James Jesus Angleton, the CIA, and the Craft of CounterintelligenceAs chief of counterintelligence for the Central Intelligence Agency from the early 1950s to the early 1970s, James Jesus Angleton built a formidable reputation. Although perhaps best known for leading the agency's notorious Molehunt--the search for a Soviet spy believed to have infiltrated the upper levels of the American government--Angleton also played a key role in the U.S. intervention in the Italian election of 1948, in Israel's development of nuclear weapons, and in the management of the CIA's investigation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He later led CIA efforts to contain the Vietnam-era antiwar movement, including the campaign to destroy the liberal Catholic magazine Ramparts. In this deeply researched biography, Michael Holzman uses Angleton's story to illuminate the history of the CIA from its founding in the late 1940s to the mid-1970s. Like many of his colleagues in the CIA, James Angleton learned the craft of espionage during World War II as an officer in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), where he became a friend and protege of the British double agent Kim Philby. Yet Angleton's approach to counterintelligence was also influenced by his unusual Mexican American family background and his years at Yale as a student of the New Critics and publisher of modernist poets. His marriage to Cicely d'Autremont and the couple's friendship with E. E. and Marion Cummings became part of a network of cultural connections that linked the U.S. secret intelligence services and American writers and artists during the postwar period. Drawing on a broad range of sources, including previously unexamined archival documents, personal letters, and interviews, Holzman looks beneaththe surface of Angleton's career to reveal the sensibility that governed not only his personal aims and ambitions but those of the organization he served and helped shape. |
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James Jesus Angleton, the CIA, and the Craft of Counterintelligence Michael Holzman,Michael Howard Holzman No preview available - 2008 |
Common terms and phrases
Allen Dulles American antiwar Archives Army asked assassination became believed Bureau bureaucratic Burgess Burton Hersh career Central Intelligence Agency chief Church Committee CIA's Cicely Angleton Clandestine Colby Colby's Cold Cold War Communist Party counterespionage Counterintelligence Staff covert Cummings D'Autremont defector Director of Central domestic Edward Jay Epstein effort files Final Report foreign intelligence friends Gehlen German Golitsyn groups Hoover Houghton Library HT/LINGUAL Huston Plan Ibid illegal intel Intelligence Activities interrogation investigation Israel Israeli Italian Italy James Angleton Johnson Kennedy Kim Philby later liaison ligence London Lovestone Maclean mail-opening matter memorandum Meyer military Molehunt Moscow National Security Nixon Nosenko officer Operation CHAOS organizations Oswald penetration perhaps political Pound President Ramparts recruited responsibility Richard Helms Riebling Rome secret intelligence services sources Soviet Union spies story Sullivan tion told U.S. Government U.S. Senate United Washington William Wisner Yale York