In the best tradition of the spy masters, James Jesus Angleton, 57, always worked in the shadows, his identity as the Central Intelligence Agency's chief of counterintelligence known to few besides other key spooks, his family and a handful of close friends. Now, the controversy over the CIA's domestic activities, in which Angleton's staff was accused of having spied massively and illegally on U.S. citizens, has made his name notorious. He was forced to resign from the CIA in December, and last week he testified for 2½ hours before the presidential commission investigating the CIA. He denied any role in the domestic spying, saying that the secret unit that ran the operation reported directly to then CIA Director Richard Helms and was only nominally under the counterintelligence chiefs control. For all the interest in him, Angleton remains a mysterious figure, his 31-year career as a highly successful spy virtually unknown. To fill in some of the blanks, TIME asked Angleton's longtime friend and admirer Charles J.V. Murphy, a former editor and Washington correspondent of FORTUNE, for this highly personal portrait of the master spy:
I had known Jim Angleton for years, but I had never fully appreciated some of his qualities until a fishing trip to the Adirondacks 14 years ago. It was a bone-chilling early spring day, and with another member of the party, I had retired fishless to the bank for a consoling drink and to wait for Angleton. Finally, he came into view, waist-deep in the icy water and feeling for safe footing among the slippery rocks. He was using a 2¾-oz. Leonard rod and casting with easy grace, the tiny fly landing lightly 80 or 90 ft. below him. He took 1 ½ hours to draw abreast of us, never quitting a run or a pool until he had tested every inch of the surface with one or another of some dozen flies. In the end, though, he had five fine native trout in his creel.
Such meticulousness stood him well in the grinding, exhausting and unforgiving discipline of counterintelligence. His job was to locate, identify and neutralize the operations of hostile espionage agents, particularly those of the Soviet KGB, at home and abroad. The task offered few rewards and demanded an angler's perseverance and patience, unflagging watchfulness and a passion for anonymity. General William Donovan, the director of the Office of Strategic Services (a precursor to the CIA), called him the OSS's "most professional counterintelligence officer." In the years that followed, all the directors of the CIA leaned on him. Allen Dulles seldom made a move on the clandestine side without first consulting him. Walter Bedell Smith made him his youthful éminence grise and bequeathed him his cherished fly-tying equipment. John McCone found him a fascinating and shrewd counselor.