We were in the place Angleton called "the wilderness of mirrors," where defectors are false, lies are truth, truth lies, and the reflections leave you dazzled and confused. The idea of false defectors is a hard one to accept, unless you read the history books and learn how MI5 did it with the Double Cross System throughout the war. It is now an unfashionable theory. But there are very few intelligence officers who lived through those years of the 1960s who do not believe that during that period we were the victim of some kind of Soviet ploy involving defectors. Some may dispute whether it was successful, or debate the limits of its scale, but few would doubt that such a game was being played. Furthermore, it could be played only if the Russians had good feedback from MI5 of intelligence about the game.
Twenty years later the truth of those years is still impossible to tie down. Goleniewski, Penkovsky, Nossenko, Fedora, and Top Hat - all had signs of interference in one way or another. I do not mean that each was a conscious false defector, although Fedora and Top Hat certainly were, as even the FBI were forced to conclude in the 1970s, long after I retired. But I do think they were being used at various times - Penkovsky to influence our perception of Soviet missile technology; Nossenko to influence the American attitude to the Kennedy assassination. Goleniewski, Fedora, and Top Hat, I believe, were part of a systematic attempt to rupture the all-important Anglo-American intelligence alliance, and also to support the deception about the performance of the Soviet ICBMs until the mid-1970s.
Consider the timing of key pieces of intelligence from these three defectors. Goleniewski gave his information about the middling-grade agent in late 1963, nearly three years after his defection. This was at the time of Hollis' visit to Washington to brief the FBI and CIA on the results of the Mitchell investigation. Nothing could be better designed to precipitate the final breach in relations between British and American intelligence than another apparently undetected spy in MI5. Luckily, Angleton's doubts about Goleniewski ensured that the story did not have the drastic impact it might otherwise have had, and in fact only served to strengthen Anglo-American suspicions of both Goleniewski and Hollis.
Almost immediately Fedora made contact with the Americans, and gave the lead which led us to Martelli. Discovery of another nuclear spy was guaranteed to create the maximum possible strain between London and Washington, though the KGB could never have dreamed that MI5 would botch the prosecution as badly as they did.
Months later, as if part of a coordinated campaign, Top Hat led us to Bossard. Once again, American weapons technology was involved, which automatically meant that the American armed forces would take an active role in protesting at British security weaknesses. When we made the damage assessment for Bossard, we concluded that virtually the entire advanced American guidance systems had been betrayed. Patrick Stewart sent an advance copy to Angleton with a one-word memorandum attached. It read simply: "Help!"
Luckily for Britain, Angleton was able to protect us from the onslaught. But it was a close-run thing, and few realize today that the exchange came nearer to breakdown in the early years of the 1960s than at any time since the war.
The night before I returned to London, Angleton and I went to dinner at a small Chinese restaurant in Alexandria, where his son ate regularly. It was one of Angleton's favorite haunts when he felt the need to talk. We could be assured of privacy, he told me, because the Chinese kept the Russians out.
Angleton was at the zenith of his power, although the strain was beginning to tell on him. For years he had been waging a covert bureaucratic war with the Soviet Division of the CIA, to ensure the independence and expansion of his counterintelligence empire. He had been successful beyond all expectations, and achieved virtual veto influence over all operations and personnel within the Agency. He controlled the Israeli account, and made the CIA station in Tel Aviv redundant. He ensured that all important communications with British Intelligence went through him personally, bypassing the London station. He even succeeded in establishing his own counterintelligence cipher independent of CIA communications, which he claimed were insecure, although we all believed that the real reason was empire-building.
The CAZAB conferences were his outstanding achievement. The best, the brightest, and the most senior officers in Western intelligence came together once every eighteen months to discuss his agenda - the Soviet threat, the role of counterintelligence - and to conduct doom-laden future scenarios. In Angleton's mind, not unreasonably, the CAZABs were the first decisive step in creating a unified Western intelligence command capable of challenging the Soviet Bloc.
The CAZAB conferences suited Angleton's temperament perfectly, and he always seemed at his most relaxed in their super-secure, electronically swept environment, grappling with the endless ambiguities of the wilderness of mirrors. I fully supported these meetings, which were very important.
Gambling was always a major feature of CAZAB conferences. Each daily session would usually end with a poker school, a game at which Angleton excelled, although I was sometimes able to "take him to the cleaners." Horse racing was also an occasional diversion. I remember at the New York CAZAB in the late 1960s-early 1970s, Angleton became the bookmaker for CAZAB for the Washington International horse race, featuring horses from all over the world, which was scheduled for the first afternoon. Before the meeting I asked Angleton to put $100 on the nose of the British horse. Lester Piggott was riding him and had ridden the winner the previous year. The British horse was unfancied, but the MI5 and MI6 contingent, anxious to be seen to fly the flag in even the most secret chambers, soon wagered around $500 between them.
That afternoon, as Angleton delivered a long paper on long-range Soviet disinformation techniques, most minds, on the British side at least, were down at the racetrack. After an hour Angleton's secretary walked in and nervously handed him a slip of paper. She handed him two chits; the first said, "How much do you want for your house, Jim?" and the second said, "The British horse won!"
"Jesus Christ!" cursed Angleton. "I forgot to lay the bets off, and that goddamn British horse has come in at 11 to 1!"
That night, as we flew back to Washington in a small CIA propeller plane, Angleton crawled around the belly of the fuselage, paying off his debts from a huge wad of $100 bills.
"The sacrifices I make for the West..." he said, as he paid me my whack.
But the humor could not mask the fact that he was making enemies throughout the CIA - in the Soviet Division, among other directors jealous of his power, and among those officers whose promotion prospects he had adversely affected. He was safe while Helms was Director, but the war in Vietnam was rapidly altering the face of the Agency, and the gathering political fashion for detente was beginning to undermine the foundations of Cold War suspicion upon which his empire was built.