Once they received Stalin’s blessing, the Yugoslavs moved swiftly to capitalize on the situation. At a plenum of the Albanian Communist Party’s Central Committee in February to March 1948, the Xoxe faction purged the leadership ranks of all those who were not fervently pro-Yugoslav. They expelled the pro-Soviet Mehmet Shehu, an ally of Nako Spiru, from the Central Committee and demoted him from his position as chief of staff of the army. They accelerated measures put in place to incorporate Albania as a seventh republic in the Yugoslav Federation. Hoxha’s position became even more precarious when Yugoslavs demanded the deployment of two Yugoslav divisions in Albania under the pretext of defending it in case of an attack from Greece. Hoxha played perhaps the only card he had left by informing the Soviet government of the request and asking for advice on handling the matter. Reports that came out later indicated that at this critical juncture Hoxha also sounded out a certain Western power—most likely France, which was the only Western country with a legation in Tirana at the time—about the possibilities of sanctuary.43
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Hoxha’s plea for help reached Moscow at a time when the Soviet perspective toward Yugoslavia had shifted dramatically. For several months Moscow had tried to curb the Yugoslavs’ independent streak and force them into the vassal position in which all the other Eastern bloc countries had fallen. Stalin’s acquiescence to Yugoslavia swallowing Albania had clearly been a gesture of goodwill toward Tito to convince him to accept Soviet domination. When Tito failed to respond, Stalin displayed his fangs. In letters sent to the Yugoslav Communist Party between March and May, Stalin and Molotov accused the Yugoslavs of denigrating the Red Army and Soviet Union and admonished them to correct their mistakes. Facing stubborn opposition from the Yugoslavs, Stalin expelled them from the Cominform on June 28, 1948.
The news caused an immediate about-face in Albania’s position toward Yugoslavia. All its leaders, including Xoxe, lined up on the side of the Kremlin denouncing the “Trotskyite” Tito and his followers. They gave Yugoslav advisers in Albania forty-eight hours to leave the country and closed the border between the two countries. They also promptly abrogated all bilateral agreements binding Albania to Yugoslavia and launched a virulent anti-Yugoslav campaign in the media. Over the next several months, Hoxha’s followers purged the ranks of the party, military, and government from Yugoslav supporters. In a reversal of fortune, Mehmet Shehu sacked Xoxe and took his place as minister of interior. Not long after that, Xoxe was arrested, convicted in a secret trial in May 1949, and executed. The subsequent anti-Titoist purges in Albania brought the liquidation of fourteen members of the party’s thirty-one-person Central Committee and thirty-two of the 109 People’s Assembly deputies. Overall, the party expelled about 25 percent of its membership.44
The Soviets took the place of the Yugoslavs in Albania, and by the middle of 1949 they had approximately three thousand advisers in the country. Dimitri Chuvakhin, the Soviet minister in Tirana, coordinated their work and was reported to be “the actual boss of the country.”45 A Soviet military mission of about one hundred officers, under the command of Major General N. J. Pavlov,46 advised the Albanian Army at the corps and division levels; Bulgarian officers provided guidance further down the hierarchy. Soviet technical advisers supported every ministry and oversaw all aspects of the economy. Colonel Nikolai Vassiliev headed the group of advisers in the ministry of interior who trained and supported the police and border guard operations.
Thus, by the middle of 1949, Hoxha and Shehu found themselves with a renewed lease on life. Having fended off the Yugoslav attempts to take over the country, they had established direct lines of support with the Soviets, who began pumping material necessities in the country, including cereals and other food items, as well as farm and industrial equipment. Hoxha and Shehu controlled the country with an iron fist. The relentless pursuit of the anti-Communist elements who had remained in the country after the war had eliminated many and forced most to cross into Greece or Yugoslavia by 1949. There was still some active resistance in the countryside carried out by small bands whose activities were limited to harassing actions against the regime. None of them controlled any substantial area of the country.
