* * *
CARMEL OFFIE WAS, by all accounts, an unusual and unscrupulous character. Born into a humble Italian family in Pennsylvania, he exhibited driving ambition at an early age. He studied dictation at a business school until he could take down conversations verbatim. He moved to Washington in the early 1930s, took a civil service exam, and was hired as a stenographer at the State Department. When William Bullitt, U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, asked for a first-class male stenographer, Offie was hired. In Moscow, he became Bullitt’s assistant and lover. When Bullitt returned to the United States, he arranged for Offie to take the Foreign Service exam, which gained him a permanent job in the State Department.175 Offie had a knack for shady financial schemes, which he used to keep powerful patrons in his debt.
Unusually for a gay man in those days, Offie did not hide his sexual preferences. He liked to refer to his bed as “the playing fields of Eton,” the all-male English boarding school attended by the British elite. In 1943, he was arrested for propositioning an undercover police officer in Lafayette Park. After hours, the leafy park across the street from the White House was a popular place for gay men to congregate. The Washington police arrest report was the factual basis for McCarthy’s charge.
At the time, Offie’s bosses at the State Department defended him because he was simply too valuable to lose. They told the Washington police chief that Offie had gone to the park on departmental business. The charge was dropped and Offie kept his job.
When Frank Wisner, former chief of the OSS station in Romania, was selected to head the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination in 1948, one of the first people he hired was Carmel Offie. Amid the office power struggles, Angleton got to know Offie well.
He was a Machiavellian operator, Angleton told a friend, a “master intriguer.… [He] knew everybody. Superb bureaucratic infighter and guide.” Angleton did not trust him. “He was capable of floating ruinous, scandalous rumors, wrecking careers,” he said.176
Angleton was well acquainted with Offie’s problems in the spring of 1950. In October 1949, Offie had propositioned a U.S. Army officer after an OPC meeting with an innuendo-laden digression about the foolishness of men who wasted money chasing women when there was a better alternative at hand.177 The officer filed a complaint with his superiors, who ordered an investigation. Angleton heard about the incident; he soon acquired the police report on Offie’s arrest in 1943.178
McCarthy’s charges alarmed CIA director Roscoe Hillenkoetter. Hilly, as he was known, was a traditional man with traditional mores. He knew all about Offie’s gay tendencies, having served on the staff of Ambassador Bullitt in the late 1930s. Hillenkoetter ordered Wisner to fire Offie.
Wisner did not carry out the order, at least not right away. He was simply too dependent on Offie’s skills. He put Offie “on leave” while allowing him to remain at the CIA. But McCarthy’s charges showed the ruse was wearing thin. Offie was looking for another job to relieve the pressure on his boss.
Angleton, no slouch at bureaucratic maneuvering, sensed opportunity. He asked Offie if he wanted to come to work for him at OSO. While he thought Offie had a “criminal mentality,” he also thought his range of contacts could be put to good use. Angleton told a friend he wanted to use Offie “in homo circles in Europe.”
Surprised, Offie asked Angleton why he would offer him a job, given that he hated him so much.
“That’s just the reason,” Angleton replied. “No one would ever suspect.”179
Offie refused the odd offer and continued to use his many contacts to look for a position elsewhere in the government.
In May, Marquis Childs, a syndicated columnist for The Washington Post, heard that Offie was still working for the CIA, despite his scandalous reputation. He called Hillenkoetter’s office, seeking comment.
“The individual in question,” Hillenkoetter replied stiffly, “had been employed but was no longer in CIA employ.”180
Unfortunately for the admiral, that was not quite true.
