JAMES JESUS ANGLETON
(The CIA's Master Spy Hunter?)

By William Louis McDonald Sr. © 2000
Essay Opinion

In the annals of the CIA's secret history, no man's name stands better known than James Jesus Angleton, the Legendary "Master Spy Hunter" who was as much a "Fundamentalist" institution within the headquarters complex at Langley, Virginia, as J. Edgar Hoover was as the Director of the FBI, or Hyman Rick over was as the father of the U.S. Navy's nuclear submarine fleet.

James Jesus Angleton was born in Boise, Idaho, in 1917, the first son of a dashing US Cavalry officer/National Cash Register Company (NCR) businessman and a vivacious Mexican mother. He was a true war hero from the second world war having accomplished incredible feats in intelligence collection, counterintelligence against the Nazis and their Fascist Italian allies, and in turning Nazi officials into "Moles" and double agents against their own people in Northern Italy as a member of General "Wild Bill" Donovan's Office of Strategic Services (OSS) from 1942-1945. He was close to communist partisans who fought to free Italy from the Fascist rule of Mussolini. In 1947, he went on to work in the field of counterintelligence with the brand new CIA, and in 1955 was appointed Chief of Counterintelligence, under the Directorate of Operations, a post he'd hold for nineteen years.

As a UFO investigator, I was approached by numerous colleagues who Hold the opinion that James Jesus Angleton would be an individual such As J. Edgar Hoover, General Douglas MacArthur, Lt. General Hoyt Vandenberg and General "Wild Bill" Donovan, who sought out and kept secret files on UFO crash retrievals and alien cadaver recoveries. I've studied Angleton's career in great detail. He was NO hero. In my Opinion based upon researching his career, he had NO access to UFO Secrets. NO need to know. And certainly NO personal friends who would trust him with such information given his Paranoiac "Fundamentalist" feelings that would lead him to suspect his own friends and colleagues of being hidden, high level Soviet moles. Comment: For reports that take a different view than the above please see James Jesus Angleton, the CIA's DDCI by Tim Cooper And, The Men Who Killed Kennedy, see bottom of page.

He was manifesting symptoms of paranoia and borderline psychosis as far back as his appointment as Chief of Counterintelligence in 1955. His relationship with Kim Philby and Philby's final defection via Beirut in 1963 was the final straw that pushed him over the edge. Dr. John Gittinger who was a senior Staff Psychologist within the Agency, made this assessment which was backed up by independent outside assessments in the years after DCI William Colby fired (Forced him to retire) him in December of 1974.

It is my personal belief that Angleton's intimacy with Philby was something to where he confided personal confidences to the point that a very paranoid Angleton might worry that Philby might believe and convey to the USSR that the famed Counterintelligence Chief of the CIA was a latent homosexual--More realistically a bisexual since he had a wife and children-His effeminate mannerisms would have been masked (Covered) by that very English style (Note: he was half Mexican on his mother's side) he exuded when in the social company of men. I don't think he ever had sex with a man; but rather, Philby was such a genius that he could play on those deeply repressed personality traits that Philby observed that Angleton may not have known he had. And then there was Angleton's deep friendships with some well known effeminate poets, writers, artists and Italian Communists.

Angleton lived in constant fear that the KGB would contact him with the threat of "Outing" him to his colleagues at the CIA's Office of Security. Neither Allen Dulles nor Dick Helms could have dug him out of that mess.

Philby has stated in interviews from Russia that he enjoyed "Playing" both Angleton and Allen Dulles.

Beginning in 1962 and by 1964, Angleton was in this VERY sick co-dependent "Relationship with a two-bit KGB paranoid "Loser" defector by the name of Anatoliy Golitsyn. When a very high level Second Directorate KGB official (Yuriy Nosenko) defected in 1962, Golitsyn knew and reasonably feared that his limited value to the CIA, FBI and Army Intel would come to a fast conclusion. He had good reason to fear this because he had over-exaggerated his value to the KGB (In reality he was very low level and very mediocre with access to very little information of any real value). Golitsyn played Angleton's paranoia and the two became a continual refueling cycle. All real defectors, Golitsyn and Angleton argued were in effect part of a grand Sino-Soviet conspiracy to fool and misdirect the west. From 1964 until 1974, both the Soviet Division and the Counterintelligence Divisions were at a virtual standstill due to the internal "Witch Hunt" and "Reign of terror" that Angleton and his boys ran in this ten year bogus search for internal moles-Operation "HONETOL." Former Angleton friend and confident, David Murphy, CIA Chief of the Soviet Division, and an original "Fundamentalist" himself, became a suspect of the Counterintelligence crew's internal molehunt in 1968, forcing his transfer from the Soviet Division to Chief of Station in Paris, just because he admitted that he was open to Yuriy Nosenko's bona-fides being legitimate. It is my opinion after sifting through many books and interviews that Angleton could not afford any good new defectors as they might bring bad news concerning Angleton's supposed manhood. Golitsyn was afraid that a really good Soviet defector would expose him as a defector running a major confidence scheme and that the CIA would cut all his purse strings.

