THE CENTER FOR INTELLIGENCE STUDIES

James Jesus Angleton, The CIA, and the Craft of Counterintelligence is the first full biography of the late and legendary James Angleton, the long-serving Chief of the Counterintelligence Staff of the Central Intelligence Agency. It is based upon significant original material from archives, documents garnered through extensive Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, interviews, and previously unpublished personal correspondence.

Angleton began his career, somewhat inauspiciously, as a friend and protégé of the British traitor and double-agent Kim Philby, while serving in the Office of Strategic Services during the Second World War, gaining from this experience the technique and the mindset of counterintelligence. Stationed in Rome, where he was ultimately head of OSS counterintelligence for Italy, he played a central role in the decisive U. S. intervention in the Italian election of 1948 that saved Italy from Communist domination.  Angleton’s special relationship with Israel’s Mossad and his role in Israel’s development of nuclear weapons are fully described for the first time in this exceptionally well-researched and superbly well-written volume, as is his management of the CIA’s investigation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy and his success in placing a spy—borrowed from the Mossad—in Havana to protect American agents working to overthrow the Castro government in the 1960's.

James Jesus Angleton, the CIA, and the Craft of Counterintelligence grounds Angleton’s approach to counterintelligence in his unlikely background - an Hispanic who quietly reached the pinnicle of power, his years at Yale, his early vocation as a poet, his studies of the New Critics movement, and his remarkable achievement as the publisher of Modernist poets while still an undergraduate student.  His marriage to Cicely d’Autremont and their friendship with E. E. and Marion Cummings are also described for the first time from an extensive cache of letters discovered in the Houghton Library at Harvard. 

Aficionados of such matters will also find this the best account to date of Angleton’s search for Soviet “moles” in the CIA and other western intelligence services and Angleton’s relationship with the controversial Soviet defector Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Golitsyn.  Importantly, the author is one of only three "civilian" writers that has ever mastered Angleton's theory of counterintelligence, which he presents in a clear and comprehensible manner. The book is worth reading for this alone.

The author also addresses the mistakes and errors made by both Angleton and the CIA during the dark days of the Cold War. Important new information regarding Angleton’s responsibility for the CIA’s program of reading international mail and telegrams arriving in and sent from the U.S., and his involvement in the effort to neutralize the Vietnam-era Anti-War Movement, including his role in the CIA’s destruction of the liberal Catholic magazine Ramparts.

Quite remarkably, the book has successfully recaptured the temper of the times and - unlike the revisionist accounts so common today - accurately describes the totalitarian threat that Angleton and the CIA fought from the shadows of official secrecy. Of equal importance to those of us that knew him, the author has treated Angleton honestly and fairly. His successes have not been exaggerated, and his failures and mistakes have not been diminished. 

What emerges from the portrait painted by Dr. Holzman is a compelling picture of perhaps America's greatest intelligence officer - brilliant, capable, complex, and compassionate, and utterly dedicated to the country he served. It is the picture of the man I knew, whose memory I honor and respect.

Angleton’s biography is also a history of the Central Intelligence Agency from its founding until the Ford Administration and, because of the unusually wide cultural connections of James and Cicely Angleton, an account of the relationship between the American secret intelligence services and American writers and artists during the post-war period.

It should be noted that Dr. Holzman had been unaware of the fact that Angleton had been recalled to the CIA after the 1980 election by his old friend Bill Casey, whom President Reagan appointed as Director of Central Intelligence. But in fairness, that fact was unknown outside the Beltway and probably still-classified at the time of writing. That Angleton's career did not end with his 1974 dismissal from the Agency - and that he was undoubtedly involved in the identification and exposure of scores of hostile penetration agents during the 1980's - does not, however, detract from the immense value of this book.

It should be "must" reading for students of the Cold War, aspiring intelligence officers, and interested citizens alike.

Reviewed by Charles S. Viar

Michael Holzman.  JAMES JESUS ANGLETON, THE CIA, AND THE CRAFT OF COUNTERINTELLIGENCE.  399pp. University of Massachusetts Press.

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Quotations from other reviews:

“Mr. Holzman weaves a tapestry of Angleton’s career that invites a continuing skein of guesses about his entire academic career at Yale and Harvard and its effect on his intelligence career.”

Dan Pinck, OSS Reborn.

“Holzman’s brisk, uncluttered book offers valuable access to previously untapped material on Angleton, who became the first head of the Counter-intelligence Staff of the CIA. In particular, it makes incisive use of his years as a student of English at Yale and the influence on him of the New Critics and modernist poets of his day.” 

Terence Hawkes, The Times Literary Supplement, June 10, 2009.

“Holzman's book is a major history of chilling impact, and a long, rewarding odyssey through the labyrinth of counterintelligence. . . . His cast is huge and his explorations far reaching.”

ForeWord Magazine, January-February 2009

“A smart and engaging discussion of James Jesus Angleton and his role as a central figure in the CIA from its origin until the mid-1970s. Doing research on someone who has dedicated his personal and professional life to concealment is not easy, yet Michael Holzman has done an admirable job of reconstructing Angleton's story. Perhaps its most valuable contribution is its elucidation of Angleton's involvement in illegal programs of domestic surveillance, an issue of obvious importance made more significant by the actions of the current presidential administration.”

Robert D. Dean, author of Imperial Brotherhood: Gender and the Making of Cold War Foreign Policy.

““This is seriously good history, as well as a biography; Holzman is a very good writer, with a style somewhere between the academic and the journalist, and this was a pleasure to read.”

 Robin Ramsay, Lobster 56