Upon his return to Washington after World War II, Angleton was employed by the various successor organizations to the OSS and eventually became one of the founding officers of the
Central Intelligence Agency in 1947. In May 1949, he was made head of Staff A of the
Office of Special Operations, where he was responsible for the collection of foreign intelligence and liaising with counterpart intelligence organizations in foreign countries. Beginning in 1951, Angleton was responsible for "the Israel desk" as liaison with
Israel's
Mossad and
Shin Bet agencies. Author Samuel Katz has claimed that Angleton directed CIA assistance to the
Israeli nuclear weapons program. Global Operations
Meir Amit (1966). As head of Staff A, Angleton worked particularly closely with Kim Philby, the apparent future head of
MI6, who was also in Washington. The Israeli intelligence officer
Teddy Kollek claimed years later that in 1950 he warned Angleton that Philby had been a Soviet agent in the 30s. In 1951, Philby's colleagues
Guy Burgess and
Donald Maclean defected to
Moscow. Philby was expelled from Washington, suspected of having tipped them off based on decoded Soviet communications from the
Venona project. Philby was confirmed to be a Soviet mole but eluded those sent to arrest him. He defected to Moscow in 1963. Philby called Angleton "a brilliant opponent" and a "fascinating" friend who seemed to be "catching on" before his defection. CIA employee
William King Harvey, a former
FBI agent, had voiced his suspicions regarding Philby and others Angleton suspected were Soviet agents. In 1953,
Allen Dulles became
Director of Central Intelligence. He soon named Angleton chief of the Counterintelligence Staff, in which position Angleton served for the remainder of his career. In 1964 he served as the CIA's liaison to the
Warren Commission, handling commission requests. At the suggestion of Angleton and others,
Yuri Nosenko was not permitted to testify before the commission. Nosenko stated that
Lee Harvey Oswald was of little interest to the KGB. However Angleton suspected he was a triple agent. During the
Vietnam War and Soviet-American
détente, Angleton remained convinced of the necessity of the war. During this period, Angleton's counter-intelligence staff undertook a most comprehensive domestic covert surveillance project (called
Operation CHAOS) under the direction of President
Lyndon Johnson. The prevailing belief at the time was that the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s had foreign funding and support. None was found by them, although the Soviet Union did
influence the movements. Angleton also believed that the strategic calculations underlying the
resumption of relations with
China were flawed based on a deceptive KGB staging of the Sino-Soviet split. He went so far as to speculate that
Henry Kissinger might be under KGB influence.
Suspicion of infiltration Angleton's view was influenced by his direct experience with the manipulation of German intelligence during World War II, the
Cambridge Five, and the success of American infiltration efforts in the Third World. In particular, Angleton's close association with Philby heightened Angleton's suspicions and led him to double-check "potential problems". Angleton's position in the CIA and his close relationship with Director
Richard Helms in particular expanded his influence, and as it grew, the CIA split between Angletonians and anti-Angletonians. This conflict rose in particular regard to
Anatoliy Golitsyn and
Yuri Nosenko, who defected from the Soviet Union to the United States in 1961 and 1964, respectively. Golitsyn defected via
Helsinki on December 15, 1961. He and his family flew with a CIA escort to Sweden and then to the United States, where he was interviewed by Angleton personally. Golitsyn limited his initial debriefing to a review of photographs to identify KGB officers and refused to discuss KGB strategy. After Golitsyn raised the possibility of serious infiltration with MI5 in a subsequent debriefing, MI5 shared the concern with Angleton. He responded by asking Helms to allow him to take responsibility for Golitsyn and his further debriefing. Golitsyn ultimately informed on many famous Soviet agents, including the
Cambridge Five, which led to their apprehension. However, other allegations Golitsyn made, including that Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Harold Wilson was a Soviet agent and that the
Sino-Soviet split was a "charade," were ultimately found to be false. Angleton believed this claim, with the result that anyone who approximated this description fell under his suspicion. Angleton became increasingly convinced that the CIA was compromised by the KGB. Golitsyn convinced Angleton that the KGB had reorganized in 1958 and 1959 to consist mostly of a shell, incorporating only those agents whom the CIA and the FBI were recruiting, directed by a small cabal of puppet masters who doubled those agents to manipulate their Western counterparts. Although Golitsyn was a questionable source, Angleton accepted significant information obtained from his debriefing by the CIA. Nosenko was allowed to defect, although the CIA was unable to verify a KGB recall order. Golitsyn had said from the beginning that the KGB would try to plant defectors in an effort to discredit him. Under great duress, Nosenko failed two highly questionable
lie detector tests but passed a third test monitored by several Agency departments. Judging his claim (as well as additional claims regarding
Lee Harvey Oswald) to be improbable, Angleton permitted David Murphy, head of the Soviet Russia Division, to hold Nosenko in solitary confinement for over three years. This confinement included 16 months in a small attic with no windows, furniture, heat or air conditioning. Human contact was completely banned. Nosenko was given a shower once a week and had no television, reading material, radio, exercise, or toothbrush. Interrogations were frequent and intensive. Nosenko spent an additional four months in a ten-foot by ten-foot concrete bunker in
Camp Peary.
