Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton - Cia's Master Spy Hunter

by Tom Mangold

A biography of the spymaster who ran the CIA's counterintelligence operation for twenty years until his downfall

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Espionage, Conspiracy Theories

464 pages, Hardcover

First published June 15, 1991

Reviews

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the early 60's the CIA realized it was in a strange position: They had 2 KGB defectors, both of whom revealed important "secrets" from the other side, both of whom claimed to have "information" about the assassination of JFK and the KGB, and both of whom insisted that the other was a double-agent sent to discredit them. Was Yuri Nosenko the real deal, with his patently unbelievable assurances that the KGB had taken no interest in Oswald during his stay in Russia? Or was Anatoliy Golitsyn telling the truth, with his fantastical, delusional-sounding declarations that the KGB had engineered a 50-year plan to fake their own demise and then reassert themselves later? Were they both false defectors, sent to confuse the CIA into a state of paralysis? James Jesus Angleton, the CIA's head of counter-intelligence, a bony, socially awkward florist, believed Golitsyn. And so began the CIA's descent into the "wilderness of mirrors", and the ultimate collapse of American intelligence. In his time, Angleton was the CIA's master spy catcher. By the time of his forced retirement after multiple administrations, however, he'd ordered domestic spying on American anti-war citizens and set in motion a series of abuses that ended with the Church and Pike congressional hearings into the CIA's illegal activities. In his quest to catch spies he missed the biggest of all, when his long-time best friend and close working associate, British agent Kim Philby, turned out to be a career mole and defected to Russia. Angleton, personally betrayed and professionally humiliated, immersed himself in a quest to prove Yuri Nosenko a fraud. Though it doesn't come close to presenting the final verdict on the Nosenko / Golitsyn affair, Cold Warrior does go a long way toward explaining James Jesus Angleton. The witch-hunts he began (officially called HONETOL) "crippled" the CIA, in the words of operatives then and now. The careers of literally hundreds of innocent agents were permanently ruined, and virtually e-v-e-r-y subsequent defector from Russia was either rejected or never utilized, right up to the end of the Cold War. The end result of Angleton's subsequent paranoid breakdown was 40 years of paralysis and confusion on the part of the CIA. (It also caused the breakdown of the CIA's relationship with the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover thought Angleton was nuts. Think about that for a second.) As is revealed in former CIA agent Tennent Bagley's 2007 book Spy Wars, the CIA decided to treat both former KGB agents - when all evidence said one or both were false - as true. That kind of pathological, systemic unwillingness to examine its own failures was not the fault of James Jesus Angleton. Despite the conclusions of this fascinating and well-researched book, in the end it was the willingness of the agency to bury the affair in favor of its bureaucratic survival that truly crippled the American intelligence community and turned the CIA into a structural failure incapable of collecting intelligence, or predicting not just the terror attacks of 9/11, but the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of communism in Russia, the rise of Putin, the fall of Saigon, the lack of WMD in Iraq, India developing the bomb...

FURTHER READING: "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA" by Tim Weiner, "Wilderness of Mirrors" by David C. Martin, "Molehunt: The Secret Search for Traitors that Shattered the CIA" by David Wise, "Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald" by Edward Jay Epstein, "Burn Before Reading" by Admiral Stansfield Turner and "Spy Wars" by Tennent H. Bagley. None of these books will give you a clear answer to the Nosenko / Golitsyn affair or the terror it wreaked on the US intelligence community, but they will reveal the scope of utter confusion felt even today by intelligence experts still trying to sort the whole business out.

NC

[Lewis Weinstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

How can a book which leaves so many questions be 5* ?

Was Angleton right or wrong? How much did Angleton's behavior hurt the CIA, and more importantly, America? How can we ever trust the CIA or any other organization whose business is spying and opposing spies?

Angleton, perhaps the most important CIA officer in history, for both good reasons and bad, was ultimately fired, but was he wrong?

Mangold's account is fascinating. But is it true?

[Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book attempts to trace and describe the damage done to the CIA (and other intelligence agencies) by the Cold War obsessions of James Jesus Angleton, who ran the Counterintelligence Department from the 1950s to the 1970s. James Angleton, scion of a wealthy and well-connected American family, was partially educated in Italy and England, acquiring a sophisticated and glamorous circle of friends in the intelligence communities. He made a career in the CIA as the person responsible for spying on the Soviet Union. The defection of Kim Philby to the USSR shocked him to the core. If he could have been so deceived by someone he had socialized and worked with, then was there any certainty left about who was on whose side? Adding fuel to the fire of his incipient paranoia was the Russian defector Golitsyin. Golitsyin, a low to mid level KGB man, knew very well that the comfort of his life in the USA would be determined by the information he was able to provide to his debriefers. And so he started to spin tales, all of which Angleton swallowed hook, line and sinker. This led directly to three major catastrophes for the CIA 's intelligence gathering efforts. First, they simply did not believe the evidence of world politics. Golitsyin maintained that the USSR and China were in fact great buddies, despite all evidence to the contrary. So Angleton and his cronies had a totally skewed view on one of the most important events in world communism. Second, when a much higher ranking KGB officer, Nosenko, defected, Angleton became convinced that he was a KGB plant. Nosenko spent years in solitary confinement in the USA and much of his most valuable information was never followed up on. Third, and perhaps most importantly, Angleton became convinced that there was a mole in the CIA. And so he spent more than a decade trying to identify this man. Innnocent CIA officers found their careers inexplicably stalled, often for no other reason than that they were able to speak Russian or were of Russian ancestry. Others fell victim to "guilt by association" thinking, e.g if they had served in the same city as known spies, they were considered to be traitors themselves. All the information these suspected persons were able to gather was discounted as being most likely planted by the KGB in a cunning game of misinformation.

Ultimately, I think the book is an indictment of the Old Boys Network. Angleton was able to continue doing what he did because he was a trusted buddy of the CIA director (Richard Helms). No one checked what he was doing. No one cared that he was creating a CIA within the CIA. Nobody took a long, hard look at what he and his department were up to - not until a new director came in and asked some simple questions like "how many spies do we have in the USSR"? It is incredible that this was able to go on for so long...

Although the book was fascinating reading, I give it two stars because I am not convinced of the accuracy of all the information. I noticed that the authors repeatedly refer to Systemic Lupus Erythematosus as a viral infection, or as a blood disease. This was only a detail in the overall story (it had to do with the question of someone died a natural death or was murdered by the KGB), but it was clear that the authors had not done a good job of fact-checking. So I wondered whether the other, more important facts in the book might suffer from similar sloppiness.

Anyway, this is the real-life stuff that is described novelistically in John Le Carre's books!

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

James Angleton has been mentioned in all the books I've read about the CIA during the Cold War, usually as a mysterious power behind the scenes. As the virtually unaccountable director of its counterintelligence for two decades he managed, according to author Mangold, to seriously hamper the agency as his increasing paranoia led to one wild goose chase after another in search of nonexistent moles. This book does address Angleton's personal life--a little, but this was a man, apparently, with not much of that. Indeed, most of the text covers the lives of the men whose careers Angleton hampered or destroyed.

[Andrew Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

The extraordinary life of one of the most important - and hitherto mysterious - players in the Cold War. As head of Counter Intelligence at the CIA, Angleton's job was to find and root out double agents in his own midst, a task which would make anyone paranoid. But Angleton was not the gung-ho Cold Warrior of stereotype. He loved poetry (especially TS Eliot), grew orchids and was a skilled worker in leather and gold, not to mention a world class fly fisherman. He was also charismatic and loved by his friends and neighbours' children, while being a stranger to his own, doomed to a lonely domestic life by the need for secrecy. The KGB think Angleton helped them by paralysing his own organisation. Wonderfully researched in difficult circumstances (ie the CIA drew down the shutters), 'Cold Warrior' is a both fascinating historical document and brilliant character study.

