This is an excerpt from the book, James Jesus Angleton: Was HeRight? (http://amzn.to/qIA9VT) By Edward Jay Epstein

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PROLOGUE THE FUNERAL OF AMIND WARRIOR

____________________________________________________________________ On May 14, 1987, some of the most powerful men in Washington, including senators,ambassadors, cabinet officers, generals, and two former directors of Central intelligence,gathered in a small church in Arlington, Virginia to pay their last respects to James JesusAngleton. The only decoration was a wreath of giant purple orchids, sent by Angleton’s former comrades in the OSS, the organization where forty-four years earlier he had begun his career as aspy. Few words were spoken, nor needed to be. The poem “Gerontion,” written by his friend T.S. Eliot, perfectly described his quest. It describes a blind man’s journey through a “wildernessof mirrors," a journey very much like Angleton’s effort to find his way through the labyrinth of deception in the Cold War. The service for the poet-spy was over in less than forty minutes.Most of those attending the service were familiar with Angleton’s extraordinary career. Hewas born on December 9,1917 in Boise, Idaho, the same year as the Russian Revolution. Hisfather, James Hugh Angleton, had been a cavalry officer in the Idaho national guard who had

met his mother, Carmen Mercedes Moreno, on a military expedition to Mexico. She was onlyseventeen year old when they married. She gave her son a common Mexican middle name,Jesus. Fifteen years later, his father bought the Italian franchise for the National Cash Register Company, and moved his family to Milan Italy. Angleton then went to Malvern College inEngland before going to Yale in 1937. There, together with his roommate Reed Whittemore, hefounded and edited

Furioso

, a quarterly devoted to original poetry. Through it, he publishedsuch leading poets as Ezra Pound, Archibald MacLeish, and e.e cummings. He graduated withhigh honors in 1941 and married Cicely d’Autremont. He briefly went to Harvard Law School, but never graduated. Instead he joined the U.S. Army, enrolling, along with his father, in theOffice of Strategic Services (OSS), America’s newly formed intelligence service. He was firststationed in London and then Rome. When the OSS was dissolved in 1945, Angleton wasassigned to a secret intelligence unit, called the "Central Intelligence Group," which became theCIA in 1947. Re-assigned to its Washington headquarters in 1949, he acted as the CIA liaisonwith the British, French, Italian, and West German intelligence services. Then in 1954, he wasmade the chief of the newly-created Counterintelligence Staff, a position which he held untilChristmas Eve of 1975 when he retired from the CIA.After his death, his actual achievements were eclipsed by his legend. In the media, he wastransmogrified into the CIA’s version of a Captain Ahab wreaking destruction of all around him by his pursuit of his own phantasmagorical great white whale. Books on the CIA depicted himas a paranoid mole hunter obsessively searching for non-existing spies planted in the heart of theCIA and non-existing deception plots aimed at the American government. His legend also became the stuff of fiction. He was the basis for a deranged and paranoid spy hunter ineverything from movies, such as

The Good Shepherd

(where he is played by Matt Damon) andTV mini-series, such as

The Company

(where he is played by Michael Keaton) to novels, such as Norman Mailer’s

Harlot’s Ghost

. Like many legends, his portrayal had some basis in reality. Itis true that he had deep-seated suspicions about KGB operations that could be construed as paranoia. It is also true that he conducted a 20 year long mole hunt, that he believed both theCIA and FBI were vulnerable to Soviet penetration at the highest level, and that the KGB passeddisinformation through intelligence channels to the White House. Even though these contentionsof a state-sponsored conspiracy to manipulate Presidents of the United States made him theobject of ridicule in the media, the question remains: Was Angleton right? _____________________________________________________________ PART ONE DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE ______________________________________________________________ [1]

Flowers of Deception

I first met James Jesus Angleton in February 1976. At that time, I knew nothing abouthis secret world of deception. Nor had I even heard of the concepts of "disinformation","dangles" "false flags" or "penetrations," which were central elements in it.I had just begun a book on Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F.

Kennedy. Although Oswald was investigated by the Warren Commission, the FBI, and other intelligence services, there was still a missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle– the nearly two yearsthat he had spent in the Soviet Union before he returned to the United States in 1962. What hadhappened to Oswald during this period? Had he had connections with Soviet intelligence duringthis Russian period? Had the KGB sponsored his return to the US? Had he been given anymission in America?I had now been offered an opportunity to exclusively interview a man who supposedlycould provide definitive answers to all these questions– Yuri Nosenko. He was the KGB officer who had not only superintended Oswald's handling in Moscow in 1959 but had also reviewed hisentire file KGB after the assassination. He then defected to the CIA. Not even the WarrenCommission had been allowed to interview him. Now Donald Jamison, who was handling Nosenko on behalf of the CIA, was making him available for a book I was writing for theReader’s Digest Press. “Nosenko is utterly reliable on the subject of Oswald,” Jamison assuredme, “He had full access to his KGB records.” How could I refuse such an offer?I had begun my interviews with Nosenko in January 1976. After I had completed sixhours of interviews with Nosenko, I found several of the assertions he made about the KGB'streatment of Oswald inconsistent with other evidence furnished the Warren Commission. Eventhough I was assured by his CIA handler that he was utterly reliable on the subject, and had fullaccess to KGB records, as he claimed, I was not completely satisfied. His insistence that theKGB had never contacted Oswald during his stay in the Soviet Union seemed implausible sinceOswald had loudly advertised on his arrival that he had some secret information of specialinterest to the Soviet Union.My doubts were not entirely alleviated. I had lunch later that week with a Sovietdiplomat in Washington, Igor Agou, to facilitate getting a visa to go to Russia. When I toldAgou that I wanted to interview a number of Russian citizens who had been acquaintances of Oswald, he replied, "there is no need for you to go to Russia.” He then, lowering his voice to awhisper, added, “the best source on Oswald's visit there is in America. He is Yuri Nosenko." Ifound it curious that the Soviet Embassy would recommend that I see a Soviet traitor: indeed, thesame traitor the CIA had also recommended to me.Disquieted by this coincidence, I went back to see Jamison. I pressed him about why, if Nosenko was such a valuable source, the Warren Commission had not called him as a witness in1964. After all, the Commission noted in its report that it lacked access to the Soviet files onOswald. According to both Jamison and Agou, Nosenko could have filled that gap.He answered that there had been some "minor problem" with Nosenko at that time. Theywere “technicalities” about his defection that had now been cleared up. When I asked further about the problem, he said that it was "too sensitive" to be discussed. He closed the issue bysaying "In any case, it is not relevant to your book. Don’t worry about it further."But I did. I began looking for an ex-CIA officer who would know about the problemwith Nosenko in 1964. In 1975, the investigative reporter Seymour Hersh had published a storyin the

New York Times

reporting an illegal CIA counterintelligence activity that resulted in thefiring of a number of CIA executives. The most prominent among them was James JesusAngleton, who, on checking his name, I found that he had also been a liaison with the WarrenCommission.Making contact with Angleton was not difficult; he was listed in the Virginia telephonedirectory. When told him on the phone that I had interviewed Nosenko, he said “I wouldn’t havethought they would be letting him out so soon– but I would be very interested in what he has to