Veteran CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton secretly oversaw a top-level spy ring involving Jewish \u00e9migr\u00e9s and Israeli operatives without \u201cany clearances\u201d from Congress or Langley itself, according to recently declassified documents published as part of the Trump administration\u2019s pledge to disclose all available information on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.<\/p>\n
The files provide a fresh and often disturbing look at a spy described by\u00a0historian<\/a>\u00a0Jefferson Morley as\u00a0\u201ca leading architect of America\u2019s strategic relationship with Israel,\u201d\u00a0detailing Angleton\u2019s role in transforming the Mossad into a fearsome agency with global reach, while assisting Israel\u2019s theft of US nuclear material and protecting Zionist terrorists.<\/p>\n Angleton established the Jewish emigre spying network in the aftermath of WWII, with the apparent goal of infiltrating the Soviet Union. But as the files show, the spymaster considered his \u201cmost important\u201d task to be maintaining the supply of Jewish immigrants flowing from the Soviet Union towards the burgeoning Israeli state.<\/p>\n According to Angelton, his Jewish assets were responsible for 22,000 reports on the USSR, generating several intelligence masterstrokes. Chief among them was the publication of Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Kruschev\u2019s famous 1956 secret speech denouncing Stalin, which the spymaster boasted \u201cpractically created revolutions in Hungary and Poland.\u201d Elsewhere, Angleton bragged that his arrangement with Israel had produced \u201c500 Polish intelligence officers who were Jewish\u201d who \u201cknew more about Polish intelligence than the Poles.\u201d<\/p>\n Other passages appear to show Angleton taking credit for securing the \u201crelease\u201d of several Zionist terrorists affiliated with the Irgun militia before they could be convicted for bombing the British embassy in Rome. Though the group had been captured by Italian authorities, the newly-disclosed files indicate the terror cell was freed on the orders of the CIA.<\/p>\n The information was originally divulged in 1975 to senators serving on the Church Committee, which probed widespread abuses by US intelligence in the decades prior. Congress was particularly interested in claims by New York Times foreign correspondent Tad Szulc, who testified under oath that Angleton had personally informed him that the US provided technical information on nuclear devices to Israel in the late 1950s. The new documents show that Angleton was deceptive under questioning, and evaded questions on Israel\u2019s nuclear espionage efforts on the record.<\/p>\n Additional unsealed FBI documents, which refer to Israel\u2019s Mossad as Angleton\u2019s \u201cprimary source\u201d of information, confirm that the CIA\u2019s head of counterintelligence relied heavily on Tel Aviv to solidify his position within the Agency \u2013 and also add to the growing body of evidence that Angleton may not have been operating with US interests in mind throughout his 21-year tenure.<\/p>\n Other\u00a0newly declassified files<\/a>\u00a0from the FBI have shown that Angleton maintained a wildly lopsided relationship with the Bureau, which saw federal agents deferring to the CIA counterintelligence chief after they caught him surveilling the correspondence of huge numbers of Americans. The files show Angleton openly admitting he would have been fired if Langley caught wind of his leaks to the Bureau.<\/p>\n A side-by-side analysis of the now-unredacted Church Committee files compared with their previously-released versions from 2018 demonstrates that even after 70 years, Washington felt compelled to conceal details of its real relationship with Israel\u2019s founders. Over a dozen references to \u201cIsrael,\u201d \u201cTel Aviv,\u201d or descriptions of figures as \u201cJewish,\u201d which were scrubbed from the\u00a02018 release<\/a>, can now be viewed on the National Archives\u00a0site<\/a>.<\/p>\n The documents on that page reveal that Angleton repeatedly lied to multiple Congressional bodies, including the Church Committee, which investigated CIA abuses, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which probed the murders of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Angleton was similarly evasive when interrogated over Israel\u2019s nuclear weapons program, and about CIA knowledge or complicity in the scheme.<\/p>\n Those documents also reveal that Angleton\u2019s CIA counterintelligence staff ordered Lee Harvey Oswald\u2019s removal from federal watchlists six weeks before Kennedy\u2019s assassination, despite his classification as a high security risk. The surveillance of Oswald was personally overseen by a member of Angleton\u2019s intelligence network of Jewish emigres, Reuben Efron, a CIA spy from Lithuania. Angleton had placed Efron in charge of an Agency program called HT\/Lingual which intercepted and read correspondences between Oswald and his family. [This play was all about one thing: Oswald was working directly with the Kennedy brothers to infiltrate the C.I.A. to subvert their schemes to assassinate Fidel Castro. See: The Untold \u201cLee Harvey Oswald Back Story\u201d That Exposes The Ultra-Secret Assassination Plot<\/a><\/strong>]<\/p>\n Numerous historians have questioned why the CIA counterintelligence chief insisted for decades on personally overseeing what he described as the \u201cIsraeli account.