The Black World of UFOs: Exempt from Disclosure (5 page)

Timothy Cooper in 2000 was threatened by many higher ups over this book chapter, typical dirty tricks.

J
ames Jesus Angleton
was  born on 9 December 1917, in Boise, Idaho, to NCR businessman Colonel James Hugh Angleton (a member OSS in WWII or, Office of Strategic Services, predecessor to the CIA), and Mexican born Carmen Mercedes Moreno. Upon graduation from Yale in 1941, Angleton moved to Harvard Law School where he met his future wife Cicely d’Autremont of Duluth, MN. Inducted into the U.S. Army on 19 March 1943, Angleton was recruited into the OSS in August through the efforts of Angleton’s father and Norman Pearson, his old English professor from Yale who was, at that time, head of the OSS Counter Intelligence division in London (1).

A
ngleton as CIA Agent in OSS X-2 Operations During WWII

James Angleton was assigned the
Rome desk after Italy’s capitulation to the Allies and was made an OSS Lieutenant who ran CI activities that included such countries as Austria, Germany, Spain, the Mediterranean, and Switzerland. As part of OSS operations in the European Theatre of Operations, Angleton mastered the art of “black” propaganda and “playback,” i.e., the method of reading the effectiveness of one’s own disinformation on the enemy. In 1944, he was given charge of the OSS Special Counterintelligence Unit Z made up of U.S. and British agents and was the youngest member of X-2 and the only American member that was allowed access to the top secret British ULTRA code breaking intelligence.

     After the war, Angleton was promoted to captain and received the Legion of Merit award from the U.S. Army, which cited him for successfully apprehending over a thousand enemy intelligence agents.

     He was also decorated by the Italian government and was awarded the Order of the Crown of Italy, the Order of Malta-Cross of Malta, and the Italian War Cross for Merit.

     In October 1945, President Truman dissolved the OSS, and had all the research, analysis units moved to the State Department and operational units to the War Department. The OSS was re-named the Strategic Services Unit (SSU).

     Angleton stayed on in the SSU in Rome and became the vital station chief in charge of the 2677th Regiment. They made Angleton the senior U.S. intelligence officer in Italy until it became the Central Intelligence Group, forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (2).

The Making of James Angleton as Master Spy Hunter

Angleton’s war experience in counterintelligence operations had affected him to the extent that he became absorbed into the ‘hall of mirrors’ world of intelligence and refused to leave despite the insistence and disappointment of his father. James would pour over the many CI files he amassed while in Italy and was forever changed by the intrigue and the possibilities of a career in the CIG. In the summer of 1947, he returned to the United States to live in Tucson, AZ with his wife and family, but his love for the service was overpowering and, on 30 December 1947, he was hired by the CIA as a senior aide to the director of the Office of Special Operations (OSO) (3).

     It was during this period that Army G-2 and other intelligence agencies were trying to crack the Soviet VENONA code used by espionage agents operating in the United States. These agents were sending back sensitive information regarding the Manhattan Project based at Los Alamos, NM. It is possible that Angleton was on special assignment prior to officially reporting to OSO who had the responsibility of running counterespionage operations (4).

     His primary mission in OSO included overseeing a classified component that operated espionage and counterespionage activities abroad. He read all the sensitive material coming across his desk and then passed them back to OSO operators in countries where the CIA had interests. In 1949, Angleton had moved up the chain of command within OSO and held a GS-15 position. Angleton developed a philosophy that, “If you control counterintelligence, you control the intelligence service,” and quickly realized the significance of the B-29 detection of Joe-1, the Soviet’s first atomic weapon detonation in August 1949. Angleton knew the technology required by the Soviets was not home grown, but rather the product of espionage and he immediately set out to discover who the moles were that passed on America’s most guarded secret to Moscow.

     As with all covert actions, counterintelligence operated without specific mentioning in the National Security Act of 1947 which gave Angleton the excuse he needed to pursue information on the most guarded of all secrets.

James Angleton as Deputy Director for Counterintelligence (DD/CI)

Aside from the technology theft of atomic secrets, one of the most guarded secrets within the CIA was the scientific and technical information regarding new weapons developments and the planned use of a new generation of Thermal Nuclear Weapons and high altitude reconnaissance platforms to spy on countries hostile to
United States strategic interests. One of the technical secrets of the United States was the study and transfer of advanced electronics gleaned from Air Force studies of unconventional aircraft and missile research carried on at several Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) facilities and proving grounds. The FBI and the CIA were aware of Soviet espionage rings operating in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. The espionage ring’s main task was providing any and all technical and scientific information on advanced technologies which could provide an advantage to the Soviet Union in the event of another world war.

     By 1949, military intelligence authorities had classified the “flying saucer” phenomenon as “Top Secret” and Army’s Counter-intelligence Corps (CIC) had passed on information that the Soviets may have developed saucer-shaped aerial weapons capable of delivering atomic bombs or dissipating radioactive materials over NATO countries as a stop-gap measure to make up for the nonexistent nuclear weapons arsenal.

     In early 1947, the nonexistent nuclear arsenal in the United States was a closely guarded secret and no doubt this fact set in motion the nuclear arms race which terrified Angleton. OSO was probably aware of Soviet knowledge of a bomb gap existing within both superpowers and the flying saucer invasion of the United States which crossed Angleton’s desk. This put a scare into his psyche reflected as a credo he shared with other OSO staff members: “You who believe or half believe, I can say this now, that I do believe in the spirit of Christ and the life everlasting, and in this turbulent social system which struggles sometimes blindly to preserve the right to freedom and expression of spirit. In the name of Jesus Christ, I leave you.”

