James Jesus Angleton was an enigma. With his horn-rimmed glasses, homburg hats and foppish manners, he looked more like a Cambridge don than an American , spy hunter. Yet the Idaho-born Yale graduate, who joined the Central Intelligence Agency after a wartime stint in the Office of Strategic Services, had a flair for global intrigue and office politics that propelled him into the CIA's upper echelons. During his 20-year tenure as head of counterintelligence at the height of the cold war, Angleton hamstrung the agency with a paranoiac mole hunt that led him to ignore crucial leads provided by KGB defectors -- and even to terrorize staff members with intimidating inquiries. By the time he was sacked in 1974, the hard-drinking, chain-smoking Angleton had so thoroughly undermined the agency's effectiveness that a formal CIA review accused him of having a "very detrimental" effect on the agency.
Those sensational charges are advanced by British author Tom Mangold in a new book, Cold Warrior (Simon & Schuster; $22.95), and provide the basis for a PBS Frontline special, The Spy Hunter, airing May 14. Though allegations of wrenching divisions within the CIA in the 1960s and early '70s are not new, Mangold has managed to corroborate many of the details in interviews with former CIA officials who were so distressed over events of that era that they were willing to break their vow of silence. After three years of research, Mangold concludes that counterintelligence and the recruitment of Soviets -- both of which came under Angleton's scrutiny -- "were virtually paralyzed by Angleton's operations." TIME's survey of many senior CIA veterans indicates there is considerable truth to this judgment.
Angleton's fixation on Soviet penetration probably began with allegations that his best friend in Britain's MI6 intelligence service, Kim Philby, was a KGB mole. Philby removed all doubt when he defected to the Soviets in 1963. "After the Philby case," says an Angleton friend, "Jim was never the same." But the full scope of Angleton's obsessive mole hunt was not apparent until his dismissal. Agents sent to clear out his secret vault at the CIA's Langley, Va., headquarters discovered hundreds of files from his Ahab-like search for Soviet counteragents within the ranks of the CIA. Investigators were baffled to find scores of unexplored leads and astounding revelations of Angleton's misdeeds and malfeasance. Among them:
THE NICK NACK DOSSIER. The FBI gave Angleton a file full of tips from a Soviet military intelligence officer code-named "Nick Nack," who outlined Soviet penetrations around the world. Angleton, convinced that the agent was part of a Soviet plot to plant a mole, stuffed the report in a safe and ignored its contents. When Angleton's successor, George Kalaris, followed up the information, all of the 20 leads it contained resulted in arrests and convictions of important Soviet agents. "In each instance," says Mangold, "spies continued to operate for seven to 10 years because of Angleton's neglect."