* * *
By 1949, virtually the only surviving members of the opposition to the Albanian regime had settled in exile primarily in Italy, Greece, and Egypt, with smaller numbers in Turkey and Syria. Collaboration with the Italians and Germans during the war had tainted many of them to a greater or lesser extent. Although a good number came from the middle and upper classes of Albania’s prewar society, all but a few were poverty-stricken, and living on international or local charity and in refugee camps in Greece and Italy. The émigrés gravitated into one of three political groups, two of which, the republican Balli Kombëtar (BK) and monarchist Legaliteti, were reincarnations abroad of the groupings that had existed in Albania during the war.
BK had most of its members in Italy and a scattering in Greece and the Near East. Mithat Frashëri, its founder, continued to lead the BK, which after the war had become firmly republican, anti-Italian, mildly leftist or reformist, and strongly anti-Communist. At the beginning of 1949, Frashëri was in Turkey attempting to form a united front of Albanian refugees that the Western powers would recognize. Abas Ermenji, another BK leader who had been a capable military figure during the war, was in Greece until the end of March 1949, when he moved to Italy under the auspices of the International Relief Organization (IRO). Ermenji led the left-leaning reformist current within the BK. He was educated and had the ear of Frashëri, who was himself an intellectual. Vasil Andoni was BK’s Party secretary and Frashëri’s principal lieutenant in Italy.
Legaliteti had at the front and center of its agenda King Zog, who had settled in Egypt in spring 1946 at the invitation of King Farouk, the tenth ruler of the Egyptian dynasty founded in 1805 by Muhammad Ali Pasha, an Albanian commander of the Ottoman Empire sent to Egypt to drive out Napoleon’s forces. Zog had established close friendly relations with King Farouk and other royals in exile in Egypt, including the Italian and Bulgarian royal families.
Zog actively sought to build up his own prestige among his fellow countrymen in exile by arranging the settlement of prominent displaced Albanians in the Near East. Through his intervention, a number of former Albanian public officials settled in Egypt, including Abas Kupi, the wartime founder and nominal leader of Legaliteti; Musa Juka, minister of interior during Zog’s regime; Mehdi Frashëri, formerly chief regent under the Germans; Mustafa Kruja, quisling prime minister until 1943; Xhafer Deva, minister of interior under the Germans; Koço Muka, quisling minster of education under the Germans; and Ali Klissura, the leader of the conservative current of the BK.
William (Bill) MacLean, one of the SOE operators attached to Abas Kupi during the war, painted an unflattering picture of Zog in early 1949:
Very clever, the shrewdest and most cunning as well as the most capable and unscrupulous of Albanian politicians. He wants to run Albania as his private reserve and will use all means to that end. He has almost no following at all in Albania. His former supporters, the tribal chieftains, have either been liquidated or otherwise rendered powerless by the Communists. Among the younger, more active generation Zog is despised as an anachronistic Turkish pasha. His reputation is low because of the way he ruled the country when he was King, his precipitous flight in 1939, his political and military inactivity during the war, his amoral life abroad since 1939 (he is popularly supposed to maintain a harem) and because of more than 10 years of Fascist and Communist propaganda against him.47
In September 1947, Zog had sent emissaries to Washington and London with proposals to work together to overthrow the Communist regime in Albania. He requested official recognition and financial support of his entourage as the Albanian government in exile or, as an alternative, unofficial recognition through an American or British representative attached to the retinue under some sort of cover. He received no encouragement from the Department of Stat
e.48 The British Foreign Office expressed sympathy but did not consider the moment at the time opportune for a move against Hoxha.49
Through the same channels, Zog approached the CIA offering the services of his followers for activities in propaganda, sabotage, and the collection of information in Albania and Yugoslavia, including the services of “twelve Albanian officers in Turkey trained as paratroopers which could be dropped into Albania.”50 Office of Special Operations staffers listened but decided not to pursue the matter further. In their assessment, Zog and his supporters offered no real intelligence value, their security was poor, and their ability questionable. They had no sources inside Albania, no facilities to cross the Greek-Albanian border, no knowledge of intelligence methods, and very little experience.51
The third grouping of Albanian émigrés, the Blloku Kombëtar Indipendent (BKI), or National Independent Bloc, existed since 1946 and included pro-Italian elements among anti-Communist exiles who had supported and participated in quisling governments during the Italian occupation. The leaders of the BKI were Ismail Vërlaci, a member of the Albanian Fascist Party and son of Albania’s prime minister during the Italian occupation, and Gjon Markagjoni, the influential leader of Catholic tribes in the north-central mountains of Albania, courted by the Italians as the Prince of Mirdita. The spiritual and thought leader of the group was Ernest Koliqi, a noted scholar and one of the foremost poets writing in the Albanian language, as well as a leading authority on the language’s origins. Influenced by his Catholic religion and long education in Italy, Koliqi had been a strong supporter of Albania’s union with Italy and had held the post of Minister of Education during the Italian occupation.