[PyranopterinMo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Angleton comes across as a misguided paranoid who accrued far to much power in an unregulated spy agency. But there were some notorious spy cases after he left. The greatest accusation one can level against him are his actions against some defectors. Worth reading as this was the period just before congress stepped in as well as a stronger CIA chief. How much can you believe is always a question with spy agencies

[Ferris Mx · Rating 4 out of 5]

Presumably Angleton did some things well to get the responsibility and power he had at the CIA; this book doesn't spend a lot of time explaining that. Rather, it goes into meticulous depth into how a (major) mistake accepting Philby led to a life of paranoia and destruction. Angleton crippled our intelligence regarding the Soviet Union by all means possible - controlling and burying information to protect the one impotent spy he believed had the keys to the kingdom. And people let him.

[Stefan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cold Warrior by Tom Mangold is a well written biography of a complicated and controversial man which gives justice to Angleton's unhealthy mental state, his apparent genius at the beginning of his counter-intelligence career, and his downfall that ended a legend. I found this book quite fascinating because I first read about Angleton in the book Spytime by William F. Buckley Jr. Since I found Buckley's personification of Angleton fascinating, I wanted to a read a non-fiction book that would better familiarize me with Angleton and the CIA during the period he controlled counter-intelligence. This book also has the distinction of re-interesting me in the cold war. I had previously read Spy Catcher by Peter Wright and had found it extremely dry and boring yet this was the complete opposite a fast paced but factually informative piece of reading that helped me place and memorize and the importance intelligence names, dates, and events of the cold war. Cold Warrior is a read that was as entertaining as informative, and as controversial as thoughtful.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A new biography of Angleton is coming out next month which jogged my memory of reading this book back in the early '90s. That I remember having read it 25 years ago is an indication of how good it must have been; I read so many books that the mediocre ones fade from memory. I remember that I was shocked at the lengths Angleton went to in order to root out Soviet "moles", and in doing so probably damaged agents who were innocent of his charge against them. I'm sure this is out of print by now, but it is definitely worth reading.

[Ryan Nary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book, though I wish it dedicated more than a few pages to Operation CHAOS, which was mentioned almost in passing toward the end of the book

[RANGER · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tremendous analysis of the cost of one man's hubris on national security

For much of his long career in the CIA, James Jesus Angleton, the CIA's Chief of Counterintelligence, was regarded as a veritable "living legend." Angleton's intelligence career began with the OSS during WWII. He then joined the CIA at its founding and within six years achieved the lofty position of Chief of Counterintelligence. It was a classic case of getting in on the ground floor at the right time and speeding up the ladder. He would reign in that position of influence until forced out to retirement in 1975. But achieving such a lofty position at a young age and bearing the mantle of a legend has its risks. Angleton was a singularly stubborn, paranoid, narcissistic, defensive, and opinionated character who wrote his own rules and probably single-handedly did more damage to US espionage than a battalion of KGB agents with a master key to the Pentagon. At some point in the early 60s, Angleton became convinced that several "moles" (double-agents) had penetrated every single US and allied intelligence agency. He spent the remainder of his career undermining every espionage operation, agent, handler, source, operative and defector connected to the Soviets and the Warsaw Pact until the entire Western spy world was frozen into an ice-floe of distrust, mistrust and bureaucratic inaction. Even worse, Angleton fell under the influence of a Soviet defector con-man named Anatoliy Golitsin who convinced Angleton that Western Intelligence was not only penetrated but also hopelessly deceived by the KGB's grand master deception strategy which rendered all intelligence from behind the Iron Curtain as mere disinformation. This is the main thesis of Tom Mangold's brilliant investigation into the life of James Jesus Angleton. Cold Warrior, James Jesus Angleton: The CIA's Master Spy Hunter, is a very unusual biography in that Mangold isn't just telling us about Angleton's life and career as much as he is uncovering the damaged caused by Angleton's personality flaws -- excessive hubris coupled with delusional paranoia -- on US intelligence operations. Angleton was a backwards thinking man who seemed obsessed with grand strategies of pre-WWII Soviet espionage. His misplaced trust in Golitsin led him to not only dismiss every credible defector and in-place agent who followed him, but to also destroy any US allied intelligence and CI personalities who didn't support the Angleton-Golitsin counterintelligence paradigm. It's a great book with a powerful message about the corrupted culture of personality, secrecy and power that can exist inside the insular world of intelligence. As an author and former intelligence officer, I found Mangold's investigative journalism compelling and readable (I recommend his Vietnam history, The Tunnel of Cu Chi).
Highly recommended for all who have an interest in US history, national security, intelligence/counterintelligence operations, conspiracy and government secrets.

