A SPY STAYS OUT IN THE COLD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91B00134R000400130034-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 4, 2009
• Sequence Number: 34
• Publication Date: July 26, 1977
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2009/02/04: CIA-RDP91 B001 34R000400130034-9
THE BOSTON PHOENIX
26 JULY 1977
. C
James Angleton is_
no longer with the Company
buf he keeps his hand in
by Jeff Stein
It was the kind of afternoon in
Washington, D.C., when the city seems
to have turned into the capital of a.
banana republic. Rumors of another coup
in the. higher levels of government swept
out of the press rooms, across Capitol Hill
and into the restaurants and bars last
week. There had been reports that the
deputy director of the. Central.-:,.
Agency and 20 other top
.operatives in the CIA's Clandestine
Services Branch had been purged.
Working on the telephone in a quiet
corridor of a private club two blocks from
the White House, James Angleton - one
of the agency's most feared men for 31
years and its counter-intelligence chief
until 1975 - was trying to find out what
had happened. He looked grim.
"I'm told that the reporter is reliable,"
he said a few minutes later, slipping into a
chair in the Army-Navy Club's cocktail
lounge and pulling a photostat of the
original UPI story from his breast pocket.
"If it's true, and if, no cause is shown, no
cause that is satisfactory to the cadres,
then it'll be damaging, very damaging."
The reported purge began to stir the
old man's memories of a similar day in
the spring of 1975, when he himself had
been unceremoniously dumped after the
appearance of a ?teries of newspaper
reports describing his role as the head of a
massive spying operation directed at
American citizens. Two years later, the
memory was still a bitter one.
`'I'm still decomtre-sing. and will he
for some time," he said, lighting the first
of the 18 Virginia Slims he would smoke
during the next two-and-a-half hours.'
His firing he says, was "a complete
pulling of the rug, and what emerged in.
the next couple months was the
deceptions they had worked upon us, and
lies - and to have that from your own
people is a little difficult to swallow.'.:
There were widespread reports that:,-
Angleton had not really been ousted
because of the domestic-intelligence
controversy, but because he had built up
too powerful. an empire within the CIA ,and had quietly warred against the
Nixon-Kissinger strategy of detente with
the USSR.
"Don't ask me that question, because I
have too many stories to tell and too
many statements to make with people
who knew about many meetings which I
never knew,"' he said with unchar-
acteristic sharpness. "And some
day I'll write about that last meeting
I had with Colby." Former CIA Director
William Colby (who would himself be
fired?by President Ford in 1976) told him,
Angleton says, that the domestic spying
flap would.blow over in a couple of days,
that Ford would simply be informed the ff
program had ended. Angleton would .
have to go, of course, but it would be
handled delicately. It didn't happen that
way. Angleton's wife heard about herl I
husband's fate on the radio.
"Should'! write a book someday,"
A ngIeto-n 'contt?nued, react.; for his rum
. ._ -._