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Angleton. Clip of interview J. Morley described in his book THE GHOST


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CLIP Angleton in front of his home 24.12. 1974 shortly after he was fired

Quote, J. Morley THE GHOST ... 

Quote

 

THE NEXT DAY (22.12. 1974), ANGLETON’S home on 33rd Road was besieged by reporters.  One  of  them  was  Daniel  Schorr,  a  CBS  news  correspondent famous for his blunt questions. He marched up to the front door and rang the  bell.  A  groggy-looking,  stoop-shouldered  man  in  pajamas  opened  the door  and  pointed  at  The  Washington  Post  on  his  doorstep.  Schorr  was standing on it.“I certainly didn’t expect you, Mr. Schorr, to trample on the press,” said
Angleton. 
Encouraged by his sense of humor, Schorr asked if he could come in. He found himself in a house strewn with books in many languages, mementos of Italy and Israel, and pictures of Cicely and the children. Angleton agreed to talk to Schorr, but only off-camera, saying he would be in mortal danger if recognized.
Each  time  Schorr  asked  him  about  the  allegations  of  improper  CIA activities  in  the  United  States,  Angleton  digressed  about  the  Cold  War. When Schorr tried to bring him back to the question he had asked fifteen minutes  earlier,  Angleton  said,  “I  am  not  known  as  a  linear  thinker,  Mr. Schorr. You will have to let me approach your question my way.” 
(Clip starts here)

When he was done, Angleton donned his black coat and homburg and walked out the front door, down the brick steps, and slowly across the lawn into  the  wilderness  of  TV  cameras.  He  stopped  as  if  hypnotized.  Schorr grabbed  a  microphone  lying  on  the  ground  and  the  cameraman  started filming.
“Why did you resign?” Schorr asked. “I  think  the  time  comes  to  all  men  when  they  no  longer  serve  their
countries,” Angleton said.
“Did you jump or were you pushed?” someone asked. “I wasn’t pushed out the window,” said Angleton.
He got into his Mercedes and drove away. That night, Christmas Eve 1974, millions of Americans heard the name James Jesus Angleton for the first time. All three TV networks reported on the Times story, along with the categorical denials of former CIA director Richard Helms. All three played footage of Angleton emerging unsteadily from his front door. Angleton’s  ordeal  was  surreal  and  unimaginable,  except  that  it  was actually happening: newspaper reporters camped out on his lawn, a career of secrecy expiring in the view of millions, his craft of counterintelligence scorned,  his  mission  mocked,  his  Agency  stripped  bare  by  reporters  he thought were righteous and ignorant 

 

 

Edited by Karl Kinaski
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What strikes me about the video clip is Angleton's odd, inappropriate affect-- as if his life of spying on the citizenry, orchestrating murders, and finally getting sh*t-canned was amusing to him.  He acts like a sociopathic child who just got busted for torturing the cat.

I had the same reaction to Angleton when I read about his encounter with Ben Bradlee in Mary Pinchot Meyer's apartment shortly after she was murdered.

(Cord and Mary Pinchot Meyer had, apparently, been close friends of James and Cicely Angleton in happier times.)

No doubt, Angleton was a very odd duck.  So was Allen Dulles.

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W. Niederhut wrote: What strikes me about the video clip is Angleton's odd, inappropriate affect-- as if his life of spying on the citizenry, orchestrating murders, and finally getting sh*t-canned was amusing to him.  He acts like a sociopathic child who just got busted for torturing the cat.

I wonder, if Angleton and Hillary Clinton have something in common in that regard. 🙂

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

What strikes me about the video clip is Angleton's odd, inappropriate affect-- as if his life of spying on the citizenry, orchestrating murders, and finally getting sh*t-canned was amusing to him.  He acts like a sociopathic child who just got busted for torturing the cat.

I had the same reaction to Angleton when I read about his encounter with Ben Bradlee in Mary Pinchot Meyer's apartment shortly after she was murdered.