\u201d Though several off-the-record interactions remain impossible to parse, the documents show that when\u00a0grilled<\/a>\u00a0about his \u201cunusually close\u201d connections to the Israeli Mossad, Angleton acknowledged forming an \u201carrangement\u201d in which, \u201cin most simplistic terms, [the Israelis] were informed that we would not work with them against the Arabs, [but] that we would work with them on Soviet bloc Intelligence and communism.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the earliest instances of Angleton\u2019s cooperation with Zionist elements came as Zionist militants embarked on a terrorist campaign to pressure the British colonial authorities to leave Mandate Palestine.<\/p>\n In October 1946, three months after they bombed the British administrative headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, members of the right-wing Irgun militia planted explosives in the British embassy in Rome in a failed bid to assassinate the UK\u2019s ambassador to Italy.<\/p>\n According to Angleton, after the Irgun \u201cblew up the British embassy in Rome\u201d in 1946, the CIA intervened to ensure they escaped Italy without prosecution.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had the members of the group, and then we had the dilemma again as to whether we turned them over to the British authorities,\u201d noted Angleton, who had served as counterintelligence chief for the Italian branch of the Office of Strategic Services, the CIA\u2019s predecessor. \u201cAnd we were in a position to make the decision one way or the other. And eventually we came down on the side of releasing them.\u201d<\/p>\n As Washington sought to manage the political ruptures caused by the creation of Israel, and monitor the wave of Soviet migrants pouring into the self-proclaimed Jewish state, Angleton framed his takeover of \u201cthe Israeli account\u201d as a convenient way for US intelligence to kill two birds with one stone.<\/p>\n \u201cThe other side of the Israeli problem was that you had thousands coming from the Soviet Union and you had the Soviets making use of the immigration for the purpose of sending illegal agents into the West and breaking down all the travel control, identifications and so on. And so there was both a security problem and a political problem.\u201d<\/p>\n To manage these \u201cproblems,\u201d the US and Israelis brokered a deal involving the secret exchange of \u201cpapers and signals, communications intelligence, [and] the other products of intelligence action,\u201d Angleton stated. The spy chief claimed the only records of the 1951 arrangement held by the US side would be in the possession of the Agency, and admitted US Congress had been left in the dark, telling senators, \u201cI don\u2019t think there were any clearances obtained from the Hill.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked by one legislator how it was \u201cpossible for succeeding directors of the intelligence agency to understand what the agreements were between\u201d US and Israeli intelligence, Angleton responded: \u201cVery simple. They saw the production to begin with. And they met with directors or the head of Israeli intelligence. And they met with Ambassadors and prime ministers. And they were very much involved.\u201d<\/p>\n Angleton was especially protective of what he called \u201cthe fiduciary relationship\u201d with Tel Aviv, assembling a close-knit clique of Jewish Americans with dubious loyalties to manage it as World War Two drew to a close. \u201cI started from the south side with two Jewish men who worked with me during the war,\u201d he explained. Having \u201csent them over as ordinary people under cover\u201d to get their bearings in newly-formed Israel, Angleton \u201cbrought over six others and put them through some months of training, outside of the structure\u201d of the CIA.<\/p>\n \u201cTo break down the fiduciary relationship \u2013 which is after all a personal business \u2013 all the men I have had, were men who stayed in it and came back to headquarters and went back to Tel Aviv, they went to the National Security Council, and went back to Tel Aviv, et cetera.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was probably the most economical operation that has ever been devised in the U.S. Government,\u201d Angleton crowed. \u201cI don\u2019t think there was [sic] more than 10 people that were hired in the same process.\u201d<\/p>\n Having trained these spies \u201coutside of the structure\u201d of the CIA, it\u2019s unclear how Angleton ensured they remained faithful to US national security objectives, or whether he ever intended to.<\/p>\n Angleton\u2019s role in enabling Israel\u2019s\u00a0wanton theft of nuclear material<\/a>\u00a0from an American facility is one of the more shocking episodes in the US-Israeli relationship. The scene of the crime was the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, or NUMEC, a uranium processing facility in Apollo, Pennsylvania owned by a Zionist financier named David Lowenthal. In 1965, Zalman Shapiro, a fellow Zionist hired by Lowenthal to run the plant, illegally diverted hundreds of kilograms of nuclear fissile material to Israel. Posing as a scientist, the notorious Mossad spy Rafi Eitan\u00a0visited NUMEC<\/a>\u00a0three years later to continue the heist.<\/p>\n As Jefferson Morley documented in his biography of Angleton, \u201cThe Ghost,\u201d the late CIA counterintelligence chief made sure the CIA looked the other way as Israel constructed its first nuclear weapon out of the stolen fissile material. According to\u00a0Morley<\/a>, \u201cAngleton, it is fair to say, thought collaboration with Israel was more important than U.S. non-proliferation policy.