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Joseph Trento: Secret History of the CIA


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John, obviously I am anxiously awaiting Mr. Trento's views, but let me jump in on the last few questions.

If LBJ was not himself a conspirator, then we can probably accept at face value his concern over a nuclear war.

And I think we can all admit that if LNJ was not involved in the assassination, he was certainly a beneficiary of it.

Moreover, as you well know, there was no love lost between JFK. And you have written that JFK was planning to dump LBK in 1964.

Why in the world would LBJ have wanted to go to war with the Soviet Union merely because he suspected (if he did) that it had murdered his political enemy and saved his political career, and made him president?

Mr. Trento's views re the motive of some in the Soviet Union who he (or Angelton) argued plotted the assassination are quite clearly stated in "The Secret History of the CIA". They believed that Khruschev's policies of liberalization were selling the Soviet Union down the river. They did not like the developing friendship between Kennedy and Khruschev any more than some hard-line militarists in the US. So, according to Angleton, this group first got Kennedy and then it got Khruschev.

IF the motive behind the assassination of JFK was, as some argue, his desire to seek accomodation with the Soviet Union, then his death may have been plotted by hard line militarists. But if Khruschev was deposed for the same reason, then the two plots may very well have been connected. If so, it was only hard-line militarists in the Soviet Union who pulled it off, for clearly the MIC in the US had neither the means nor the opportunity to depose Khruschev.

So do I also get a badge of courage for defending James Jesus?

Edited by Tim Gratz
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So do I also get a badge of courage for defending James Jesus?

No. You are not bright enough to display intellectual courage. In your case it is just plain stupidity.

I suppose you expect to be praised for your comments today where you equate the 19th century campaign to abolish slavery with the 21st century campaign against abortion.

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First of all, I would like to thank you for showing the courage to defend James Angleton. It is something that Edward Epstein and Gus Russo are unwilling to do.

Cleve Cram had a reason not to like me or Angleton. I reported in the 1970’s that Angleton conducted operations on his turf in Ottawa (where he was COS). The details of that operation involved Bennett and Nick Shadrin. Cram and his colleague – a former Russian desk officer and later CI official hated all my CIA reported. In both cases these men trie to pass on disinformation and both were caught at it. Cram was also angry because I got a hold of his report on Angleton draft form and published a newspaper version of it. If you had read my books then you should be aware I included Petty’s views.

I am not convinced that Cram’s criticism of you in based on your report on events in Canada. It has to be remembered that the purpose of this report was for the briefing of senior CIA officials. In fact, he only spends a couple of sentences on your book: “Not every book on espionage and counterintelligence published between 1977 and 1992 is reviewed; only those that are historically accurate, at least in general, and were influential are assessed. Excluded are some recent works like Widows, by William R. Corson and Susan and Joseph Trento because they are not reputable by even the generally low standards of most counterintelligence writing.” (page 1). He also mentions you on page 8 when he claims you wrote a series of articles in 1979/1980 where you “launched a number of charges against Angleton, including some erroneous information about certain cases.”

Cram’s real target is not you but Edward Epstein, who he believes participated with Angleton in a massive disinformation campaign.

If you had read my books then you should be aware I included Petty’s views. Petty was a glory hound who took credit for the work of others. His report on Tenant Bagley was discredited not by Petty but by the greatest case officer in CIA history, the late George Kisevalter.

I did not attempt to defend the views of Petty. At first he was also taken in by Angleton’s disinformation campaign. It was only when he was carrying out research into Angleton’s proposed moles in the CIA that he came up with the idea that Angleton was working for the Soviets. As I have already said, I believe that Petty got this wrong. Cram does not give the impression that he believed this theory either.

Your little history review in or note leave out a great deal. I think it is fairly clear your knowledge about Angleton and Schlesinger is less than complete. No CIA head was less respected than Schlesinger among the rank and file , Angleton thought him a fool. He told me that only a fool would try follow Helm’s who clear would still play a leadership role at the CIA as Ambassador to Iran.

I do not agree that James Schlesinger was a fool. Nor did Angleton agree with this assessment. In fact the two men got on very well together. Schlesinger made no attempt to sack Angleton although he accepted that it was incompetent as well as being mentally ill.

Schlesinger was clearly Nixon’s man who posed a serious threat to the CIA. Soon after he was appointed Schlesinger was heard to say: “The clandestine service was Helms’s Praetorian Guard. It had too much influence in the Agency and was too powerful within the government. I am going to cut it down to size.” This he did and over the next three months over 7 per cent of CIA officers lost their jobs.

