James Angleton
| James Jesus Angleton | |
|---|---|
James Jesus Angleton
|
|
| Allegiance |
 United States
|
| Service |
Central Intelligence Agency United States Army |
| Active | 1947–1975 |
| Rank | Counterintelligence (CI) Chief (1954–1975) |
| Operation(s) |
Enigma Code Manhattan Project Operation CHAOS |
| Award(s) | Distinguished Intelligence Medal |
|
|
|
| Born |
December 9, 1917 Boise, Idaho, United States |
| Died | May 11, 1987 (aged 69) Sibley Memorial Hospital, Washington, D.C., United States |
| Cause of death |
Lung cancer |
| Buried | Morris Hill Cemetery 43°36′27″N 116°13′45.83″W / 43.60750°N 116.2293972°W |
| Nationality | American |
| Parents |
|
| Spouse | Cicely Harriet d'Autremont |
| Children | 3 |
| Alma mater | |
James Jesus Angleton (December 9, 1917 – May 11, 1987) was chief of CIA Counterintelligence from 1954 to 1975. His official position within the organization was "Associate Deputy Director of Operations for Counterintelligence (ADDOCI)". Angleton was significantly involved in the U.S. response to the purported KGB defectors Anatoliy Golitsyn and Yuri Nosenko. Angleton later became convinced the CIA harbored a high-ranking mole, and engaged in an intense search. Whether this was a highly destructive witch hunt or appropriate caution vindicated by later moles remains a subject of intense historical debate.
According to one-time Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms: "In his day, Jim was recognized as the dominant counterintelligence figure in the non-communist world." Investigative journalist Edward Jay Epstein agrees with the high regard in which Angleton was held by his colleagues in the intelligence business, and adds that Angleton earned the "trust ... of six CIA directors—including Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, Allen W. Dulles and Richard Helms. They kept Angleton in key positions and valued his work."
James Jesus Angleton was born in Boise, Idaho, to James Hugh Angleton and Carmen Mercedes Moreno. His parents met in Mexico while his father was a U.S. Army cavalry officer serving under General John Pershing. His father purchased the NCR franchise in pre-war Italy, where he became head of the American Chamber of Commerce and later joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).
James Jesus Angleton's boyhood was spent in Milan, Italy, where his family moved after his father bought NCR's Italian subsidiary. He then studied as a boarder at Malvern College in England before going to Yale. The young Angleton was a poet and, as a Yale undergraduate, editor, with Reed Whittemore, of the Yale literary magazine Furioso, which published many of the best-known poets of the inter-war period, including William Carlos Williams, E. E. Cummings and Ezra Pound. He carried on an extensive correspondence with Pound, Cummings and T. S. Eliot, among others, and was particularly influenced by William Empson, author of Seven Types of Ambiguity. He was trained in the New Criticism at Yale by Maynard Mack and others, chiefly Norman Holmes Pearson, a founder of American Studies, and briefly studied law at Harvard, but did not graduate.
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