[Pete daPixie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The BBC's Tom Mangold has produced a profound eye-opener with this extraordinary biography of CIA's counterintelligence chief Jim Angleton. 'Cold Warrior', published in 1991, focuses on and charts the two decades of Angleton's tenure as the head of CI., from 1954 through to 1974.
If Tom Mangold and co-author Jeff Goldberg had concluded in the Epilogue that Angleton was to be judged a Soviet operative from Moscow Centre I could readily accept their pronouncement.
'Cold Warrior' is a meticulously researched piece of journalism. Readers will be both disturbed and incredulous at the catalogue of damage that Angleton incurred, not just to CIA and the destroyed careers of agents, but the damage to foreign intelligence networks, the deaths of agents and the many rejections of genuine Soviet defectors. None more so than the case of KGB Lieutenant Colonel Yuriy Nosenko in 1964.
If anyone's rampant paranoia created a mountain out of a supposed mole in the Langley H.Q. it was the man behind CI/SIG, who searched for over a decade to expose the illusive double agent. In reality he was 'the shoeless hunter who's gone deaf but still remains.'

[Vivian Valvano · Rating 3 out of 5]

Again, a book that I read for my paper on ULYSSES in the film THE GOOD SHEPHERD. Again, not great writing but lots of interesting information - and a good deal of tedious repetition and going on and on and on. But it, and the other books, were worth it for my purposes. This one is a biography of Angleton, focusing mostly on his CIA career - and its aftermath. Paranoic doesn't begin to describe the state of Angleton as his quest for moles (Soviet agents, betrayers of CIA secrets to the KGB) intensified. The list of people whom he suspected and had investigated in his later years is hilarious until you realize that this man had a position of power in the center of the espionage world, representing the USA. To name a few: Harold MacMillan, Averill Harriman, Henry Kissinger (hmm... Kissinger...). There is much more to the career of Angleton, but I just and to write that!

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book chronicles the career of James Angleton, chief of the CIA's counterintelligence office from 1954 to 1975. Tom Mangold uses a variety of sources (primarily documentary and interviews with Angleton's associates). As for his use of unnamed sources, take those as you will. Overall, he paints a picture of a deeply devoted but flawed man of fixed convictions; secretive even by the standards of an intelligence agency. Much of the book details Angleton's relationship with Anatoliy Golitsyn and the unbelievable faith Angleton had in the dodgy KGB defector. The book at times seems to be more about Golitsyn and his complex conspiracy theorizing, including labeling all subsequent defectors as plants, asserting the presence of innumerable Soviet agents in western intelligence agencies, and insisting that the Sino-Soviet split was a ruse. All of this Angleton, and many other "Fundamentalists" in the CIA, would support fully. The resulting paranoid witch hunts would consume not only the American but also British, French, Canadian, and Norwegian intelligence communities. Real defectors were mistreated, lost, or killed, loyal agents were branded as traitors, and genuine intelligence not acted upon. Ultimately, Mangold suggests that Angleton's idiosyncratic, paranoid, and sometimes illegal behavior would greatly undermine the CIA's ability to counter the genuine threat of Soviet espionage.

[Mark Filipovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

subcutaneous, molehunt, perfidy, suborn, provocation, ecology, concomitant, unbowed, wilderness, bathos

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

2nd reading