The BKI was conservative and capitalistic in nature, and by virtue of its associations with Italian government and military officials of the war period, had the support of the Italian bureaucracy and intelligence services. Vërlaci was among the very few Albanian émigrés to have brought personal wealth out of Albania, which he used to move around refugee centers in Italy and recruit supporters.
The leaders of the three principal Albanian groups had been unable to find a lasting basis of agreement by themselves. What drew them together was only the hatred against their common enemies: the Communists who ruled their homeland and the Greek government who continued to press its claims on southern Albania. On pretty much everything else, they were continually at odds, divided by issues such as the form of government, economic and social reforms, and their position toward Kosovo, with some but not all advocating for its union with Albania under the boundaries of ethnic Albania that briefly existed during the war. These leaders could not forget that before the Communists came to power they had considered each other fierce political and personal rivals.52 The clash of personalities among the leaders, in particular Zog, Frashëri, and Vërlaci, was probably the most important obstacle to the unification of the three groups.53
CHAPTER 3
Genesis of Operation Fiend
On December 23, 1948, Sotir T. Martini, minister of the Royal Court of Albania in Egypt submitted a letter to Colonel Norman E. Fiske, the US Military Attaché in Cairo, outlining a new proposal by King Zog to collaborate with the Americans in the overthrow of the Communist regime in Albania. Zog felt that an exceptional opportunity existed at the moment to reestablish in Albania a government friendly to the Western powers. According to Zog’s letter, the people of Albania were thoroughly disillusioned with the regime and were ready to overthrow it at the earliest opportunity. Tito’s difficulties with the Cominform could be exploited to ensure he wouldn’t interfere with the action, and a friendly Albania would go far toward resolving the existing troublesome situation in Greece. The first crack in the ring of Soviet satellites would hearten other dominated peoples and be a definite influence against full-scale war.1
The letter couldn’t have fallen into better hands. Fiske was an exceptionally bright army officer with firsthand experience in that area of the world. At a time when a quarter to a third of the officers in the army had no college education, Fiske had a bachelor’s degree from the University of California and a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He had also reached the highest levels of military schooling both in the US and abroad. He was a graduate of the United States Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and of the Italian Military Academy at Tor di Quinto, Rome. He had been assistant military attaché in Rome in 1935 to 1940 and had spent some time in Albania during the Italo-Greek war in 1940.2 Fiske understood immediately the importance of Zog’s proposal. A few days later, he called on King Zog at his villa in Alexandria for a face-to-face conversation about the ideas Zog had outlined in his letter.
