrarian (BKA). After the split, Ermenji and Pali expelled two supporters of Klissura from the NCFA Executive Committee and replaced them with their own followers, which increased their majority to a dominating role within the committee.

  Ermenji, a member of the NCFA’s military junta together with Kupi and Kryeziu, had strong opinions on how the agent selection, training, and infiltration operations should be run. He constantly clashed with Joseph Lieb, the CIA station officer in Rome and liaison with the NCFA, while trying to play up to his advantage the support he was receiving from the British. At the end of 1951, after the Americans decided to stop recruiting agents from NCFA supporters and to cut the military junta out of the field operations, Ermenji became more vocal in expressing his disagreements with the conduct of activities.9

  He steadfastly refused to accept American proposals to expand the NCFA in 1952 with representatives from the Blloku Kombëtar Indipendent and the BKO and threatened to withdraw altogether from the committee, which the CIA feared would lead to the breakup of the entire NCFA. Klissura’s BKO faction retaliated by, among other things, threating to appeal to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to look into the left-leaning elements of the NCFA, which would have had potentially serious consequences for all the CIA-controlled émigré operations at the time, not just the Albanian one.12

  At the end of 1953 an exasperated Lieb summarized his two years’ experience dealing with the NCFA in Rome as follows:

  At times the writer is stunned by the cross currents, or forces of discord, which pervade HTNEIGH [cryptonym for NCFA]. It seems that, no matter what the magnitude of any given problem (or activity), some pressure group, impelled by some unworthy purpose, invariably arises. Almost without exception, these groups are seeking (1) individual gain for themselves, or (2) to improve the political fortunes of their political party, or (3) to block what they believe to be a personal (or political) gain for certain of their associates.13

  Reserving his toughest words for the members of the Balli Kombëtar Agrarian, Lieb added:

  More often, however, XNMALEDICT [cryptonym for BKA] represents the opposition to any solution which would benefit HTNEIGH as a whole. Theirs is a program designed to wear down the opposition while strengthening their own party position a bit at a time as a result of the failure manifested by their brothers-in-arms.

  Such a policy may well sweep all concerned down the drain, but such a possibility appears to be of little concern to the XNMALEDICTS. The XNMALEDICTS realize they have only one chance of attaining their goal—that they must ride into office under the auspices of an HTNEIGH so demoralized as a body that out of its embers only XNMALEDICT can arise quickly to seek control of the country.14

  This ongoing bickering among the different factions and the self-interest displayed by the different members of the NCFA lowered its prestige and reduced its appeal to Albanians both abroad and within the country. In December 1953, Lieb pushed through the reorganization of the NCFA, which now included the overwhelming majority of the Albanian exile groupings: Dosti’s faction of the BKA, Klissura’s BKO, Kupi’s Legaliteti, Vërlaci’s Blloku Kombetar Indipendent, Kryeziu’s followers, and other independents. The new NCFA elected Dosti president and Abas Kupi vice president of the Executive Committee. Ermenji, Pali, and their followers of the left wing of the BKA refused to join the reorganized NCFA.

  The restructured NCFA continued to support psychological and propaganda tasks for another couple of years, including the publication of the newspaper Shqipëria and its continued distribution among the exile community in Italy, Greece, Germany, and the United States. They also prepared propaganda leaflets and scripts for clandestine radio broadcasts. In September 1954, sixteen members of the NCFA led by Dosti were included in the executive board of the Assembly of Captive European Nations (ACEN)—a coalition of representatives from nine nations who found themselves under the yoke of Soviet domination after World War II. Funded by the Free Europe Committee (FEC), which itself was funded covertly by the CIA, the ACEN worked to become the authorized source of information about conditions behind the Iron Curtain, educate public opinion on the actual situation in their countries, and enlist the cooperation and assistance of governmental and nongovernmental institutions.15 The ACEN and the FEC marked a shift in the CIA’s strategy for propaganda against the Soviet Union and its satellites. Although supported by CIA funds, the activities of these organizations were not covert in nature. Instead, their work was public and in the open.

  * * *

  The incorporation of the Blloku Kombëtar Indipendent in the NCFA placed all the Albanian anti-Communist groups that the CIA wanted to control under one umbrella, thus simplifying the agency’s efforts to influence them. The CIA-BKI relationship had begun in 1949 with Plan Charity, the joint operation between the Office of Special Operations and Italian Naval Intelligence that had parachuted into Albania several followers of Ismail Vërlaci and Gjon Markagjoni. After years spent in the mountains of northern Albania, nine surviving Charity agents had crossed the border to Yugoslavia in 1952, thus significantly reducing the operational and intelligence value of the BKI.

  Nevertheless, the agency continued to support the BKI under a new plan, code name Obstacle, which replaced Charity between 1952 and 1954. A CIA review of its operations with the BKI since 1950 found that “the principal agents were consumed by Albanian émigré politics, were marked by intrigues implicating Americans, Britains [sic], and Italians, and schemes to enhance personal prestige. . . . OSO and OPC entanglements . . . in retrospect, acted more favorably to the Albanians than to either US organization.”16

  As a result of the analysis, the agency replaced Obstacle in August 1954 with a much smaller project, code name Obdurate, focused only on foreign intelligence and counterespionage targets. The new project kept on the payroll as principal agents Gjon Markagjoni, the tribal chieftain of the Catholic regions, and Ernest Koliqi, the scholar, poet, and spiritual guide of the BKI. Through them the CIA continued to maintain control on the BKI and to strengthen relations with the Italian intelligence services, which remained the strongest supporters of the BKI. An additional goal of the plan was to use the nine agents in Yugoslavia who corresponded regularly with their leaders in Rome as a source of information about Yugoslavia’s intentions toward Albania.17

  Obdurate paid Ernest Koliqi $400 per month for operating his net and for providing informational reports on Albanian émigré circles; another $40 per month was used for gifts and care packages sent to the former Charity agents in Yugoslavia. Gjon Markagjoni received $320 per month, mostly to maintain his good will and for any intelligence he might provide on Albania and Yugoslavia.18

  The third principal agent under Obdurate was Iliaz Kraja, a BKI member who had been approached by Sigurimi officers attached to the Albanian legation in Rome loo
king for information on agent infiltrations into Albania and the Labor Services Company in Germany. CIA officers in Rome decided to use Kraja as a double agent in a counterespionage play aimed primarily at discovering the Sigurimi’s personalities, functions, policies, and modus operandi in Italy. They placed a payment of $100 per month in an escrow account for Kraja for as long as he continued to meet with his Sigurimi handlers and report on their interactions.19

  In August 1955, Obdurate was further reduced in scope to reflect the course of actions over the past fourteen months. Markagjoni’s payments were cut in half to $160 per month because there had been no substantial direct contribution on his part to intelligence production. Careful review of Koliqi’s reports at headquarters raised pointed questions about the quality and reliability of his information, such as: “Does [he] represent a small, private ‘papermill’? Is the information we gain from this source simply fabrication available to any purchaser?”20 Koliqi himself told his control officer that his teaching at the University of Rome, his writing, and other duties, such as being secretary of the Association of Refugee Intellectuals in Italy, did not leave him as much time as before to support intelligence collection and reporting. The CIA changed Koliqi’s status from principal agent to informant and reduced his compensation from $400 to $80 per month.21