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Petraeus's appointment as combatant commander of Central Command was set in motion several weeks ago, with the firing of then-combatant commander Adm. William Fallon. The administration let him go not for opposing a possible strike against Iran, as was widely speculated, but for arguing too often with Petraeus over troop levels in Iraq. Petraeus, who may be the most well-read analytical mind in the military, wanted to maintain troop levels, rather than reduce them for use in Afghanistan and for other contingencies -- to say nothing of relieving strains on the army. But Fallon and Pentagon generals wanted troop levels...

I may have awakened him. The late James Jesus Angleton, once the chief of CIA counterintelligence, sounded kinda groggy to me after I got him–loud and clear!–on my famously untrustworthy ouija board. Of course I have no idea whether he gets to sleep at all. I don’t quite know exactly “where” he is, after all, and he doesn’t answer direct questions on the subject. Anyway, there he was, and I started right in. ML: So what am I supposed to think about Petraeus? JJA: That you’re living in a country where espionage is rampant. ML: Huh? JJA: Have you read...

BRAZORIA COUNTY, Texas -- Jubal Alexander was taking after his father working in chemical plants across Texas.The father and son just had dinner together days before his son was murdered and decapitated in Angleton."They cut my son's head off and they took my son's head. Who would do that? I don't understand,” his father told KTRK. “I couldn't even see my son. They won't even let me see him."Alexander was sleeping in his truck under a bridge in Angleton.The 24-year-old was trying to save up money for bills working at a local chemical plant as a pipe fitter.Friends and family...

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel August 18, 2002 Pg. 5 Despite Son's Pleas, Scientist's Death Remains A Cold War Mystery Given LSD, he died in a fall from hotel room; government later promised to tell all, but didn't By Frederic N. Tulsky, Knight Ridder News Service San Jose, Calif. -- The death in 1953 of a government scientist, Frank Olson, in a fall from a New York hotel window is one of the most notorious cases in CIA history. Only in 1975 did Olson's family learn that the CIA had slipped LSD into his drink, days before his death. President Ford apologized...

“A fine mess down there, I must say. Nobody learns, ever, so far as I can tell…” It was hard to disagree, especially with one of the great experts on intelligence, the late James Jesus Angleton, once upon a time the head of CIA Counterintelligence. I wanted his take on the latest Chinese fire drill over the abridged “torture memos” that the Obama people had made public, and all the subsequent smoke and fire about possible prosecutions and/or investigations of the “guilty parties.” I’d had some repairs made to my ouija board, and had tracked him down in the great...

On Saturday 2-24-07 there were (4) 9 and 10 year old boys playing out behind a house in Angleton Tx. in a sparsely wooded area. Three boys had BB guns and one was ...another area of the property. Two of the boys had Daisy pump up BB guns model 880. One had a Daisy "Red Rider". They were shooting at trees. There was a pile of trees from some recent clearing that was piled up in the area. Two of the boys were playing behind the pile of brush when the boy on the horse rode by out from behind...

Why should anyone believe anything the CIA has to say about Iran? Like everyone else in Washington, I’ve been reading excerpts from James Risen’s new book, the one that "exposes" the "crimes" of the Bush administration with regard to the war on terrorism. The most recent excerpt deals with the CIA’s activities vis-à-vis Iran, and Risen says some very shocking things, things which a serious city would find far more troublesome than the legalities about NSA’s intercepts of conversations involving terrorists. Since I’m just an amateur at these arcane subjects, I thought it best to get some real expertise, and...

Traitors of Record: The Record of the New York TimesBy Fedora “. . .the most untrustworthy paper in the United States. . .” --President Dwight Eisenhower, referring to the New York TimesIntroductionLast week Senator John Cornyn criticized the New York Times for endangering national security with a James Risen story on NSA surveillance timed to coincide with a vote on the Patriot Act and, incidentally, with the release of a book by Risen. A review of the record illustrates that endangering national security through irresponsible leaks is nothing new for the New York Times. Some particularly outrageous examples are worth...

