PERSONALITY The Making of a Master Spy In the best tradition of the spy mas- came into view, waist-deep in the icy wa- ters, James Jesus Angleton, 57, always ter and feeling for safe footing among the worked in the shadows, his identity as the slippery rocks. He was using a 2%-oz. Central Intelligence Agency's chief of Leonard rod and casting with easy counterintelligence known to few besides grace, the tiny fly landing lightly BO or 90 other key spooks, his family and a hand- below him. He took '4 hours to draw ful of close friends. Now, the controversy abreast of us, never quitting a run or a over the CIA's domestic activities, in which pool until he had tested every inch of the Angleton's staff was accused of having surface with one or another of some doz- spied massively and illegally on U.S. cit- en flies. In the end, though, he had five izens, has made his name notorious. He fine native trout in his creel. was forced to resign from the CIA in De- Such meticulousness stood him well cember, and last week he testified for 2% in the grinding, exhausting and unfor- hours before the presidential commission giving discipline of counterintelligence. investigating the CU. Ile denied any role His job was to locate, identify and neu- injhe domestic spying, saying that the se- tralize the operations of hostile espio- cret unit that ran the operation reported nage agents, particularly those of the RACII 1,11C1,71,1 Soviet KGB, at home and abroad. The task offered few rewards and demanded an angler's perseverance and pa- tience, unflagging watchful- ness and a passion for ano- nymity. General William Donovan, the director of the Office of Strategic Services (a precursor to the CIA), called him the OSS's "most profes- sional counterintelligence of- ficer." In the years that fol- lowed, all the directors of the CIA leaned on him. Allen Dulles seldom made a move on the clandestine side with- 1 out first consulting him. Wal- ter Bedell Smith made him his youthful eminence grise and bequeathed him his cher- ished fly-tying equipment. John McCune found him a fascinating and shrewd counselor. Trusted Bridge. Angle- ton had a storybook back- ground for his work. His Illinois-born father, James FORMER COUNTERINTELLIGENCE CHIEF ANGLETON Hugh Angleton, joined the A passion for anonymity. National Guard in Idaho in 1916 and chased Pancho Vil- directly to then CIA Director Richard la south of the border under General Helms and was only nominally under the John J. ("Black Jack") Pershing. While counterintelligence chiefs control. For all there, Angleton courted and married a the interest in him, Angleton remains a beautiful Mexican girl of 17. On return- mysterious figure, his 31-year career as a ing to Boise, where their first son, chris- highly successful spy virtually unknown. tened James Jesus, was born in 1917, To fill in some of the blanks, TIME asked Angleton pere established himself as a Angleton's longtime friend and admirer star salesman for the National Cash Charles J. V. Murphy, a former editor Register Co. In the 1920s he took charge and Washington correspondent of FOR- of the company's European operations. TUNE, for this highly personal portrait of In 1933 he bought the firm's franchise the master spy: for Italy and moved his family to Milan and later to Rome, where they lived in a I had known Jim Angleton for years, handsome old villa. For years he headed but I had never fully appreciated some of the American Chamber of Commerce in his qualities until a fishing trip to the Ad- Italy and was the trusted bridge between irondacks 14 years ago. It was a bone- the American embassy and Italian chilling early spring day, and with an- industry. other member of the party, I had retired His son's familiarity with high cui- fishless to the bank for a consoling drink sine, wine and good tailoring was thus and to wait for Angleton. Finally, he all naturally acquired. So too was his TIME, FEBRUARY 24, 1975 • F • •*, MKAr+.0. J■17;;71.01. - " '41.R.;4 ANGLETON ON A FISHING TRIP TO ENGLAND (1964) At home with Dante, poker and handicapping horses. profound abhorrence of totalitarianism. tered Harvard Law School and Says Angleton "If one has lived much of married Cicely d'Autremont of his life abroad, as I have, one is apt to Tucson, Ariz., a junior at Vassar. judge his country more precious than do He was called up in 1943, put those who know no other country well." through basic training and also He recalls the day in 1936, when he was assigned to oss and sent to Italy. 