Tom Mangold
(Simon and Schuster, London and New York, 1991)
On things Angleton, Tom Mangold’s Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton (Simon and Schuster, London and New York, 1991) is very good but is not the biography it pretends to be. There is nothing on Angleton’s time in Italy after the war; and, even more extraordinary, nothing on Angleton’s relationship with the Israelis. Mangold tells us (p. 28) that the “Israeli account…. stayed under Angleton’s tight, zealous control for the next twenty years’ — and never mentions it again. Mangold tries to explain Angleton’s enormous power wholly by his being head of Counter Intelligence. This is not convincing. Surely part of Angleton’s bureaucratic power came precisely from the “Israeli account’. The book is essentially an account of the disastrous effects of the Angleton-Goltisyn relationship and subsequent mole-hunts. (The latter first appears on p. 49.) Crudely summarised, the book shows that for 20 years Angleton and his fans (Peter Wright, for example) believed complete crap for which they had not a shred of evidence — and were not challenged by the CIA’s senior management. This latter point has yet to be explained by anybody.
RR