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James Jesus Angleton (1917-1987) was the CIA's director of counterintelligence from 1954 to 1974, overseeing the Israeli intelligence liaison (KK MOUNTAIN) and Operation CHAOS before being fired by DCI Colby following the Hersh exposé of illegal domestic CIA activities. | 1917-12-09 | 1987-05-11 | Boise, Idaho |
James Jesus Angleton was the Central Intelligence Agency's director of counterintelligence and was also responsible for liaison with Israel. He was known for his insistence on secrecy and his paranoia about Soviet penetration of the Agency. Angleton's increasing inability to deal with the real world eventually led to his firing in late 1974. He had worked closely with members of the Jewish resistance in Italy at the end of World War II, during a period when thousands of Jewish refugees and concentration camp survivors were being illicitly funneled from Europe into Palestine.1
Angleton's closest colleague was Meir Deshalit, an Israeli intelligence official. Angleton shared Deshalit's view of the Soviet and Arab threat to Israel, and his personal contacts and strong feelings made him the logical choice to handle liaison between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Israeli government. His assignment was crucial in the 1950s and early 1960s due to the continuous flow of Soviet and Eastern European refugees into Israel. Angleton and his Israeli counterparts ran the "rat lines," as the Jewish refugee link became known, which provided the West with important insights into the Soviet bloc. Some of these programs were financed off the shelf by Central Intelligence Agency contingency funds, as part of KK MOUNTAIN.1
Despite his love for Israel and shared views on the Arab and Soviet question, Angleton investigated any Israeli or American Jew he suspected of trafficking in classified information, particularly nuclear technology. The Central Intelligence Agency suspected that Israel's quid pro quo for French help at Dimona included access to design information purloined from U.S. nuclear laboratories. While no evidence of such a link was found, investigators discovered Angleton's personal files revealing a long-running and questionable study of American Jews in the government, based on a "Jewishness index" that included synagogue attendance as a basis for suspicion.1
Angleton also sponsored a highly secret Central Intelligence Agency operation, through the CHAOS program, involving the Agency's purchase of a Washington, D.C. trash collection company. This firm had contracts to pick up garbage at various Third World embassies, including the Israeli embassy, and the trash was systematically sorted and analyzed for intelligence.1
Operation CHAOS (MHCHAOS)
Separate from the garbage-collection operation, Angleton's Counterintelligence Staff ran Operation CHAOS (operational codeword MHCHAOS), the CIA's domestic surveillance program targeting American antiwar and civil rights organizations. Established in August 1967 under direct orders from Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms following pressure from President Lyndon B. Johnson, the program was directed day-to-day by Richard Ober, who reported to Angleton. MHCHAOS was substantially expanded under the Nixon administration from 1969 onward.
At its peak in 1971, the MHCHAOS Special Operations Group employed 52 personnel. The program maintained a computerized index called HYDRA that ultimately contained files on approximately 7,200 American citizens and cross-references to approximately 300,000 names and 1,000 organizations. Project MERRIMAC, a subprogram of MHCHAOS, placed CIA infiltrators inside domestic antiwar and Black activist organizations in the Washington D.C. area. A separate subprogram, Project RESISTANCE, involved CIA coordination with campus administrators, local police, and university security offices to compile dossiers on student organizations.2
The Church Committee (Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) documented MHCHAOS in its final report of April 26, 1976 (S. Rept. 94-755). The committee concluded that MHCHAOS violated the CIA's legislative charter, which prohibited domestic operations, and described it as "unlawful." Angleton's central role in overseeing the program through his Counterintelligence Staff was documented in the committee's findings. Richard Ober's MHCHAOS files were largely destroyed on Helms's orders in 1973 before the Senate investigation; a partial cache survived only because it was misfiled.2
Seymour Hersh's front-page exposé in the New York Times on December 22, 1974 ("Huge C.I.A. Operation Reported in U.S. Against Antiwar Forces") triggered the formal investigation. DCI William Colby, who had succeeded Helms, dismissed Angleton on December 17, 1974, five days before the Hersh article appeared, having been informed that Hersh's story was imminent. Angleton's firing ended 21 years of service as the CIA's chief of counterintelligence.2
Angleton's first intelligence report on Israel's plans to build the bomb was filed routinely in the late 1950s. He continued to produce intelligence on Dimona based on information from his personal contacts, but never learned or reported the full extent of Israel's deception regarding its nuclear weapons progress. His reports on Dimona, even when buttressed by U-2 Spy Plane data, did not result in an official Central Intelligence Agency estimate that Israel was going nuclear, as analysts in the Central Intelligence Agency's Office of National Estimates (ONE) did not find his HUMINT sources reliable.1
Footnotes
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Hersh, Seymour M. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House, 1991. Chapter 11. ↩︎
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Church Committee, S. Rept. 94-755 (April 26, 1976). Hersh, Seymour M. "Huge C.I.A. Operation Reported in U.S. Against Antiwar Forces." New York Times, December 22, 1974. Ranelagh, John. The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA. Simon and Schuster, 1986, pp. 507-512. ↩︎