In 1961 KGB Major Anatoliy Golitsyn defected to America. He became the most controversial Russian defector of the Cold War. He first ran into difficulties when he said there were KGB agents within the CIA. This sent chills through the slumbering bureaucrats. A controversy bubbled within our own intelligence community. Some disliked Golitsyn, having strong feelings against the idea of traitors and moles in their midst. The chief of CIA counterintelligence, James Angleton, took Golitsyn seriously and did a number of tests (by leaking information to groups of CIA officers to see if this information reached the Russians). According to...

Notwithstanding former President Jimmy Carter's recent statement to the contrary, Undersecretary of State John Bolton's remarks about Cuba's biological weapons capabilities underscore lingering concerns with the rogue island only 90 miles from the United States. Bolton, on May 6, told an audience at the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation that the U.S. is suspicious about Cuban biomedical laboratories and their ability to transfer biological weapons technology to Iraq, Syria and Libya, all countries that Cuban President Fidel Castro visited last year. Bolton also made remarks, which may be interpreted as a clear signal of hardening State Department policy toward Cuba, faulting...

Was Angleton Right? WALL STREET JOURNAL December 30, 2004 by Edward Jay Epstein Recently a number of former CIA officers received an invitation from the Spy Museum in Washington to attend a luncheon for former KGB Col. Victor Cherkashin. The event, as the invitation said, would afford "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dine and dish with an extraordinary spymaster." In the heyday of the Cold War, such an offer, delivered with slightly more discretion, might have been the prelude to a KGB recruitment operation. Now it's merely the notice for a book party celebrating yet another memoir by a former KGB...

Recently a number of former CIA officers received an invitation from the Spy Museum in Washington to attend a luncheon for former KGB Col. Victor Cherkashin. The event, as the invitation said, would afford "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dine and dish with an extraordinary spymaster." In the heyday of the Cold War, such an offer, delivered with slightly more discretion, might have been the prelude to a KGB recruitment operation. Now it's merely the notice for a book party celebrating yet another memoir by a former KGB officer recounting how the KGB duped the CIA. In this case, there is...

The Agency Rides Again - Angleton on Chalabi Michael Ledeen/NRO Like everyone else, I've been reading the stories about my friend Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress, and the accusations that he's an Iranian spy. I don't believe it, but before launching a tirade against the misnamed Central Intelligence Agency I thought I'd better check with the greatest unliving expert on intelligence, the late James Jesus Angleton. He was the longtime chief of CIA counterintelligence, and knew everything there was to know about spying, so I dusted off the ouija board and got him on the second try. JJA:...

ANGLETON — Gail Mizell may not be a major general, but she has two stars now. Mizell was one of about 30 relatives of Brazoria County servicemen who received Blue Star Banners on Saturday at the Support the Troops Rally. The event was at American Legion Post 241. The white banners with red borders, have a blue star for each family member on active duty, a tradition that dates back to World War I, said American Legion member Bill Scott. “Our auxiliary handmade the blue-star banners,” Scott said. “They can hang them in the window of their home.” Mizell’s two...

Those Old Spies Are Still Haunting Post 9/11 Debateby Ron Rosenbaum "I can only tell what the history is .... "-C.I.A. head George Tenet, in the Feb. 13 New York Times, speaking of terror-alert intelligence. 1 The House of Secrets Washington has a shiny new spy museum, and an expensive new spy establishment post-9/11, complete with a highly reassuring and informative orange, red and yellow color wheel to translate its "findings." But a new book reminds us that there's a hole in the shiny façade of the New Espionage establishment: a hole in its past, a gap that haunts its...

Question: WAS ANGLETON RIGHT? What does it say about the state of US intelligence in the late nineteen-eighties and early ninety-nineties that two top counterintellgence officials-- Aldrich Ames in the CIA's anti-Soviet counterintelligence and Robert Phillip Hanssen in the FBI Soviet counterintelligence-- were moles for the Russian Intelligence Service? Under such circumstances, who controlled the recruitments the CIA and FBI were making during this period? ANSWER: James Jesus Angleton, the chief of the CIA's counterintelligence staff from in 1953 to 1974, principal concern was not with "moles" per se, but with the inherent vulnerability of intelligence services to systematic deception....