18 and working through a summer hol- His unit uncovered some of the iday as an apprentice mechanic in Na- secret correspondence between tional Cash Register's Paris factory, that Hitler and Mussolini that was the workers heard about the Wehrmacht later introduced into the Nurem- reoccupation of the Rhineland. Says An- berg trials as proof of their gleton: "The workers to a man threw conspiracy. down their tools and standing at atten- After the war, Donovan tion sang the Marseillaise. Then they asked him to help the provision- streamed into the street, cursing the gov- al Italian government beat off ernment. I stayed up all night, listening a threatened Communist take- • • ...- to the furious talk of the workers in the over. Angleton assisted the cars- I ' - bistros. It was my first political experi- binieri in rebuilding a counter- WITH GENERAL DONOVAN AT VATICAN (1946) ence—an experience in despair. And the intelligence service. Through it, war lengthened the experience. While he acquired the Soviet instructions to the cret Service; George Paques, a NATO of- gathering evidence for the Nuremberg Italian Communists for supporting the ficial whose activities were in part the war trials, I came upon the horrifying Greek Communists in the civil war in basis of the book and film Topaz; and proof of the extermination of 6 million Greece. He and his principal associate Heinz Felfe, a high-ranking officer of the Jews. To prevent war, to preserve free- for all of his career, Raymond Rocca, West German intelligence service. dom are continuing causes with me. who retired recently from the CIA, where Angleton's CIA staff was small—no They have shaped may life." he had been Angleton's chief deputy, more than a few score, mostly senior After 3% years at Malvern College in ferreted out the exchange of correspon- men who had been with him since the England, he entered Yale in the class of dence between Stalin and Tito that fore- agency's founding. They were chiefly 1941. Says Poet Reed Whittemore, An- shadowed the 1948 breach between specialists on the "adversary" services; a gleton's college roommate and still a them. foreign intelligence officer says that the close friend; "He was quite British in his Late in 1947 Angleton resigned from operation was "the best in the world." ways, though he had treasured his Mid- the Army as a major and returned to Three of' Angleton's people, including dle Western accent. He was a mixture of Washington. By then, he had become, as Rocca, have left the agency, angry over pixiness and earnestness, very much at he puts it, "sharply aware of the Soviet its failure to stand by their boss. home in Italian literature, especially long-term objectives in subversion." Forced Out. His defenders regard Dante, as well as the fine points of hand- Having long ago turned his back on law, Angleton as a casualty of the times. They icapping horses. He was an owl; he he joined the CIA, which had been cre- believe that he was forced out because stayed up late, talking, reading or play- ated some months earlier. Angleton was some important U.S. policymakers no ing poker." put in charge of helping to organize its longer hold counterintelligence an indis- Original Poetry. In their junior clandestine side. pensable function and so strongly be- year, Whittemore and Angleton edited a Many of Angleton's covert opera- lieve in the durability of détente that quarterly of original poetry, called Fu- tions after he joined the CIA remain se- they are uncomfortable with a clandes- "'ow, financed mostly by subscriptions cret. The only people who know what he tine organization that persists in regard- raised by Whittemore's aunt. Contribu- really did are his superiors and those ing the KGB as a serious threat. In this 'yrs included Ezra Pound, E.E. Cum- who worked with him. One exploit that respect, Angleton's departure is rem- mings, Archibald MacLeish and Wil- can be told came early in 1956. In col- iniscent of the fate of a fictional counter- liam Carlos Williams. Rates were $1 a laboration with a friendly intelligence intelligence man, George Smiley, the sad page. "When we were short of money, service, his unit acquired a copy of Ni- hero of John le Carres Tinker, Tailor, which was most of the time," Whitte- kita Khrushchev's famed denunciation Soldier, Spy. Fired during a staff shake- more remembers, "we paid off our poets of Stalin to the 20th Party Congress. An- up at the British Secret Service, Smiley with fine Italian cravats from the stock gleton and his lieutenants also developed was later called back to root out a sus- Hutt the Angleton haberdasher in Italy the evidence that helped lead the FBI in pected "mole," or traitor, who had bur- kept replenishing." 1957 to the KGB agent Colonel Rudolf rowed deeply into his old organization.