Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Angleton privately accused various foreign leaders of being Soviet spies. He twice informed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that he believed Prime Minister Lester Pearson and his successor Pierre Trudeau to be agents of the Soviet Union. In 1964, under pressure from Angleton, the RCMP detained John Watkins, a close friend of Pearson and formerly Canadian Ambassador to the Soviet Union; Watkins died during interrogation by the RCMP and the CIA, and was subsequently cleared of suspicion. Angleton accused Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, and British Prime Minister Harold Wilson of using their access to NATO secrets to benefit the USSR. Brandt resigned in 1974, after one of his aides was found to be a mole from the East German secret police. Angleton came to suspect Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who commented wryly that even the most brilliant and loyal officers should not spend their entire career in such pressurized and paranoid fields.[citation needed] Angleton also privately accused numerous members of Congress and President Gerald Ford of treason.[citation needed] Angleton's notorious pursuit of the "5th Man", who he believed had penetrated a secret agency in Washington, was solved, he believed, when DCI William Colby fired him.[citation needed] No one was above suspicion, and even Angleton himself was accused by others of working for the Soviets.[citation needed]
Resignation[edit source | editbeta]
Angleton's resignation was announced on Christmas Eve of 1974, just as President Ford demanded that Colby report on the allegations and as various Congressional committees announced that they would launch their own inquiries. Three of Angleton's senior aides in counter-intelligence, his deputy Raymond Rocca, executive officer of the counter-intelligence division William J. Hood, and Angleton's chief of operations Newton S. Miller, were coaxed into retirement within a week of Angleton's resignation after it was made clear that they would be transferred elsewhere in the agency rather than promoted, and the counter-intelligence staff was reduced from 300 people to 80 people.
Yeah, someone looking for Communists under every bed, suspicious of foreign leaders, accusing the president of treason, etc., is just what the NSA needs. Sure. :-/
Cheers,
Scott.