09-07-2011, 04:22 AM
In the chapter entitled "Reflecting on the Yale Succession" [originally published under a different name in the Yale Herald, February 21, 2003] written by the son of Yale English professor Richard B Sewall, later Dean and master at Yale University, another tale is told about James Jesus Angleton [Yale 41]. Angleton is described as Yale's second most famous spy, behind Nathan Hale.
The tale, told on pages 55 and 56 in Kris Millegan's edited collection Fleshing Out Skull and Bones: Investigations into America's Most Powerful Secret Society, speaks of the time that the author Steve Sewall read his father an excerpt from Joseph Trento's "magisterial" Secret History of the CIA. Angleton had majored in English at Yale and his father recalled his name and having taught him.
Angleton "granted Trento an interview two years before his death in 1987. I read my father the following excerpt:
"Within the confines of [Angleton's] remarkable life were most of America's secrets.
"You know how I got to be in charge of counterintelligence? I agreed not the polygraph or require detailed background checks on Allen Dulles and 60 of his closest friends… they were afraid that their own business dealings with Hitler's pals would come out. They were too arrogant to believe that the Russians would discover it all.… You know, the CIA got tens of thousands of brave people killed.… We played with lives as if we owned them. We gave false hope. WeIso misjudged what happened."
I asked the dying man how it all went so wrong.
With no emotion in his voice, but his hand trembling, Angleton replied: "Fundamentally, the founding fathers of US intelligence were liars. The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted. These people attracted to and promoted each other. Outside of their duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power. I did things that, in looking back on my life, I regret. But I was part of it and I loved being in it… Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, Carmel Offie, and Frank Wisner were the grandmasters. If you were in a room with them you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell." Angleton slowly sipped his tea and then said, "I guess I will see them there soon."
The tale, told on pages 55 and 56 in Kris Millegan's edited collection Fleshing Out Skull and Bones: Investigations into America's Most Powerful Secret Society, speaks of the time that the author Steve Sewall read his father an excerpt from Joseph Trento's "magisterial" Secret History of the CIA. Angleton had majored in English at Yale and his father recalled his name and having taught him.
Angleton "granted Trento an interview two years before his death in 1987. I read my father the following excerpt:
"Within the confines of [Angleton's] remarkable life were most of America's secrets.
"You know how I got to be in charge of counterintelligence? I agreed not the polygraph or require detailed background checks on Allen Dulles and 60 of his closest friends… they were afraid that their own business dealings with Hitler's pals would come out. They were too arrogant to believe that the Russians would discover it all.… You know, the CIA got tens of thousands of brave people killed.… We played with lives as if we owned them. We gave false hope. WeIso misjudged what happened."
I asked the dying man how it all went so wrong.
With no emotion in his voice, but his hand trembling, Angleton replied: "Fundamentally, the founding fathers of US intelligence were liars. The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted. These people attracted to and promoted each other. Outside of their duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power. I did things that, in looking back on my life, I regret. But I was part of it and I loved being in it… Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, Carmel Offie, and Frank Wisner were the grandmasters. If you were in a room with them you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell." Angleton slowly sipped his tea and then said, "I guess I will see them there soon."
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"