Up to that point, Zog hadn’t said anything the CIA didn’t know. What followed next was a careful attempt on his part to offer the agency an alternative to the National Committee for Free Albania as the leading force behind the insurgency. Despite the strength of the Albanian armed forces and their support by Soviet specialists in the country, Zog stated that a considerable proportion of officers were still loyal to him and would defect and turn against the regime in the event of an uprising. “Scattered throughout the country,” he said, “there are some two thousand former reserve officers with war experience who are loyal to me and would provide local leadership in operations against the Government.” He also asserted that a number of nonmilitary people in the Hoxha administration remained loyal to him and would turn against the regime when called to do so.
Having made the case for why the Americans should support him, Zog then addressed what had always been his greatest weakness in the eyes of the Western allies, the legitimacy of his claim to the Albanian throne. Fully aware that doubts about his intentions lingered in the minds of the Americans, the king emphasized that his interest in action in Albania was not based on a desire to be restored to the throne but was purely an expression of his interest as a patriotic Albanian who wished to help his country. As proof of his lack of self-interest, he committed to inviting a UN-sponsored group to supervise the establishment of any postinsurrection system of government that the people of Albania might choose in free elections.
Zog concluded the meeting by reiterating again that he was in the best position to lead the resistance movement and make a real contribution in Albania due to the loyal following he still had in the country. He stood ready to do anything that the Americans needed of him in the future and was at their disposal.5
* * *
The conversation with Zog must have struck a chord with Yatsevitch. He clearly saw potential in developing him as a source for ideas and tapping into his followers for operations in Albania in addition to the pool already available to the CIA in the Labor Services Company in Germany. Two days after their first meeting, on August 17, Yatsevitch met again with Zog at his suite at the Mayflower Hotel. As usual, Zog began the conversation in a lighthearted mode by reminiscing about his activities in World War I and his detention by the emperor of Austria in Vienna; then, both he and Yatsevitch discussed their mutual interest in fencing. After this initial exchange of pleasantries, Yatsevitch said that the CIA was very interested in having more information on Zog’s ideas concerning the best way of creating a revolution in his country.
“I have given the matter a lot of thought,” Zog said and went on to reiterate his earlier statement that it would be most desirable to conduct the action as though it were a spontaneous revolution breaking out within Albania. He outlined the ideal sequence of activities in order to carry out a successful operation.
To start with, it was necessary to create the political conditions for the success of the effort. They included a declaration from the United States expressing firm support of Albania’s territorial integrity and declarations from Yugoslavia, Greece, and Italy committing not to attack Albania and to use UN mechanisms for pursuing any territorial claims they might have. He thought that the United States could exert sufficient economic pressure to force the Greeks, Italians, and Yugoslavs to make these declarations. “I raise this issue again,” Zog said, “because I am afraid that the British have a secret deal with the Greeks to allow them to occupy Northern Epirus in exchange for abandoning their claims on Cyprus.”
Next, a US staff, working jointly with Zog’s staff, would prepare the operational plans, including training and stockpiling arms and ammunition for ten thousand men. Four or five of King Zog’s officers would make reconnaissance trips throughout Albania to assess the situation and prepare the ground for local support. Small forces would move clandestinely into Greece and other staging areas from which they would enter Albania.
The open revolt operations would begin with a few carefully chosen assassinations carried out by persons within the Albanian government who were still loyal to King Zog. At the same time, small Albanian forces would be introduced by air and land, with King Zog and his staff in the lead, followed by the members of the NCFA and any other Albanian groups who would be willing to participate in the revolution. Arms would be dropped by air to supply guerrilla units in advance. Defections from regular ground forces would increase the revolutionary army to the strength required to overcome any forces that remained loyal to the regime.
Upon termination of the military phase, the NCFA and other political groups would begin their activities. “At this point,” Zog said, “I will invite the UN to send representatives to ensure that formation of the new Albanian government is in accordance with democratic principles.”
