Word: angleton
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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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...
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...