Inurnment Date: June 29, 1987
Location: Section 6-45-4
Angleton was the retired director of counterintelligence for the CIA, where he gained a reputation as a brilliant, tireless, single minded and mysterious guardian of the nations secrets. He died of cancer at the age of 69. When he resigned as number two man in the CIA in 1975, the word was out that James Angleton had been America's master spy for many years.
He was born in St. Al's hospital on December 9, 1917. The family moved to Italy where in his teens, he became protégé of the internationally famous poet, Idaho-born Ezra Pound. Later when Jim entered Yale, he and poet Reed Whitemore edited a quarterly of original poetry called Furioso to which Pound was a contributor along with E. E. Cummings and Archibald MacLeish.
After Harvard Law School, he joined the Army and entered the OSS as an infantry sergeant. Four years later, after serving in Italy (uncovering secret correspondence between Hitler and Mussolini, among other things), he resigned in Washington, D.C. as a Major but continued to serve through 31 years in OSS and CIA sensitive areas.
In 1975 a Time magazine writer reported that dozens of international spies have been caught in Angleton's net, among them the real life Topaz. While with the CIA, Angleton was credited by some with helping expose Kim Philby, the former high official of Britain's (MI6 Secret Service) who fled to Moscow in 1963. In the course of his career, he became one of the most celebrated intelligence officers of his time. In early 1975, he had to resign during controversy over the agency's domestic activities.
Stooped, lean, professorial and chain smoking, he wrote poetry, grew orchids and tied fishing flies for relaxation.