Zog emphasized that, if the Americans desired, he would undertake to plan, organize, and execute the operation. Otherwise, the United States could conduct the entire operation, and he would be willing to perform whatever functions the Americans considered most useful.6
* * *
Zog’s plan was far grander than what the agency was prepared to try at the time in Albania. However, Yatsevitch saw useful elements in what Zog proposed that he could weave into the ongoing activities of operation Fiend. On August 30, 1951, Yatsevitch returned for a third and final meeting with Zog at Hotel Delmonico in New York on the eve of his departure from the United States. “My agency has given serious thought to our recent conversations on the subject of Albanian operations,” Yatsevitch said. If Zog considered it a useful thing to do, they would provide all possible material assistance in infiltrating a small party of high-grade agents provided by Zog, complemented by a good wireless transmitter operator trained by the Americans. They would perform reconnaissance in Albania and establish contact with people who were friendly to Zog within the Albanian armed forces and government. They would also establish relations with any resistance groups they would be able to reach.
Zog said he would willingly place his men at the agency’s disposal. He would select officers from his retinue in Egypt who would need to move clandestinely to Greece through another European country in order to maintain the secrecy of the operation. Colonel Hysen Selmani, his aide-de-camp, would assist the Americans in screening a list of Zog supporters among refugees in the Lavrion camp in Greece and selecting a few guides to assist these officers in moving through critical areas in Albania. Zog warned Yatsevitch that he would probably not have any information on the W/T operator the Americans would select to be part of the team. He assumed they would vet the person thoroughly and would be responsible for his trustworthiness and reliability. “I also hope,” Zog said, “that you use cryptographic material that could not be broken by the Russians, who are very good at breaking codes and ciphers.”7
After they covered the topic of operations in Albania, Zog and Yatsevitch continued the conversation for another hour or so, during which Yatsevitch wanted to hear about Zog’s impressions of the United States and his views on other world issues. Zog emphasized the importance of finding a resolution soon to the Jewish-Arab problem and the need for vigorous action against Communists in China. He also described the meetings von Blomberg had arranged for him with Generals Douglas MacArthur and Lucius Clay and said that he was impressed by their grasp of the matters he had brought up in the conversation with them.8
* * *
One of the last items of business Zog conducted before leaving the United States was the purchase of property in the Muttontown section of Nassau County, in what is known as the Gold Coast of Long Island, NY. The Knollwood Estate was one of the most impressive country estates in the area, built between 1906 and 1920 by Charles Hudson, a prosperous stockbroker. A fabulous sixty-room mansion stood on a hill overlooking rolling meadows of landscaping and gardens by Ferruccio Vitale.9 The house had “wide terraces, high Roman columns and massive stone steps leading to the gardens.” The interior was equally impressive, with the main winding staircase made of Caen ma
rble and a white marble fountain in the center of one of the entertainment rooms.10
One additional feature that attracted Zog to the property was that it included a dairy farm complex with stables, a poultry plant capable of housing one thousand chickens, and several farmhouses that could accommodate multiple families of tenants. By Zog’s calculations, the property could support an entourage of 115 persons, including servants and farmers, in addition to his family.
Shortly after the transaction was concluded, a front-page article in the New York Times reported that Zog had paid for the property with a “bucket of diamonds and rubies,” requiring the services of jewel experts to close the deal, in addition to the usual assortment of real estate agents, appraisers, and lawyers. The romantic image of an exiled Muslim monarch married to a young half-American countess emptying a bucket of jewels on the table like the Count of Monte Cristo struck the imagination of the public. Sightseers began appearing in the neighborhood, although the handwrought iron gates of the property remained locked.