(Cord and Mary Pinchot Meyer had, apparently, been close friends of James and Cicely Angleton in happier times.)

No doubt, Angleton was a very odd duck.  So was Allen Dulles.


He was a peculiar man. 

Are there hints or shades of an Angleton who has been betrayed? So much of his life was in service to a this Machiavellian agency and the powers that be have interests that diverge from his hard grained ideals. He probably thought he was always serving America or its elite class in a warped way and at this point America perhaps begins to pivot toward globalism or a deconstruction of US empire. At which point Angleton and his ideas make him a relic of a previous agenda, a dinosaur. He’d served his purpose. Firing him, took away his purpose in life. 

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3 hours ago, Chris Barnard said:


He was a peculiar man. 

Are there hints or shades of an Angleton who has been betrayed? So much of his life was in service to a this Machiavellian agency and the powers that be have interests that diverge from his hard grained ideals. He probably thought he was always serving America or its elite class in a warped way and at this point America perhaps begins to pivot toward globalism or a deconstruction of US empire. At which point Angleton and his ideas make him a relic of a previous agenda, a dinosaur. He’d served his purpose. Firing him, took away his purpose in life. 

     He and Dulles used and abused powers that they never should have acquired in our Constitutional democracy-- even actively thwarting and subverting the foreign policies and directives of our elected President, then conspiring to murder him and those who might have exposed their murder plot.

     What colossal arrogance!

     And, what is worse, JFK's thwarted policy concepts were right all along, as the JFK-- Destiny Betrayed documentary illustrates so clearly.

Edited by W. Niederhut
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3 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

     He and Dulles used and abused powers that they never should have acquired in our Constitutional democracy-- even actively thwarting and subverting the foreign policies and directives of our elected President, then conspiring to murder him and those who might have exposed their murder plot.

     What colossal arrogance!

     And, what is worse, JFK's thwarted policy concepts were right all along, as the JFK-- Destiny Betrayed documentary illustrates so clearly.

Agreed, because they had impunity from above. Despite the corrupt aspects, I think those two were very much for the uni-polar world and US dominance and, as @John Cotterpointed out recently in another thread, JFK was for a multipolar situation. Dulles & Angleton would do anything to ensure US dominance and that their masters wishes came to fruition. Most people have no experience of what it is like to be able to act above the law, with zero repercussions. They take on a hubris and god like status, almost invincibility. This is ironic as Dulles quipped that "that little Kennedy thought he was a god." Dulles felt like a god and couldn't stand taking orders from someone he regarded as inferior. 

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Well said, Chris and William.

Angleton looks like some kind of nocturnal creature out of his element in the light of day. This is perfectly understandable and indeed inevitable, since he, Alan Dulles and their minions were denizens of a murky diabolical underworld, the CIA, which was deliberately contrived so as to be beyond the ken and the moral and legal compass of the citizens and their elected representatives whom they were being paid to serve.

James Douglass describes well the intrinsic illegitimacy of the CIA in JFK and the Unspeakable:

Quote:

On June 18, 1948, Truman’s [recently-created] National Security Council took a further step into a CIA quicksand and approved top-secret directive NSC 10/2, which sanctioned US intelligence to carry out a broad range of covert operations: ‘propaganda, economic warfare, preventative direct action including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and excavation measures; subversion against hostile states including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups.’ The CIA was now empowered to be a paramilitary organization. George Kennan, who sponsored NSC 10.2, said later in the light of history that it was “the greatest mistake I ever made”

Since NSC 10/2 authorized violations of international law, it also established official lying as their indispensable cover. All such activities had to be ‘so planned and executed that any US government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons, and if uncovered the US government can plausibly deny any responsibility for them.’ The national security doctrine of ‘plausible deniability’ combined lying with hypocrisy. It marked the creation of a Frankenstein monster. (p33).

End quote.

Edited by John Cotter
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