CIA Spy Chief: “Certain Individual Rights Have to be Sacrificed for the National Security”
Nine months after being forced to resign from the CIA because of revelations of his role in creating and directing massive CIA spying on American citizens, the former head of the agency’s counter-intelligence program, James Jesus Angleton told the Senate Church Committee on this day that “certain individual rights have to be sacrificed for the national security.”
Angleton’s view perfectly expressed the lawless attitude of the CIA and other national security agencies during the Cold War — and in later years, in fact. He was hardly the only government official to state the the government had the right to lie to the American people or break the law. On December 6, 1962, Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense in President Kennedy’s administration told the Press Club that the government had a right to lie to the American people. Specifically, he said that the government had an inherent right to lie “to save itself.”
Angleton’s comment came in his testimony before the Senate Church Committee (named after its co-chair Senator Frank Church), created on January 27, 1975 to investigate abuses of the rights of Americans by the the CIA, the FBI, and other government agencies, including the Post Office. The creation of the Church Committee and the parallel Pike Committee (named for its chair Rep. Otis Pike) in the House of Representatives, create on February 19, 1975), were both prompted by the sensational expose of CIA spying on Americans by a front page article in The New York Times on December 22, 1974.
The investigations by the Church and Pike Committees were the first-ever critical investigations on the intelligence agencies. The reports of the Church Committee are publicly available today and remain invaluable resources on the abuses of the CIA, the FBI and other agencies.
Angleton served as Director of Counterintelligence (abbreviated CI in the agency) from 1954 to 1975. While he actively cultivated an image of the master spy, his real legacy involved many illegal deeds, some of which impeded the effectiveness of the CIA in its spying on the Soviet Union.
(1) His greatest misdeed was his obsession with the idea that the Soviet Union had planted a mole high in the ranks of the CIA. No evidence was ever found to support this idea (labelled “The Great Mole Hunt”), about which Angleton became increasingly obsessed an paranoid as the years went by. (2) Angleton was also instrumental in creating two programs of massive spying on Americans because of their political beliefs and activities (most of which were lawful and protected by the First Amendment). The first was a mail cover program (labelled LINGUAL/HUNTER) in which the CIA and the FBI photographed the covers of mail to suspected persons and in some cases opened, read and copied the contents. The second was the notorious and better known CHAOS program of spying on the activities of Americans. (The CHAOS program was exposed in the December 1974 New York Times story that forced Angleton’ resignation from the CIA.)
(3) Angleton’s operations also interfered with the internal politics of America’s allies, including most notoriously the spread of rumors that British Prime Minister Harold Wilson was a Communist agent, forcing his resignation. (4) Angelton knew about and covered up an operation in which Israeli agents stole fissionable material from a U.S. company which was important to the development of Israel’s atomic bomb. (5) Angleton also had a special and almost obsessive interest in Lee Harvey Oswald (who assassinated President John F Kennedy) that began in 1959 when Oswald attempted to defect to the Soviet Union. Angleton maintained unusually tight control over his file of Oswald and in a serious break of protocol never shared his material with the Warren Commission, which investigated Kennedy’s assassination.
Read the fascinating (and horrifying) biography: Jefferson Morley, The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton (2017)
Learn more about the CIA: Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (2007)
Read Hersh’s autobiography (including a chapter about his exposure of he CHAOS spying program): Seymour M. Hersh, Reporter: A Memoir (2018)
Learn more: Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (2008)