A little more than a year later, King Zog and his estate were in the news again. Citing as a precedent his favorable tax treatment in Europe due to his kingly status, Zog claimed “sovereign immunity from the imposition of local taxes” and refused to pay the Long Island annual property tax assessment. The Nassau County Treasurer H. Bogart Seaman was not impressed. He imposed a $2,654 tax lien on the estate, and scheduled it for sale at auction on December 1, 1952, at the opening of the Nassau County annual tax sale.11 Through his lawyer, Zog paid almost three thousand dollars in back taxes and penalties but not before the property was put on the tax list and inspected by a number of people.12
Most of the visitors were attracted by rumors that Zog had buried a treasure somewhere in the property. For a while, the presence of the caretaker, a White Russian former Cossack officer who lived on the property, deterred the treasure hunters. The Nassau County Police Department also leased one of the buildings on the property as the headquarters for its Second Precinct. But by the end of March 1953, Zog had evicted both the caretaker and the police, leaving the ninety-five-acre property locked but completely empty.13
* * *
At the beginning of September 1951, Yatsevitch was in Europe, reviewing the final preparations for the infiltration operations that were planned for the season. He took a detour to Egypt and on September 12, 1951, called on King Zog in Alexandria, in order to complete the arrangements for the team of officers he was going to supply for infiltration into Albania. Yatsevitch provided Zog with a set of cryptonyms and pseudonyms to use in their correspondence. The CIA cryptonym for Zog himself was RNCASTING. His pseudonym was Mr. Yarborough. Yatsevitch would write to Colonel Selmani, care of the Albanian legation in Cairo, using the agreed-upon cryptonyms and pseudonyms, and the letters would be delivered to Egypt through a secure CIA channel. Zog would have his letters delivered to Yatsevitch through the American military attaché in Cairo who had secure means for forwarding them to Washington.
The king stated that he would prefer to have this particular operation handled exclusively as an American undertaking, without British participation, although he had no objection to the sharing of intelligence results with the British. He also agreed with Yatsevitch that the matter must be handled without the knowledge of the NCFA.14
From his meeting with Zog in Alexandria, Yatsevitch proceeded to visits in Germany and Greece and finally in Rome for the joint Fiend-Valuable on October 22–24. There he received news of the disastrous outcome of the 1951 infiltrations broadcast by Radio Tirana, which served as the final push for activating Zog’s agents.
At Yatsevitch’s request, the OPC station chief in Cairo met with Zog at his villa in Alexandria on October 26 and 27 to further discuss the selection of the intelligence team that he had agreed to furnish for the mission in Albania. The team would attempt to establish contact with and determine the whereabouts and status of various officers in the armed forces and other individuals in the Albanian government who might be willing to participate in operations to overthrow the Hoxha regime.
The king agreed that at all times the team would make favorable reference to the National Committee for Free Albania. The king again repeated his earlier assurances that he favored the committee and was exerting his influence to maintain unity within it.
Concerning the timing of the operation, Zog indicated that a spring infiltration of the team would substantially improve their chances of survival and the success of the mission. Although the men were ready to go if asked, it was best to postpone the mission until spring 1952, with the end of March as the target date. In the meanwhile, Zog would keep his officers on hand in Egypt and would await instructions from the Americans as to when to send them to Germany.15
CHAPTER 14
A Rich Harvest of Bitter Fruit
The preparations for the infiltration of the first Zog team into Albania began in March 1952. Zog selected three officers from his retinue in Egypt, members of the former Royal Guard that had followed him in exile and had served as bodyguards for him and his family. He chose Halil Branica for his contacts in the Burgajeti village of Mati from which Zog himself hailed; Zenel Shehi for his connections in the Burreli area; and Haxhi Gjyla for his acquaintances in the Martaneshi area.
Colonel Hysen Selmani, Zog’s aide-de-camp, accompanied Branica, Shehi, and Gjyla as they traveled by ship from Cairo to Marseille, using their royal Albanian passports and under the cover of escorting Zog’s sisters visiting Europe. They then continued to Paris, where a CIA officer met them and arranged transport by car to the German border. There they changed in US military uniforms, crossed covertly into the American zone, and then traveled to a safehouse in Bad Tölz, fifty kilometers south of Munich, where they met Tahir Premçi, the team W/T operator. On March 26, CIA staff drove them to the airport in Fürstenfeldbruck, thirty kilometers west of Munich, and put them on board a covert aircraft for their flight to Athens. Alfred C. Ulmer, CIA Athens station chief, and Gordon Mason, chief of external operations in charge of running agents into Albania and Bulgaria, met them at the airport.