When Hillenkoetter called Frank Wisner, the latter said that his investigation of Offie’s alleged offense “had failed to reveal any grounds to substantiate the charge.”181 Offie was still on the CIA payroll. On June 2, Childs called Hillenkoetter again, seeking “to verify that Mr. Carmel Offie was no longer employed by CIA.”182 Hillenkoetter assured Childs that Offie “has no connection with the organization.” Just to be sure, the irate director then ordered Wisner “to put a memo in his personnel file to the effect that Carmel Offie was never to be rehired by CIA.”183
And still Offie was protected. Wisner arranged for him to go to work for Jay Lovestone at the Free Trade Union Committee of the American Federation of Labor, which was subsidized by the CIA.184 Even Angleton conceded that Offie did a good job. “He had many useful contacts in Europe,” he said.185
Angleton’s response to the Lavender Scare was telling. He was not repelled by Offie’s homosexuality. He was not deterred by politics from coming to Offie’s aid. He could—and would—keep secrets on behalf of a gay man if it served his purposes and the Agency’s. One writer would later insist, without evidence, that Angleton himself was homosexual.186 Angleton certainly didn’t think of himself as gay in the way Carmel Offie did. Nor was he uncomfortable with such a man, even though he might dislike him otherwise. As always with Angleton, the imperatives of secret intelligence trumped the strictures of conventional morality.
PHILBY
KIM PHILBY’S FRIEND GUY Burgess was slightly taller than average in height with a combination of blue eyes, inquisitive nose, and curly hair that gave him the expression of an alert fox terrier. Said one British reporter, “He swam like an otter and drank, not like a feckless undergraduate, but like some Rabelaisian bottleswiper with a thirst unquenchable.”187 After a cocktail or two, his eyes lit up with a glint of a sexual appetite that was insatiable. Said one lover, “If anyone invented homosexuality, it was Guy Burgess.”188
In mid-twentieth-century Washington, Burgess stood out even more than Carmel Offie. In a city where gay impulses were all but unmentionable, Burgess did not conceal his witty contempt for American conventions. Before Burgess took up his post in Washington, his boss in London, who knew full well of his sexual recklessness, warned him there were three taboos he must respect in America: homosexuality, communism, and the color line. Burgess pondered the advice.
“What you’re trying to say in your nice, long-winded way,” he deadpanned, “is—Guy, for God’s sake don’t make a pass at Paul Robeson,” the statuesque African American actor known for his Communist sympathies.189
Philby welcomed Burgess to Washington in the summer of 1950. Philby’s masculine style encompassed toleration, even affection, for Burgess. They might even have been lovers. Philby’s colleague Basil Mann dropped by the house unannounced one morning and found Kim and Guy lounging together in Philby’s bed, dressed in bathrobes, drinking champagne.190
In 1934, while students at Cambridge University, Philby and Burgess first met when Burgess collected money for the campus Socialist Society, of which Philby was treasurer.191 They had stayed in touch ever since. During the war, Burgess worked at the British Broadcasting Company, where he produced a popular radio program.192 He helped Philby get his first job in the Secret Service. Burgess became an aide to Hector McNeil, the minister of state for the Foreign Office, who sent him to Washington, in the fatuous hope that his scandalous private life would not stand out in a large embassy.
When Burgess arrived in August 1950, he stayed as a temporary guest in Philby’s house at 5100 Nebraska Avenue.193 Philby introduced Burgess to Angleton. Like many people, Angleton was half appalled and half charmed by Burgess’s exuberance. He invited both men to his house, and Angleton’s daughter remembered the drunken games they played.
“They’d start chasing each other through the house in this little choo-choo train,” according to Siri Hari (Lucy) Angleton, “these men in their Eton ties, screaming and laughing!” At another raucous party
, she recalled, “Philby’s wife passed out, and was just lying on the floor. Mummy said, ‘Oh, Kim, don’t you want to see how Mrs. Philby is doing?’ And he said, ‘Ahhh…’ and just stepped right over her to get another drink.”194
Guy Burgess was an ornament in Angleton’s social world. But he had a mean streak, too, as Angleton knew full well. Jim and Cicely attended a dinner party at the Philbys’ in January 1951 in honor of Bill Harvey, who would soon head off to command the CIA’s base in Berlin. Harvey’s enduring resentment of the Ivy Leaguers who dominated the Agency had only been slightly mollified by his prestigious assignment. And his suspicions of the effete British had only been slightly eased by Philby’s liquid hospitality. Harvey’s wife, Libby, an unsophisticated midwesterner, had just begun to get comfortable with such cosmopolitan company.
Guy Burgess wandered into the house, vivacious and drunk, as usual. He exchanged pleasantries with the Harveys and let slip that he was a caricaturist and would be delighted to do a portrait in honor of Mrs. Harvey. He dashed off a drawing and presented it to the lady. The drawing depicted Libby Harvey (depending on which version of the story you believe) as either a homely hag or a wanton woman with her dress hiked up and legs obscenely spread. Enraged, Harvey threatened Burgess, and the two men had to be separated. The Harveys stalked out, and the party broke up.