     After General Walter B. Smith was appointed as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), Angleton continued on as OSO Staff “A” (foreign intelligence operations) inside the CIA’s clandestine division. In 1951, he was given the all-important Israeli desk which he held tight control over for 20 years because it was a source of vital Soviet information in the Middle East as more and more UFO sighting reports made their way to CIA headquarters (5) (also see WBS memos in Chapter 3, Figures 2a & b). Raw, unevaluated reports were forwarded to counterintelligence when the locations were identified as Soviet bloc countries. During this period, Angleton made good liaisons with FBI contacts who were equally concerned with protecting vital atomic research facilities and no doubt Angleton read many domestic reports as they came across his desk in the “L” Building across from the Lincoln Memorial.

     When Smith was coaxed away from his power base as DCI, Allen Dulles, Angleton’s friend from the OSS days, became the new DCI. In late 1954, he promoted Angleton to the position of deputy director and Chief of Counterintelligence. Angleton had direct access to Dulles and all foreign UFO intelligence from the Intelligence Advisory Committee which had been established to look into national security implications involving the UFO phenomena (6). In order to cement Angleton’s counterintelligence charter together, General James H. Doolittle was commissioned by Dulles to conduct an outside survey of CIA counterintelligence operations. He concluded that the CIA was losing ground to the KGB and recommended more stringent and ruthless measures be taken against Soviet penetration.

     Dulles endorsed the Doolittle Report by ordering a more powerful tool to stop and interdict the moles within the CIA, and he personally chose Angleton to head the CI staff. Perhaps this is why foreign and domestic UFO sighting reports diminished shortly thereafter.

     During Dulles’ tenure as DCI from 1953 to 1961 (next Chapter, longest in CIA history), Angleton enjoyed a privileged position (as he did with other future DCIs like McCone and Helms Chapter 3) not shared by other directors despite the fact that he reported to the Deputy Director of Operations [DDO]. On many occasions, he bugged the phones and residences of high ranking U.S. government officials and foreign dignitaries with Dulles’ approval and over the objection of the DDO. If the situation called for it, Angleton could go around proper channels for acquiring personal data on anyone within the CIA and other agencies which was clearly outside of the CIA charter and violated FBI jurisdiction. As the new head of CI, he had to organize a staff, write the rules, and oversee all clandestine operations aimed at Soviet military and security organs of the GRU and KGB (7). The CI staff was primarily tasked with preventing penetrations at home and abroad and protecting CIA operations through careful research and analysis of all incoming intelligence reports. By keeping the most vital and sensitive files to himself, Angleton became a storehouse of secrets, which helped him consolidate his power base. Officially, Angleton was allowed access to everyone’s personnel, operational, and communications files within the CIA.

     He reviewed all proposed and active operations and the approval for recruiting agent assets. This did not engender trust or cooperation, but Angleton did not concern himself as he felt the intrusions were needed. One of Angleton’s former Chief of Operations, “Scotty” Miller, expressed the environment in which CI staff operated as one of a “watchdog” snooping around to sniff out either Soviet deception or manipulation.

Angleton and the MJ-12 Directive

Cold War hysteria accompanied the “duck and cover” scare that seemed to grip the nation. No real problems popped up until the 1960 presidential elections when Democratic presidential candidate Senator John F. Kennedy accused the Republican incumbent President Eisenhower of allowing a “missile gap” to exist and charged that the United States was getting too close to the Soviet Union.

     Soon after Kennedy became president, he began to needle the CIA for information on UFOs (11) which was unnerving from the outset for Allen Dulles after he was just burned on the failed April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of communist-enslaved Cuba. The once cordial relationship that had existed fell apart and Dulles knew his time as DCI was short (12). 

     Dulles knew of the explicit instructions contained in the
24 September 1947 Truman directive;
it prohibits the DCI from making disclosures to a chief executive who obviously did not have a “need-to-know.”  Disclosure without a “need-to-know” might not only compromise the CIA, but the lengthy and costly UFO program deemed so
necessary to national security by all involved.

     This simply could not be jeopardized for any one person, even for the president of the United States. Knowing the character of Allen Dulles and James Angleton, we can only speculate as to what kind of response Kennedy may have received. According to the DCI Top Secret/MJ-12 document, it leaves no doubt that Dulles was not going to fully cooperate with Kennedy’s request, but instead forwarded it to Angleton for review, consideration and feedback.

MJMAJESTIC TWELVE included spin-off projects that were obviously equally sensitive activities of the CIA such as PARASITE, PARHELION, ENVIRO, PSYOP, GREEN, SPIKE, and HOUSE CLEANING. Other sensitive and covert programs could be affected as well such as MK ULTRA, ARTICHOKE and DOMESTIC all of which appear to have been valid projects associated with MJMAJESTIC TWELVE. The full implications of the above are not clear at the present time, but it is obvious that the other projects were held in readiness for some kind of mass indoctrination and deception which would be undertaken in a national crisis.

Murder, INC.

The strain mounted on the CIA by Kennedy was reaching a flash point of wills and with the Noresenko affair (13) driving Angleton to obsession, a UFO leak crisis brought new strains on Angleton. He had learned of Hollywood screen star Marilyn Monroe’s phone conversation with a New York art dealer (14) discussing Kennedy’s secret visit to an undisclosed military base to see alien artifacts (this could have been Ft. Belvoir, Annex K or Wright-Patterson AFB). With that was her disdain over the soured relationship she had endured with President Kennedy and his brother, the United States Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy, all of which had been recorded by CIA domestic electronic surveillance experts.