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THE LOGINOV BETRAYAL. Angleton was the prime motivator in the tragic case of Yuri Loginov, a Soviet KGB officer who provided valuable intelligence to the CIA for more than six years. Angleton decided that Loginov, then under Soviet "deep cover" in South Africa, was "dirty" -- a Soviet plant. Loginov was exposed as a KGB spy to local authorities, who in 1969 turned him over to the West Germans to use in a spy swap with the East. In 1979 an agency review determined that Loginov had been aboveboard and his information valid.
THE GOLITSYN DEFECTION. Angleton's fears of a mole in the CIA appeared to be confirmed in 1961 by KGB Major Anatoly Golitsyn, a Soviet defector. Although Golitsyn initially denied any knowledge of Soviet penetrations, he later claimed that the Soviets had planted an agent code-named "Sasha" inside the agency. Golitsyn also described a Soviet "master plan" to provide disinformation to the CIA and cautioned that subsequent Soviet defectors would be dispatched to discredit him. Thus when KGB Lieut. Colonel Yuri Nosenko defected in 1964, the stage was set for a monumental confrontation that still reverberates within the halls of the CIA. Nosenko claimed to have firsthand knowledge that the KGB was not involved in the assassination of President John Kennedy and, moreover, that there was no Soviet penetration of the CIA. But Golitsyn fingered Nosenko as a false defector, and Angleton sided with Golitsyn.
Unable to find a mole among Soviet defectors and counteragents, Angleton turned on the CIA's own staff. Some 40 officers in the Soviet Division were considered suspect, and 14 of them were seriously investigated. Angleton's only grounds were that they were of Russian origin or, based on Golitsyn's allegations, that their names began with K. Three senior CIA officials who later learned how the investigation had marred their careers sued the agency and won six-figure compensations. KGB Colonel Oleg Gordievsky, who spied for the West for 10 years before defecting in 1985, said after reviewing Angleton's cases that the former counterintelligence chief "displayed disgraceful ignorance of the KGB and the Soviet system as a whole."
Angleton's conduct greatly inhibited the CIA's attempts to recruit Soviet agents at the height of the cold war. Retired veterans of the agency's Soviet Division describe a lethargy that gripped them because of Angleton's constant security fears. "Jim had gotten out of hand," concludes former CIA Director William Colby. "His central intelligence staff had become far too intimidating." The Soviet Division, according to Colby, "wasn't doing anything worthwhile." Richard Helms, who was the CIA's director from 1966 to 1972, concedes that "Jim fell in love with his agent Golitsyn," but he also insists that "it speaks well for Jim that the CIA was not penetrated on his watch."