Cicely and Miriam Mann consoled Aileen Philby, who was in tears, while Angleton commiserated with Basil Mann. All the while, Kim sat, head in hands, anguished by Burgess’s outrageous ways for more reasons than his wife and friends could possibly imagine. Suddenly, he was weeping.
“How could you?” Philby sobbed. “How could you?”195
* * *
“I ALWAYS THOUGHT THERE was something wrong with Philby,” Angleton would later tell fellow CIA officer John Hart.196 He told journalist Andrew Boyle that he suspected as early as 1951 that Philby might be a spy. Such claims are not supported by any evidence.197
In fact, one of Angleton’s friends raised doubts about Philby’s loyalties at the time and Angleton did not act. The friend was Teddy Kollek, a British Zionist who had served as an SIS agent during the war before emigrating to Israel. Angleton had met Kollek in Rome after the war as the Jewish Agency organized the exodus of European Jews to Palestine. They were reunited when Kollek was assigned to work at the Israeli embassy in Washington. In the fall of 1950, Kollek paid a visit to CIA headquarters to see Angleton.
“I was walking towards Angleton’s office,” Kollek recounted, “… when suddenly I spotted a familiar face at the other end of the hallway.… I burst into Angleton’s office and said ‘Jim, you’ll never guess who I saw in the hallway. It was Kim Philby!’”
Kollek knew Philby. He had lived in Austria in 1934 when a fascist government crushed a socialist insurgency that had drawn supporters from across Europe, including the young Philby. Kollek told Angleton that Philby may have been recruited as an agent of the Soviet Union. “Once a Communist, always a Communist,” he said. Angleton stared back.
“Jim never reacted to anything,” Kollek said. “The subject was dropped and never raised again.”198
* * *
ON JUNE 25, 1950, the men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency were caught by surprise.199 The army of Communist North Korea invaded South Korea. President Harry Truman was surprised, too. It wasn’t until eight hours after the fighting began that the commander in chief received the news. Where was the CIA? the president wanted to know. Summoned to Capitol Hill to explain, director Hillenkoetter said of wars, “You can’t predict the timing.” When Truman heard that, he wanted a new CIA director.
Truman chose Gen. Walter Bedell Smith to replace Hillenkoetter. Smith, known as “Beetle,” was serving as U.S. ambassador to Moscow. He was best known for starting out as a buck private in the Indiana National Guard and rising to become Gen. Dwight Eisenhower’s chief of staff during World War II.200 Smith was the product of military education, training, and tradition. He did not come to his new job with a high opinion of the fledgling CIA.
“I expect the worst and know I won’t be disappointed,” he wrote to one friend.201
Smith thought he was taking over an intelligence organization, only to discover the CIA was a sprawling entity that had acquired its own radio stations, newspapers, airlines, and even private armies.202 A stickler for order, Smith set out to get control of the organization, particularly its covert operations.203 He asked OSS veteran Allen Dulles, now a partner at the Sullivan & Cromwell law firm, to serve as a short-term consultant. Dulles moved to CIA headquarters in Washington for six weeks. He wound up staying for a decade.204
Angleton was delighted to be working with Dulles again. He was more critical of Smith, whom he thought had no appreciation for the difficulty of running covert operations. The acerbic general, in turn, had no special regard for Angleton, especially not after Guy Burgess, the obnoxious houseguest of Angleton’s friend Kim Philby, turned out to be a Soviet spy.
* * *
ANGLETON LEARNED THE STORY after the Memorial Day holiday in May 1951. He might have heard it from Philby himself: Donald Maclean, a top official in the British embassy, had vanished while on home leave in England—and apparently Guy Burgess had vanished with him.
U.S. and British officials had come to suspect that Maclean was a spy. The U.S. Army’s code-breaking office had deciphered a series of messages sent to the Soviets in 1944 and 1945 from a source identified only as “Homer,” who spoke of a pregnant wife in New York whom he visited regularly. At the time, Maclean’s wife was pregnant and lived in New York. British officials had just decided to summon Maclean for questioning when he disappeared.