Nosenko became the CIA's secret prisoner in total isolation for over five years. Tortured, mentally tortured, even raped by his interrogators. Another Russian, Yuriy Loginov was betrayed, long distance by Angleton, arrested by the South African Police, and turned over to the KGB at the East German border in 1969. At least five legitimate defectors were betrayed by Angleton in his paranoia to be executed by the KGB and GRU because of that quiet monster. He personally boasted while drinking with Sir Charles Spry, the DIRECTOR GENERAL of the AUSTRALIAN SECRET INTELLIGENCE ORGANIZATION, that he personally "Knocked back" at least twenty-two Soviet intelligence defectors that he (Angleton) considered to be provocations. Angleton informed Spry that he was sure that all of them had been sent by some KGB mastermind to try and fool the KGB and the FBI. Every single defector since Golitsyn is a fake, he proclaimed. The "Sino-Soviet split" was a sham-A ruse to confuse the western intelligence agencies.

DCI Colby & New CI Chief Kalaris had to clean up the whole sorry, sick mess. Angleton had literally two dozen safes loaded with files spirited away from the Central filing system at Langley. There is EVERY reason to believe that Angleton took some home or stashed them elsewhere as he had also left 1500 copied files in Golitsyn's custody in upstate New York-In 1975, Former Brazil Chief of Station, George Kalaris, now appointed the new CI Chief to replace Angleton, had to track down Golitsyn at his upstate New York cabin even as an FBI buddy's black bag team was breaking into Golitsyn's town home in Manhattan to recover top secret files that should never have left the HQ complex at Langley.

DCI's Colby, Schlesinger, and Turner all blamed Angleton for crippling CI for nearly twenty years and inhibiting the operations of the Soviet Bloc Division for over ten. Case officers refused to recruit Soviet agents because they were afraid Angleton would stamp their service records with the dreaded black "H" for "HONETOL" which meant all future promotions and rewards were canceled. 40 Loyal top of the line officers' careers were wrongly derailed and only a few have ever had absolution from a DCI after their forced retirements. Another 40 counterintelligence
cases where real moles were found in MI5, MI6, France's secret security police, Australia's secret service and the State Department-Their discoveries, arrests, and prosecutions were delayed by years.

CIA staff psychologist Dr. John Gittinger wrote in his reports that Golitsyn was a paranoid borderline psychotic and that Angleton's delusions were feeding off this Golitsyn, the scam artist.

Anyone wishing to conduct further research on CI Chief Angleton should locate a copy of the biography "COLD WARRIOR, James Jesus Angleton: The CIA's Master Spy Hunter," by research journalist Tom Mangold. The book is published by Simon & Schuster, 1991. I studied eight other books, and over a dozen web sites, and interviewed three of my father's former CIA associates to achieve this current hypothesis and opinion on Angleton. Tom Mangold's book is not only foundational, it's really the last word on Angleton. Also the Church Committee's findings (!975-1977)are on the public record for those who wish to dig. Retired DCI, Admiral Stansfield Turner is also open to discussions on Angleton and is uncomplimentary At best.

I think it's appropriate we researchers should trace the Angleton diaries. But if Angleton's purported grandson is playing at such a mystery man persona-Not wanting us to know how to contact him and where he lives, then perhaps he has inherited some of that Angleton mental illness from his granddad-If the retired Counterintelligence Chief is truly his granddad. This young man could be running a scam.

James Jesus Angleton was NO "Spymaster," and absolutely a failed "Spycatcher." He was ineffective as CI Chief for twenty years and NO American hero after the dissolution of the OSS on 20 SEPTEMBER 1945.

As for OSS UFO files-We should be after General "Wild Bill" Donovan's descendants. He was as well connected as GEN Douglas MacArthur.

And let us NOT forget J.Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson. My money is on the testimonies from retired FBI officials that they had far more interesting "X"-Files than "'X'-FILES" TV show creator/producer Chris Carter ever imagined. Far more files of substance than James Jesus Angleton and his "Fundamentalist" followers on their best day.