Spytime: The Undoing of James Jesus Angleton

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
For nearly 50 years, William F. Buckley Jr. has successfully pursued a number of concurrent careers: magazine editor, newspaper columnist, television personality, staunch (and vociferous) conservative ideologue. In the midst of all this, Buckley has also found time for a secondary career as a popular, if lightweight, novelist whose books reflect an obsessive fascination with the issues and events of the recent Cold War. His 1999 novel, The Redhunter, is a sympathetic portrayal of the life and times of Senator Joe McCarthy. His long-running Blackford Oakes series (Who's on First, Stained Glass, Saving the Queen concerns a Yale-educated CIA agent whose adventures take him to one after another of the Cold War's hot spots: Soviet Russia, Castro's Cuba, East and West Berlin, etc. Buckley's most recent novel, Spytime, once again examines that turbulent era through a fictionalized portrait of legendary spymaster James Jesus Angleton, long time Chief of Counterintelligence for the CIA.

Angleton (1917-87) was, for many years, one of the principal figures of the American intelligence community. Buckley's account of his long career begins during the waning days of World War II, when Angleton -- a novice agent for the Office of Strategic Services -- plays an unexpected role in the capture -- and subsequent execution -- of Benito Mussolini. With admirable economy, Buckley then sketches in the high points of Angleton's post-war career, a career which carries him into the ruling inner circle of the Central Intelligence Agency, and which eventually culminates in dismissal and disgrace in the radically altered political climate of the mid-1970s.

Buckley portrays Angleton as a dogged, diehard anti-Communist driven by the belief that Soviet agents have infiltrated -- and compromised -- the major Allied intelligence services. Spytime explores the roots of Angleton's belief by re-creating an era in which duplicity did, in fact, proliferate, in which a series of scandals -- most of them concerned with the notorious Cambridge Spy Ring -- rocked the West. The first of these scandals erupted in 1951, when Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean -- Cambridge graduates who occupied sensitive positions within MI6, the Foreign branch of the British Secret Service -- were revealed as "moles": long-term, deep-penetration Russian agents. A number of other moles -- among them George Blake, Sir Anthony Blunt, and the charismatic traitor Kim Philby -- were subsequently uncovered. Much of Spytime concerns Angleton's attempts to discover whether Philby -- his longtime associate and sometime friend -- is a loyal English intelligence agent or a Communist spy.

The bulk of the action takes place in the early 1960s, a particularly eventful period in the history of the Cold War. Angleton's search for the truth about Philby is set against a backdrop of momentous historical events, such as the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the building of the Berlin Wall. Buckley populates his crowded narrative with a gallery of the era's iconic figures: Allen Dulles, John and Robert Kennedy, Robert McNamara, William Colby, McGeorge Bundy, and the Russian defector Anatoliy Golitsyn, a former KGB agent who helped shape Angleton's belief in the prevalence of treason in the British and American governments.

Spytime is a detailed, authoritative account of a fascinating time, but it is not a perfect novel. In fact, for all his intelligence and vaunted command of the language, Buckley doesn't strike me as a natural-born novelist. Whenever it descends from the political to the personal, whenever it addresses such unruly topics as love, sex, and human relationships, Spytime stumbles and grows irredeemably stilted. But whenever Buckley turns his attention to his central subject -- the ideological underpinnings of the Cold War -- the novel relaxes and regains its footing. Spytime isn't for everyone, but it comes highly recommended to anyone with an interest in espionage, in contemporary history, and in the Realpolitik of an era that ended with the astonishing collapse of the Soviet Union, some 15 years ago. At its best, it re-creates the ambiance and anxieties of a world that has receded into history and brings that world to vivid, believable life. (Bill Sheehan)

Bill Sheehan reviews horror, suspense, and science fiction for Cemetery Dance, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and other publications. His book-length critical study of the fiction of Peter Straub, At the Foot of the Story Tree, has been published by Subterranean Press (www.subterraneanpress.com).

