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Wilderness of Mirrors: Intrigue, Deception, and the Secrets that Destroyed Two of the Cold War's Most Important Agents

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The term, "wilderness of mirrors," is still used today in counterintelligence circles to denote the feelings of paranoia that sometimes develop in the byzantine business of spyhunting, when one is no longer able to distinguish between what is real and what is illusion. When conjuring up images of this precise phenomenon, no name rings louder than that of James Jesus Angleton, who himself was enveloped and ultimately destroyed by his obsession with uncovering a "mole" within the CIA.

Martin's brief account of the CIA's largely unsuccessful efforts to spy on the Soviet Union during the Cold War alternates between the stories of "Jim" Angleton and "Bill" Harvey, two CIA trailblazers who undoubtedly left their marks in their profession. What's unfortunate is that while they may have scored some early successes, they spent the latter parts of their careers in shambles, with both resigning under hostile circumstances. Especially in Angleton's case, it is tough to objectively determine whether he did more good than bad.

For a more detailed account of the CI fiasco involving Angleton, Golitsin, and Nosenko, check out David Wise's "Molehunt."

This book, which relates the ongoing war between the CIA and the KGB, focuses on the activities of William K. Harvey, a gun-totin' ex-FBI agent (who does not seem to have entirely evolved in a social sense), and James Jesus Angleton, a Yale graduate who lived first in Italy and then in England, where he learned the fine arts of counter-espionage at the knees, as it were, of Kim Philby, and was in charge of counter-espionage at the CIA. The revelation that the latter was a KGB penetration agent in British Intelligence seems to have engendered extreme paranoia in the former, who was ever after on the lookout for moles in the Agency (and was even suspected by some of his colleagues of being one himself).

The tales of covert operations range from the amusing (an agent loitering in a park to make a dead-letter drop being arrested as a potential child molester) to the appalling (the dastardly enticement of the Soviet defector Yuri Nosenko with promises of a salaried job and then keeping him in what was tantamount to a cage for 1277 days (292 of which were devoted to interrogation) [p, 171], all because of the dubious word of Anatoli Golitsin, a previous defector--living high off the hog at taxpayer expense--who warned that the next defector would be a KGB plant.). Angleton placed his faith unstintingly in Golitsin, whose wild scenarios had Averell Harriman, a former United States ambassador to the Soviet Union, cast as a KGB agent. It never seems to have occurred to Angleton that Golitsin may have been the KGB plant, intent on making mischief.

The title, "Wilderness of Mirrors," was apparently coined by Angleton, who was a poet in his spare time. It refers to the labyrinthine world of espionage into which one is "lured deeper and deeper ... pursuing the traces of Soviet plots, both real and imagined, each step taking [one] farther into a bewildering world of intrigue ... [p. 10].

The author notes the justification of the battle between the CIA and the KGB, but he also cites the absurdity of its reality. "The careers of Angleton and Harvey were mired in absurdities, not the least of which was that they habitually violated the democratic freedoms they were sworn to defend . . . Immersed in duplicity and insulated by secrecy, they developed survival mechanisms and behavior patterns that by any rational standard were bizarre. The forced inbreeding of secrecy spawned mutant deeds and thoughts. Loyalty demanded dishonesty, and duty was a thieves' game. The game attracted strange men and slowly twisted them until something snapped. There were no winners or losers in this game, only victims" [p. 226].

Since its establishment in 1947, CIA has enjoyed some modest successes as an agent for regime change, but does not to appear to have been a very effective intelligence agency. Yet during the first 25 years of its existence under the freewheeling influence of the many WWII Office of Strategic Services (OSS) veterans who formed its original cadre, it certainly seems to have been an interesting place to work. Indeed its halls were apparently filled with interesting and colorful characters who may or may not have been very good intelligence officers, but who were never boring. This very good book provides the story of two such characters who were at the heart of the CIA counterintelligence program.

James Jesus Angleton was clearly CIA material with his WWII OSS experience, Ivy League education, and international background. Yet he was also by all accounts one the strangest intelligence officers CIA ever recruited. An orchid growing intellectual, Angleton began his long involvement with counterintelligence with the OSS under the tutorship of Kim Philby, who even then was a Soviet mole. He appeared to thrive on the intellectual challenges presented by convoluted and complex work that was counterintelligence. From the first he applied himself to seeking out Soviet agents within CIA with the passion and zealotry of a Jesuit converting a heretic. In the end his efforts failed to find real evidence of Soviet penetration of CIA, but in the notorious `mole' search he initiated succeeded in virtually destroying its ability to run clandestine operations against the Soviets. Ironically for all his zeal, Angleton was unable to recognize that his mentor and friend Philby was a Soviet plant in heart of the delicate U.S. and UK intelligence relationship.

William King Harvey was Angleton's complete opposite in every respect. He was a small town lawyer turned FBI agent who was sacked because his behavior came too close to breaking the number one rule of the FBI in the post war period, don't embarrasses Mr. Hoover. Somewhat like Angleton however, Harvey had developed a passion for counterintelligence work and when he was sacked was probably the FBI's leading expert in this arcane subject. The newly created CIA was struggling to create a counterintelligence program and was happy to take Harvey on board. He and Angleton quickly learned to loathe each other. The hard drinking, womanizing Harvey tended to shoot from the hip, while the aesthetic Angleton tended to move carefully and intellectually. Fortunately Harvey decided that he would like the rough and tumble of overseas work and got a plume assignment in the then divided city of Berlin where he was clearly at home. Prior to taking this assignment however, Harvey presented CIA with what in the end was an accurate argument that Philby was indeed a Soviet plant.

In the end the careers of both men were destroyed by the very things that made them effective counterintelligence agents and the sea changes that shook CIA in the 1970's

I found myself wanting to know more about the beginnings of the CIA as well as their cold war exploits. This book was recommended to me by a friend and is a good starting point to find out about some of the key players in the US intelligence of previous years. There is much about background or the beginnings of the CIA, this book is more of a character study of two men, James Jesus Angelton, who most people are familiar with and William Harvey, who most people seem not to know. It is an interesting tale of how two men got so wrapped up in their own ego's as well as paranoia that they brought CIA intelligence operations to a halt. It also paints the CIA as an agency without a clear direction and poorly managed. This book had the effect that all good non-fiction books have on me, it casued me to do more research on the events and people in the book. Great read if you want to see the effect 2 men can have on an agency but don't expect a broad history of the CIA.

This is one of the anti-Angleton books. You you want to understand Angelton's approach to counter-intelligence, I would recommend Edward Jay Epstein's "Deception" instead.

There were some "juicy" bits but this was not an unbiased approach. I bought the book to get a contrasting view of JJA, but wound up with a more "novel" approach. It was entertaining.

This is the best CIA book according to old CIA hands.
It doesn't tell you that the CIA people planned the JFK assassination,.... but it sure does tell you that Nosenko the KGB defector who told them the KGB didn't control Oswald,...was tortured and urged to change his story,...and WHO treated Nosenko so harshly.
You can then deduce that those same agents were the JFK assassins.