\u201d<\/p>\n A\u00a01977 investigation<\/a>\u00a0by the US Government Accountability Office found that the CIA withheld information about the NUMEC nuclear theft from the FBI and Department of Energy, and \u201cfound that certain key individuals had not been contacted by the FBI almost 2 years into the FBI\u2019s current investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n The latest batch of Church Committee files add new detail about Angleton\u2019s compromising of US national security to benefit Israel, and his attempts to cover up his betrayal.<\/p>\n During his testimony before the Committee, Angleton was pressed about\u00a0media reports<\/a>\u00a0alleging that he and his counterintelligence unit provided Israel with technical support for constructing nuclear weapons. He strenuously denied the charges, insisting the CIA had never played any role in providing Tel Aviv with\u00a0nuclear materials<\/a>. However, when questioned about whether \u201cIsraeli intelligence efforts\u201d were ever conducted in the US \u201caimed at acquiring\u2026 nuclear technology,\u201d Angleton equivocated.<\/p>\n First, he blustered, \u201cthere have been many efforts by many countries to acquire technical knowledge in this country, and that doesn\u2019t exclude the Israelis.\u201d Asked if CIA counterintelligence had \u201ccertain knowledge\u201d of Israeli agents \u201ctrying to acquire nuclear secrets in the US,\u201d Angleton pleaded, \u201cDo I have to respond to that?\u201d<\/p>\n The Committee then went \u201coff record\u201d at the senators\u2019 request, making Angleton\u2019s responses impossible to scrutinize.<\/p>\n In a secret 1975 memorandum to the FBI, the ousted CIA counterintelligence chief\u00a0disclosed<\/a>\u00a0that he had \u201cavoided any direct answers\u201d during his Senate testimony on Israel\u2019s spies carrying out \u201cintelligence collection\u201d to gather \u201cnuclear information\u201d in the United States.<\/p>\n Just days later, a\u00a0Bureau report<\/a>\u00a0on \u201cIsraeli intelligence collection capabilities\u201d revealed Angleton entertained \u201cfrequent personal liaison contacts\u201d with Mossad representatives at Israel\u2019s Washington DC embassy between February 1969 and October 1972. This \u201cspecial relationship\u201d involved \u201cthe exchange of extremely sensitive information.\u201d<\/p>\n Further, the 1975\u00a0FBI memo<\/a>\u00a0on Angleton disclosed the Israeli embassy\u2019s establishment of a \u201ctechnical intelligence network\u201d seven years earlier which was directed by an Israel scientist who worked on Tel Aviv\u2019s nuclear program. This may explain why Angleton was so cagey under Senate questioning.<\/p>\n The Church Committee files show Angleton bristled at then-CIA Director William Colby\u2019s efforts to apply a modicum of transparency to the Agency\u2019s activities, especially as they related to Israel. The spymaster warned that if the USSR ever caught wind of Langley\u2019s use of the self-proclaimed Jewish state as a de facto halfway house for communist turncoats, they would almost certainly end their policy of encouraging Eastern European Jews to migrate to Israel:<\/p>\n \u201cThis idea of opening the doors and letting the light in, and breaking down compartmentation, and breaking down the need to know, would inevitably put in jeopardy the immigration, if the Soviets should learn the extent of the activities,\u201d Angleton stated.<\/p>\n Colby fired Angleton in 1974 after the\u00a0New York Times<\/a>\u00a0revealed that he devised an illegal program of domestic spying targeting antiwar American dissidents. In his testimony, Angleton framed their clash as an interpersonal conflict, describing Colby as \u201cnot my cup of tea professionally or in any other way.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet Angleton also acknowledged to Senate that a \u201cdispute in connection with these Israeli matters\u201d between himself and Colby contributed to his departure from the Agency.\u00a0Was this a reference to the former spook\u2019s involvement in Israeli theft of US nuclear secrets, enabling Israel to acquire the bomb?<\/p>\n Whatever the case, it was clear why Angleton would be remembered more fondly in Israel than inside the country he ostensibly served.<\/p>\n On December 4, 1987, the director of Israel\u2019s Mossad and Shin Bet intelligence services\u00a0gathered in secret<\/a>\u00a0on a hillside in Jerusalem to plant a tree in honor of Angleton. They were joined there by five former Israeli spy chiefs and three former military intelligence officers.<\/p>\n Despite attempts to keep the ceremony under wraps, two local reporters managed to evade the cordon to record the ceremony for the former CIA counter-intelligence director, who had died seven months prior. Together, the Israeli spooks laid a memorial stone that read, \u201cIn memory of a dear friend, James (Jim) Angleton.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thegrayzone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/11.png?resize=1024%2C643&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\nFreeing Zionist terrorists<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nA secret deal with the Mossad<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nGrooming Zionist spies \u201coutside the structure\u201d of the CIA<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nEnabling Israeli theft of US nuclear material, spying on America<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\n\u201cIsraeli matters\u201d trigger Angleton\u2019s downfall<\/h3>\n
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