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The rise and slow fall of a legendary spymaster James Jesus Angleton, unmasked in this gripping novel by the bestselling author of the Blackford Oakes series.

James Jesus Angleton was the master-a legend in the time of spies. Founder of U.S. counterintelligence at the end of the second World War, and ruthless hunter of moles and enemies of America, his name is synonymous with skullduggery and intellectual subterfuge. Now bestselling author William F. Buckley Jr. presents a subtle and thrilling fictional account of the spymaster's life. From his early involvement in the World War II underground to the waning days of the Cold War in Washington, D.C., Angleton pursued his enemies, real and imagined, with a cool, calculating intelligence, and an unwillingness to take anything at face value. Convinced that there was a turncoat within the CIA itself, he confused his enemy through misleading acts and deceptive feints to distort his real objective-to capture and expose a traitor. The result was near-victory for American Intelligence-and defeat for himself. A brilliant re-creation of his world, which included the CIA, Soviet defectors, the infamous traitors Burgess, MacLean, and Philby, and American presidents from Truman to Carter, Spytime traces the making-and tragic unmaking-of a man without peer, and at the end, a man without a country to serve.

About the Author:

William F. Buckley Jr. is the founder of The National Review and the host of television's longest-running program, Firing Line. The author of twelve other novels, he lives in Connecticut.

FROM THE CRITICS

Barnes & Noble Guide to New Fiction

A "wonderful look at Cold War spying by the CIA," by one of the most renowned and enigmatic counter-intelligence agents. "Not only does Buckley have his facts straight, but he has a real feel for the atmosphere of the post WWII-Cold War world." "But don't forget you're reading Buckley, so make sure you have a dictionary close at hand - though I only had to use mine twice." "A great read. Enjoyable in the fullest sense of the word." "A real man's book."

New York Daily News

The ultimate in spy novels-with real characters and studied speculation on certain events by Buckley, who met many of the key players-this is a tense, heroic tale of a real Cold War legend.

Publishers Weekly

For the second time in little more than a year (following 1999's The Redhunter: A Novel Based on the Life of Senator Joe McCarthy), Buckley offers up a fictional account of an icon in America's war against communism. This time, he focuses on James Jesus Angleton, the head of counterintelligence at the CIA for 20 years. Buckley traces Angleton's career from 1945, when the young Yale graduate was handpicked by Allen Dulles, director of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services in Europe, to work undercover in the Italian resistance, to his firing in 1974, when he was scapegoated for many of the CIA's moral and ethical lapses. Over those 30 years Angleton earned a reputation as a brilliant tactician, capable of discerning the most subtle of hidden motives in the international game of espionage. Yet he was also a man of such obsessive anti-communist fervor that at times it clouded his thinking, providing his enemies with ammunition for their attacks. While Buckley's perspective on Angleton's public and private life is perceptive--the worldly operative's mother was Mexican, and he grew up in Italy and England--the book suffers from glaring gaps in the master spy's biography. The late 1940s and early 1950s, for example, years when Angleton was laying the foundation for his career, are completely skipped over. Buckley also inexplicably derails an otherwise compelling story by cutting away for nearly a quarter of the book to follow one of Angleton's prodigies in action on low-level work in Lebanon in the early 1960s. In general, Buckley's protagonist never manifests the mysterious fascination he radiates in Aaron Latham's Orchids for Mother (1977). 75,000 first printing; $50,000 ad/promo; 3-city author tour. (July) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Library Journal

Author of the best-selling "Blackford Oakes" series, Buckley here takes on the core of spying--recruiting, training, and deceit. Many former spies make cameo appearances in this profile of James Jesus Angleton, a real spymaster who ran the counterintelligence operations of the CIA for decades after World War II. The introduction of young agents gives Buckley a lot of room for sexy interludes, professorial expositions, and energetic episodes. Throughout the book, the intellectual appeal of espionage separates this from the usual cloak-and-dagger story. Sure to be a favorite, this novel successfully explores the enigmatic life of a Cold Warrior. For all popular fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/1/00.]--Barbara Conaty, Library of Congress Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

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