Suspicion of foreign leaders Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Angleton privately accused various foreign leaders of being Soviet spies. He twice informed the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police that he believed
Prime Minister Lester Pearson and his successor
Pierre Trudeau were agents of the Soviet Union. Angleton accused Swedish
Prime Minister Olof Palme,
West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, and British Prime Minister
Harold Wilson of being assets for the Soviet Union.
Church Committee and resignation In 1973,
William Colby was named Director of Central Intelligence by
Richard Nixon. Colby reorganized the CIA in an effort to curb Angleton's influence and weaken the Counterintelligence branch, beginning by stripping him of control over the Israel desk. Colby demanded Angleton's resignation. Angleton came to public attention when the
Church Committee (formally the
Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) probed the CIA for information on domestic surveillance, specifically the operation known as
HT Lingual, as well as assassination plots and the
death of John F. Kennedy. In December 1974,
Seymour Hersh published a story in
The New York Times about domestic counter-intelligence activities against anti-war protesters and other domestic dissidents. Angleton's resignation was announced on Christmas Eve 1974, just as President
Gerald Ford demanded Director Colby report on the allegations and various congressional committees announced that they would launch their own inquiries. Angleton told reporters from
United Press International that he was resigning because "my usefulness has ended" and the CIA was getting involved in "
police state activities". Three of Angleton's senior aides retired within a week after it was made clear that they would be transferred elsewhere in the Agency rather than promoted. The counterintelligence staff was reduced from 300 to 80 people. In 1975, Angleton was awarded the CIA's
Distinguished Intelligence Medal. By this time, Angleton had been quietly rehired by the CIA at his old salary through a secret contract. Until September 1975, "operational issues remained solely the preserve of Angleton".
Aftermath The late 1970s were generally a period of upheaval for the CIA. During
George H. W. Bush's tenure as Director, President Ford authorized the creation of
Team B, a project concluding that the Agency and the intelligence community had seriously underestimated Soviet strategic nuclear strength in
Central Europe. Admiral
Stansfield Turner, on his appointment as DCI by President
Jimmy Carter in 1977, used Angleton as an example of the excesses in the Agency that he hoped to curb. He referred to this during his service and in his memoirs. Because of their suspicions, Angleton and his staff ultimately impeded the career advancement of numerous CIA employees. Forty employees are said to have been investigated and fourteen were considered serious suspects by Angleton's staff. The CIA paid compensation to three under what Agency employees termed the "Mole Relief Act". With Golitsyn, Angleton continued to seek out moles. They sought the assistance of
William F. Buckley, Jr. (himself a former CIA asset) to write
New Lies for Old, which argued that the Soviet Union planned to fake a collapse to lull its enemies into a false sense of victory, but Buckley refused. In his 1994 book
Wedge: The Secret War between the FBI and CIA, author Mark Riebling claimed that of 194 predictions made in
New Lies For Old, 139 had been fulfilled by 1993, nine seemed "clearly wrong", and the other 46 were "not soon
falsifiable". Angleton was outraged by the anti-CIA backlash of the 1970s, and was the founding chairman of a pro-intelligence
legal defense fund and lobbying organization, the Security and Intelligence Fund, in 1978. At the time of Angleton's death, the organization was called the Security and Intelligence Foundation. == Personal life and death ==