The British traced his movements in England. They discovered that Burgess, also on home leave, had picked up Maclean in a rented car. The two men had boarded a ferry to France, where the trail went cold. The only possible explanation for Maclean’s flight, just as he was about to face interrogation, was that he had been spying for the Soviet Union. The simultaneous disappearance of Burgess was a surprise, because he had not been suspected of spying. Had someone tipped them off that Maclean was in danger? Was there a third spy in Washington, a third man?
Suspicions focused on Kim Philby. Beetle Smith asked everyone on his staff who knew Burgess, Maclean, and Philby to assess their loyalties.
Bill Harvey responded first. He consulted with Win Scott, who knew Philby from his stints in London.205 They agreed Philby was a Soviet spy and that he had tipped off Burgess and Maclean. In a memo dated June 13, Harvey noted Philby had been joint commander of a CIA-SIS operation in Albania, which was plagued with security problems. Philby had known about the code breakers’ efforts to identify the Soviet agent known as “Homer.” And, of course, Philby had shared his house with Burgess. Harvey argued forcefully that these constituted too many coincidences to allow an innocent conclusion.
A few days later, Angleton said Philby was guilty only of being too fond of Burgess.
“Philby had consistently ‘sold’ subject as a most gifted individual,” Angleton wrote in his memo to Smith. “In this respect, he has served as subject’s apologist on several occasions when subject’s behavior has been a source of extreme embarrassment in the Philby household. Philby has explained away these idiosyncrasies on ground that subject suffered a severe brain concussion in an accident which had continued to affect him periodically.” The tenor of Angleton’s memo was that the trusting Philby could not be blamed for Burgess’s treachery.206
Harvey scoffed. When he read Angleton’s memo, he scrawled across the bottom, “Where’s the rest of the story?”207 Harvey speculated that there was a homosexual relationship between Philby and Angleton, or that the two were such good friends that Angleton just could not bring himself to face the possibility that Philby was a spy.208
Beetle Smith told the British that the CIA would have no contact with SIS until Philby was removed from his position in Washington. Philby prepared to return to London. When Angleton heard the news, he
called Philby and suggested they meet for a drink. In his memoir, Philby said he thought his American friend seemed oddly clueless about his predicament. The CIA thought he was a spy, and SIS was calling him home. In fact, Philby had been spying for the Soviet Union for sixteen years and had been deceiving his friend Angleton for seven. He had tipped off Maclean about his imminent arrest, though he never expected Burgess to bolt with him. Angleton, confronted with the possibility that his deep and warm friendship was a sham, did not allow himself to believe it. At their last meeting, Angleton told Philby he expected they would meet again.
The poignant truth, as Jim McCargar discovered, was that Angleton believed Philby was innocent. One day in 1952, he ran into Angleton at the Hotel Crillon in Paris. They talked about the Philby affair.
“Knowing nothing of the facts,” McCargar wrote later, “my feeling at the time was that Philby had been railroaded out of the British service by American pressure. I therefore told Jim unless he thought it undesirable for any reason, my intention was to invite Philby for drinks the next time I was in London. Jim said he thought it was a very good idea.”
“I still feel Philby someday will head the British service,” Angleton said.209
He didn’t care what Bill Harvey and J. Edgar Hoover said. He still believed his great, good friend, Philby, was an honest man.
MOSSAD
AFTER PHILBY’S FORCED DEPARTURE, the upward trajectory of Angleton’s career flattened for the first time. He was no longer the miracle worker of the Italian elections. The disaster of Burgess and Maclean did nothing to endear him to the dyspeptic Beetle Smith.
The arrival of Allen Dulles in the so-called tempo buildings on the Mall was a positive development for Angleton. The merger of OPC and OSO was not.210 In 1952, Dulles merged the CIA’s two competing divisions into a single clandestine service, known as the Directorate of Plans.211 Smith anointed Frank Wisner to run it. To Angleton’s way of thinking, Beetle Smith had had been hoodwinked by Wisner and his “psychological warfare” specialists.212 Angleton argued that the Agency had to tighten security, focus on intelligence collection, and understand the history of Soviet intelligence operators before it could mount secret actions of its own. With his usual creativity, he looked for opportunities to prove his point.
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