Zog said that he had based his analysis on information from his supporters in Albania, particularly leaders of mountain tribes, with whom he claimed to be in close touch. He felt that he could rally his supporters to supplant the Albanian regime with a relatively small amount of outside aid. Then, Zog went on to explain his plan for accomplishing the task, which was nearly identical to the plan he had devised in 1924 to orchestrate the overthrow of Noli’s government and his return to power. Specifically, he proposed to organize an expeditionary force of some five hundred men recruited among Albanians abroad and possibly anti-Soviet Poles, Germans, and Hungarians, together with the requisite arms and equipment, primarily small arms, machine guns, mortars, light tanks, and transport. Zog would make available experienced Albanian officers for detailed planning, organization, training, and execution of the operation. However, he required outside financial and material assistance, and his first preference was to receive that assistance from the US. When Fiske asked for Zog’s plans after the overthrow of the Albanian regime, Zog said he was prepared to have the ultimate form of government in Albania decided by popular referendum. “Being a King in the Balkans,” he added somewhat ruefully, “is not always a happy career.”3
On January 11, 1949, Fiske forwarded Martini’s letter and a summary of his conversation with Zog to the US Army director of intelligence. Fiske’s opinion was that, while the proposal seemed quite optimistic, the venture might succeed if actions from abroad were coordinated with internal preparations. The package eventually made its way onto Wisner’s desk on March 21, 1949. That same day, Wisner received a detailed report on the Albanian situation by Burton Yost Berry, a State Department official4 temporarily assigned to the Office of Policy Coordination, like many other Foreign Service officers who filled the ranks of the OPC in the first few months of its existence, until it had established its organizational structure on the ground.
* * *
Berry had spent his entire twenty years with the Foreign Service in diplomatic posts in the Balkans, Turkey, and Egypt. In 1944 he served as the head of the US diplomatic mission in Bucharest where he met Wisner, who at the time was running the OSS operations in Romania. In his OPC assignment, Berry toured the region in the first few months of 1949, contacting his connections and acquaintances and looking for opportunities Wisner could exploit for his operations.
Visiting Italy, Greece, Egypt, and Turkey, Berry realized that the CIA’s regular intelligence gathering and reporting services had missed some important opportunities in Albania. As he got deeper into the investigation of the Albanian situation, he realized the urgency and importance of preparing an Albanian operation.
Because of Tito’s split with the Soviet bloc, Albania was left physically isolated from the rest of the Soviet satellites, since it was surrounded by pro-Western Greece and Italy in addition to anti-Kremlin Yugoslavia. Experts in the region saw Enver Hoxha’s regime in Tirana as very weak, given the bitter anti-Communist feelings in large regions of the country, especially in the northern and central areas. The trials of Koçi Xoxe and other Communist leaders closely affiliated with Tito and who had conspired with him against Hoxha, had just started in Tirana. Berry expected they would further divide Albania to the point where even a large swath of anti-Stalin and pro-Yugoslav Communists could su
pport a revolt against the government. There were enough anti-Communist Albanians abroad to provide the initial thrust through the Greek border if they received logistics support, money, and munitions from supplies being given to Greece, advice from the American military mission in Greece, and help from Greek National Army troops. Some sources ventured as far as to suggest that “for peanuts the US could get a friendly government in Albania.”5
The benefits of such a reversal would be significant and sensational. It would be the first open revolt behind the Iron Curtain and would encourage all anti-Communist elements in the Soviet satellite countries. It would knock out Kremlin’s sense of security and show the Soviets that the West could match in kind their tactics for supporting guerrillas and subversive activities in their areas of influence. It would save the situation in Greece by cutting off Albania as one of the remaining two sources of support for the Communist guerrillas; the other source, Bulgaria, would be intimidated into cutting off the flow of men and supplies through their borders for fear of risking a similar fate.
Berry argued that time was of the essence and they must launch the operation in Albania within the next few months in order to take advantage of the summer weather. If the fighting lasted longer than expected, the winter would force a cessation of hostilities, which would provide an opportunity to resupply the resistance forces through Greece and allow a political settlement of the conflict to take place.6
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