The Nation: The Spy Who Came into the Heat

Until recent weeks, James Angleton was a paradigm of his arcane trade. Cultivated in taste, shrewd in intellect, and above all discreet in his work for the CIA, Angleton, 57, was in the twilight of a distinguished career.

Then, suddenly, he became a casualty of the constant tension that a covert agency must live with in an open society. As the New York Times was about to blow his cover, Angleton blew his cool. In a telephone conversation with Seymour Hersh, he let slip that the CIA had a “source” in Moscow who was “still active and still productive.”

Last week, his career ended, Angleton’s gaunt, 6-ft. figure was more stooped than usual. His speech slurred by exhaustion, he insisted that his actions had been intended solely to protect the U.S. from its archenemy, the Soviet Union. Said he: “I have seen no change in the Soviets at any time, where the Soviets have ever deviated from their own desire to take over.”

Meanwhile, bits of information about his background surfaced. His late father, James Hugh Angleton, was a businessman with foreign connections. During World War II, the elder Angleton became a lieutenant colonel in the OSS. The son went to Yale (class of ’41). Fellow Student William Bundy, an ex-CIA man and now editor of Foreign Affairs, recalls Angleton as “a person of great depth in whom one sensed a constant searching.” Among other things, Angleton worked on the campus magazine, the Lit.

After Yale, Angleton spent two years at Harvard Law School, then followed his father into the OSS. Immediately after the war, he worked for a U.S. intelligence operation in Italy that helped pro-American politicians win election over leftist opponents. He joined the CIA when it was formed in 1947 and served for a while overseas.

Kim Philby, the British spy who defected to Moscow, mentioned Angleton in his book My Silent War. Philby found Angleton hard-driving and liked his American colleague. They frequently dined together, and Philby described him as “one of the thinnest men I have ever met and one of the biggest eaters.”

In 1954 Angleton assumed responsibility for counter-espionage—combatting the activities of adversary spooks round the world. Victor Marchetti, the ex-CIA official who turned agency critic, said that colleagues regarded Angleton as “a gentleman, a connoisseur of fine wines, an intellectual who knew orchids, and a fanatic who was always able to keep his fanaticism in rein.”

His indiscretion in dealing with Hersh astonished Angleton’s friends. Mourned one: “It was wildly out of character. I can only think that Jim cracked under the strain of knowing that the Times story was coming and there was nothing he could do about it.”