Ulmer was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1916 and spent the early years of his life there, including two years as a reporter for the Jaksonville Journal, before going to Princeton, where he graduated with honors in 1939. He worked for two years in public relations for Bentown and Bowles in New York City before joining the Navy in 1941. He served with distinction in Europe and the Middle East, received a Bronze Star and the Medal of Merit, and reached the rank of lieutenant commander by the end of the war. Ulmer joined the State Department in 1945 and served as attaché in Vienna and Madrid until 1950. After a brief stint in 1951 working for a real estate development company in Florida, Ulmer joined the CIA and was posted as chief of station in Athens, under the cover of first secretary of the embassy and special assistant to the ambassador.1
Gordon Mason, who would be the case officer for the team, took them to a safehouse on the outskirts of Athens, which the CIA staff called “the farm”—not to be confused with “The Farm,” the CIA Camp Peary training facility in the United States, outside Williamsburg, Virginia. Hamit Matiani and Xheladin Sakollari, who would be the team guides into Albania, were already waiting for them at the safehouse. The farm consisted of two main houses where the Albanians and the CIA staff lived, plus the caretaker’s cottage. A big garden surrounded the buildings and offered privacy from the outside. Nevertheless, because the CIA had used the farm since 1950 to stage Albanian teams and a considerable number of Bulgarian agents, the locals knew that Americans held refugees there. Eventually, security compromises with the caretakers forced the CIA to abandon this safehouse and take a second safe house, a fenced building situated on a backstreet in the Kifisia neighborhood in North Athens.2
Gordon Mason chose the code name Apple for the team. Its mission was to conduct reconnaissance and determine conditions within Albania; to attempt to locate and establish contacts with friends in government and military circles; and
to send out intelligence reports by W/T or runners who could act as guides for future infiltration operations. Unlike other Fiend teams, which generally were instructed to exfiltrate after six to eight weeks in the terrain, Apple would remain within its area of operations as long as conditions permitted.
The CIA staff led the team through one month of training and conditioning in the hilly area northeast of the farm. Training included: survival problems; night compass orientation; firing of Mauser rifles, Schmeisser automatics, and Walther P38 pistols; daily marches in mountainous areas carrying field equipment; map reading and familiarization with the coordinate system; first aid and field hygiene; use of concentrated rations; setting up and operating the radio set in the field and establishing contact with base in order to transmit mock intelligence and observation reports. The CIA staff instructed the team on the type of intelligence they were particularly interest in receiving.
The staff officers maintained absolute security and allowed none of the team members to leave the safehouse unless accompanied by members of Fiend staff. Colonel Selmani was a headache from the start and constantly interfered with the training program and communication exercises, although he took no part in them himself. In the end the team members and Fiend staff ignored him completely in the interest of getting the show on the road. In a progress report sent to Washington, Ulmer commented about Selmani: “In the future it is recommended that he confine his activities to Yarborough’s [Zog’s] court in BGBRAWL [cryptonym for Egypt ] where it is felt they will be more appreciated and useful.”
The team was equipped with rifles, Schmeisser submachine guns, Walther P38 9-mm semiautomatic pistols, hand grenades, knives, and ammunition. They also carried food supplies for several days, cigarettes, medical kits, flashlights, one SR-5 radio with extra batteries, and the everpresent L-pill filled with liquid potassium cyanide. The team received 225 gold pounds and $260 in one-dollar bills. Detailed accounting records kept by the Fiend staff showed that clothing and nonmilitary supplies for the team cost seven million drachmas or about $230, since one million drachmas was worth around thirty-three dollars at the time; food supplies for the team in March and April cost twelve million drachmas or slightly over $400.3
Operation Valuable Fiend Page 20