Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton : The Cia's Master Spy Hunter [Paperback]

Tom Mangold (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1992

Based on more than three years of research and 300 interviews, Cold Warrior charts the career of James Jesus Angelton, former head of counterintelligence for the CIA and America's most legendary and ruthless spycatcher. Rarely has the dangerous, illusory world of international espionage been so fully revealed. 16-page photo insert.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mangold's first-class biography of James Angleton, CIA counterintelligence chief from 1955 to 1975, who died in 1987, concentrates on Angleton's obsessive search for Soviet double agents within the agency. When the investigation outside his own department failed to produce a "mole," Angleton moved against the counterintelligence staff itself. The result, as Mangold reveals, was an internal-affairs skirmish that claimed several innocent victims. No spy was ever found. The great "molehunt" caused so much damage to Western intelligence that some suspected Angleton himself of being a Soviet agent. Mangold relates the episode involving Yury Nosenko, who defected to the West in 1964; Angleton, convinced he was a Soviet plant, kept him a secret prisoner of the CIA throughout much of the 1960s and tried unsuccessfully to force a "confession" from him. The book is an intriguing account of self-destructive paranoia in America's intelligence community. Mangold is the author of The Tunnels of Cu Chi. Photos.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

A character straight from a John le Carre novel, recently the subject of a PBS Frontline documentary, and still a figure of controversy, Angleton was for 22 years the chief of the CIA's counterintelligence staff. With his neurotic, obsessive, and destructive belief in a master Communist conspiracy and in the penetration of the CIA by Soviet moles, Angleton not only betrayed defectors and ruined his CIA colleagues; wrecked careers and lost lives followed his tread. Based on exhaustive research, Mangold's fascinating account argues persuasively that Angleton did more to damage U.S. intelligence than all the Soviet spies put together. Angleton was "responsible for the loss of priceless intelligence from the very heart of the KGB and the GRU" without ever catching one mole. This book is sure to reopen the bitter major debate over Golitsyn and Nosenko. Reservation: Mangold does not pursue broader questions about the cost of America's Cold War anti-Communist neuroses that drove the country for so many years. For international affairs and espionage collections.
- H. Steck, SUNY at Cortland
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 462 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone Books (May 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671778803
• ISBN-13: 978-0671778804
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,013,226 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting story about the CIA's first CI chief., December 31, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Framingham, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton - Cia's Master Spy Hunter (Hardcover)

I read this book several years ago, and found it to be very interesting and worthwhile. James Jesus Angleton was one of the early members of the CIA - a graduate of Yale which, at one time, was one of the primary recruiting grounds for the CIA. Angleton, according to the author, cut a very shadowy figure in an already shadowy world. Some of Mangold's text seems biased against Angleton, such as references to "The Trust" - an early counter intelligence operation created by Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Cheka. Angleton placed great emphasis on understanding this old operation. Mangold seems to deride this practice of Angelton's, which I felt was unfairly judgemental. Mangold, however, also describes an operation headed up my Angleton which caused the ruin of some productive CIA officers. All in all, though, the book is very interesting, and manages to submerge the reader into the world of counter intelligence during the cold war era. Counter Intelligence has been described by those who have practiced it as a "Wilderness of mirrors". After reading this book the reader will gain an appreciation, even if only superficial, of how nerve-racking the job could be - not knowing whom you can trust.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Angleton: Still an Enigma wrapped in a Riddle?, February 1, 2008

By 

Herbert L Calhoun "paulocal" (Falls Church, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton : The Cia's Master Spy Hunter (Paperback)

This book focuses on "Master-Counterspy" James Jesus Angleton's obsession with a CIA penetration, or with the infamous internal mole hunt instigated by Angleton's own paranoia. Angleton's paranoia, and the way it left the agency's counterintelligence directorate tied in knots, seems to have been his most important, if not his only, legacy.

British journalist Tom Mangold, tries, without much success, to rehabilitate the Angleton legacy by pulling back the veil formed around the Angleton mystique. The book gives short shrift to Angleton's background and life, going right to his controversial exploits as head of the CIA's counter-espionage directorate. But I believe that Mangold over analyzes and over sensationalizes some of Angleton's most famous cases. The foremost exception to this rule however was Angleton's relationship with the Soviet defector Anatoli Golitsyn, who Angleton apparently trusted so much that he gave Golitsyn the keys to the U.S. intelligence kingdom. In my view, David Wise's account of this episode is much richer and interesting, giving it a "realpolitic flavor" and getting into the respective psychologies of both Angleton and Golitsin. This version, comparatively speaking, is bland, sketchy and very much incomplete.

Angleton seems as much an enigma after reading this book, as was his work. He controlled the Israeli account as if it were his own private fiefdom, not sharing his cases even with his staff including his deputy, and giving paranoid but undecipherable reports to his superiors, including GWH Bush, why? More than a few authors have even implicated him as being the CIA's moving hand behind the scene in the JFK assassination; that he looked the other way as Israel developed nuclear weapons, etc. But there is no hint of any of this here?

This author leaves the consequences of Angleton's two decades of machinations and "tying the CIA up in knots," very much hanging in the air. I would argue that this "retrospective" is much too "Angleton friendly."

Bill Colby eventually fired Angleton, and it seems that he was sent to the agency to do just that. Upon arrival, Colby and others claim that there was no evidence based on actual cases that Angleton had caught any Russian spies during his entire career? If so, what purpose did he serve over all those years? Is it not an elementary axiom in spy craft, that if one is not catching any moles, but is preventing his agency from doing so, then he must be the mole himself?

Even the retrospectives friendlier than this one, suggest that Angleton may have done more harm than good to the nation's counterintelligence operations: His claim of a deep CIA penetration was never discovered, or if discovered, never revealed -- at least not until a CIA's own "in-house" investigative unit revealed that "the most likely" deep undercover CIA mole was Angleton himself. Even though their evidence against him was all circumstantial, it was nevertheless persuasive: An important part of their case against the legendary Master Counterspy of course rested on the fact that he alone had regular luncheon meetings with none other than the infamous British spy and traitor Kim Philby himself. In retrospect, those on the investigative team ceased to see those meetings as entirely innocent as was previously assumed.

This book raises as many questions as it leaves open, and answers none. For that reason, this is not the best spy book on the market, but despite this, it does have some historical value. Three stars

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and full of detail, October 17, 2008

By 

JMC "Joe in Atlanta" (Georgia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton - Cia's Master Spy Hunter (Hardcover)

This was one take on JJA that offered some insights not highlighted elsewhere. I found it to be an easy read.