On 9th May, 1973, Schlesinger issued a directive to all CIA employees: “I have ordered all senior operating officials of this Agency to report to me immediately on any activities now going on, or might have gone on in the past, which might be considered to be outside the legislative charter of this Agency. I hereby direct every person presently employed by CIA to report to me on any such activities of which he has knowledge. I invite all ex-employees to do the same. Anyone who has such information should call my secretary and say that he wishes to talk to me about “activities outside the CIA’s charter”.

There were several employees who had been trying to complain about the illegal CIA activities for some time. As Cord Meyer pointed out, this directive “was a hunting license for the resentful subordinate to dig back into the records of the past in order to come up with evidence that might destroy the career of a superior whom he long hated.” The result of this investigation was the production of what has become known as the “Family Jewels”. This then became information that Cram was able to use in his investigation.

I am afraid I have repeatedly been over the territory you cite and just can’t come to the same conclusions. Mangold’s book was so discredited – it was a planned attack on Angleton – largely because it used such poor sources as Gerald Post etc., that the publisher pulled the rug out from under it shortly after it was published.

I would be interested in hearing further information about Tom Mangold being discredited (are you also making the same claim against David Wise and David C. Martin). In the UK Mangold is a much respected investigative journalist who has a long record of disclosing corruption in government.

I have read all three books and I agree with Cleveland Cram’s judgement of Mangold, Martin and Wise. In fact one cannot fail to be impressed by the logic of Cram’s assessment of the books he reviews. Cram had been recruited into the CIA from the Harvard’s history department (it followed the publication of his PhD). It shows. Intellectually he is head and shoulders above the rest of the senior figures in the CIA.

It also has to be remembered that Cram was also the same man who spent six years researching the History of the Counterintelligence Staff 1954-1974. As David Wise points out in his book Molehunt (1992): "When Cram finally finished it in 1981... he had produced twelve legal-sized volumes, each three hundred to four hundred pages. Cram's approximately four-thousand-page study has never been declassified. It remains locked in the CIA's vaults."

Cram was able to use this information when writing Moles and Molehunters. I suspect he knows more about what was really going on in the CIA during this period that anyone else, dead or alive.

As you probably know, Epstein admitted in May 1989 that Angleton was probably involved in a disinformation campaign. I would be interested to know if you also accept that now. Were you used by Angleton to spread false stories that the KGB/Castro were responsible for the assassination of JFK? If you do still believe this theory, what was the motive? Also, how did they managed to persuade the FBI and CIA to cover-up the crime? Why did LBJ not order an immediate invasion of Cuba? In fact, why did LBJ also help to cover-up KGB/Castro involvement in the assassination?

I don’t really know how to reply to you. Cram – like Leonard McCoy and others are all out of a class of Agency apologists.

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I don’t really know how to reply to you. Cram – like Leonard McCoy and others are all out of a class of Agency apologists.

It may well be true that in public Cleveland C. Cram was a CIA apologist. However, his document, Moles and Molehunters, was a classified document. It was not for public consumption. This is what makes it so interesting. Nor is the document supportive of the CIA. In fact it is highly critical of CIA officers like James Jesus Angleton and Clare Edward Petty who were passing classified information to people like yourself. However, he was especially damning of people like Angleton who were passing “false” information to journalists such as Edward Epstein who then went on to write books that completely misrepresented what had actually happened.

I can understand why people like Epstein, Russo and yourself were taken in by Angleton. It must have seemed like a great scoop to get the chief of the CIA's counter-intelligence section to give you what appeared to be classified information. However, in reality, he was giving this information to a large number of journalists. Nor was it accurate information. As Cleveland C. Cram points out, most journalists were able to work this out and did not include this "false" information in their books and articles. Others fell for it and in doing so became part of Angleton’s disinformation campaign.

Epstein admitted in 1987 that he had been fooled by Angleton. Do you now accept that some of the information that you got from Angleton was false?

Don’t you think William Colby was right to sack Angleton. As Colby later admitted, following his investigation of Angleton, he could not find any evidence "that we ever caught a spy under Jim". He added: "That really bothered me... Now I don't care what Jim's political views were as long as he did his job properly, and I'm afraid, in that respect, he was not a good CI chief."

In fact he was a disaster. Not only did he fail to catch any spies, he allowed the most important, Kim Philby, to get away. If the CIA director, Walter Bedell Smith, had listened to William Harvey instead of Angleton, Philby would have been arrested in 1951 and would never have been able to escape to the Soviet Union. Also, a thorough investigation of Philby at this time might well have revealed if the CIA did have a Soviet mole at the heart of the organization. Given these facts, one can see why Clare Edward Petty, came to the conclusion that Angleton was a Soviet agent. As I have said before, I think he was wrong, but the possibility definitely existed. He was definitely a better possibility than Angleton’s main candidate, David Murphy, the former chief of the Soviet Division.

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