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James Jesus Angleton, the CIA, and the Craft of Counterintelligence | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Holzman
Publisher: Univ. of Massachusetts Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 308310
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 408
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1
ISBN: 1558496505
Dewey Decimal Number: 327.12730092
EAN: 9781558496507
ASIN: 1558496505
Publication Date: July 31, 2008
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Condition: Trade Paperback, without Dust Jacket, 2008. This is a brand new book! We ship our orders every day!
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Product Description
As chief of counterintelligence for the Central Intelligence Agency from the early 1950s to the early 1970s, James Jesus Angleton built a formidable reputation. Although perhaps best known for leading the agency s notorious Molehunt the search for a Soviet spy believed to have infiltrated the upper levels of the American government Angleton also played a key role in the U.S. intervention in the Italian election of 1948, in Israel s development of nuclear weapons, and in the management of the CIA s investigation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He later led CIA efforts to contain the Vietnam-era antiwar movement, including the campaign to destroy the liberal Catholic magazine Ramparts.
In this deeply researched biography, Michael Holzman uses Angleton s story to illuminate the history of the CIA from its founding in the late 1940s to the mid-1970s. Like many of his colleagues in the CIA, James Angleton learned the craft of espionage during World War II as an officer in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), where he became a friend and protege of the British double agent Kim Philby. Yet Angleton's approach to counterintelligence was also influenced by his unusual Mexican American family background and his years at Yale as a student of the New Critics and publisher of modernist poets. His marriage to Cicely d Autremont and the couple s friendship with E. E. and Marion Cummings became part of a network of cultural connections that linked the U.S. secret intelligence services and American writers and artists during the postwar period.
Drawing on a broad range of sources, including previously unexamined archival documents, personal letters, and interviews, Holzman looks beneath the surface of Angleton s career to reveal the sensibility that governed not only his personal aims and ambitions but those of the organization he served and helped shape.
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| Customer Reviews:
 An odd man in an odd job September 26, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book argues that for a period of twenty years James Jesus Angleton was considered by CIA to be the principal authority on counter-intelligence (CI). As such Angleton set the priorities for the agency's CI program and the tradecraft that was used to execute it. On a different level the book shows how the old boy network of former WWII Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operatives came to dominate CIA's leadership and its approach to its missions.
Angleton was an Ivy League (Yale) intellectual trained in the then prevalent techniques of literary analysis. He was a highly cosmopolitan figure in that he was a Mexican-American and had spent his much of his formative years abroad. This background made him an ideal candidate for the OSS and in 1943 he became an OSS officer.
Angleton's first OSS posting was London where he immediately became involved in CI working closely with the UK CI staff of MI6 (Secret Intelligence Service). This, more than anything, was a learning experience for Angleton and he took to CI analysis so readily that he at the end of the war when he had been reposted to Italy, he was a recognized OSS expert in CI. Ironically his principal tutor in CI tradecraft was Kim Philby, who in the end turned out to be a Soviet agent.
After the war Angleton along with many of his OSS colleagues was recruited into the rapidly developing Cold War intelligence establishment. He became part of that group of OSS officers who shaped the culture and tone of the newly created CIA. In 1954 he became chief of the CI office of CIA, a position which he held until he was sacked in 1974. Because he was part of the `inner circle' of CIA he was also given the important and sensitive Israeli account. During his tenure Angleton prosecuted CI tradecraft as he understood it and trained others to do the same. Whether he did a good or bad job of CI will have to be sorted out by future intelligence historians.
 A chillingly relevant new analysis of Angleton, founder of the CIA August 1, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
This extraordinary new analysis of the life of James Jesus Angleton makes a fascinating connection between his training and early life as a poet and literary critic and his career in counterintelligence. Chillingly relevant to the current debate on the CIA and intelligence-gathering techniques it is a 'must read' for anyone interested in the current state of American democracy.
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