CIA and MI6 Covert Action in Communist Albania at the Dawn of the Cold War (459)

20:43Stephen Long:Hi, this is Rhonda in Virginia, and I support Cold War conversations because I think the work that Ian is doing is critically important. I think it's vital to record the firsthand accounts of people who lived and experienced the Cold War because it illustrates history in a way that a book never can. So thank you so much for the podcast. It's my favorite podcast, and I look forward to it every week. to be like ronda and help to preserve these incredible stories of the cold war as a monthly or annual supporter you'll be able to listen ad free you'll become one of our community get the sought after cold war conversations drinks coaster as a thank you and you'll bask in the warm glow of knowing that you're helping to preserve cold war history just go to coldwarconversations.com slash donate to find out more hey are you still there that's great now if you're enjoying the podcast and you listen via the apple podcast app you can leave a written review positive reviews really help me gain new listeners so hit that pause button and give me a five star rating thanks very much for listening i read in the book somewhere that mi6 concluded that at least 30 of the agents names had been known to the Sigurumi before they even arrived?

22:09The Cold War Conversations Team:That's right. Yeah. They were absolutely astonished when the agents that managed to exfiltrate, when they got back to Athens and were debriefed by MI6 officers, they were absolutely appalled to learn that the agents basically said they were expecting us. They knew our names. They knew where we lived. They knew our hometowns and they were waiting for us essentially. So this seems to illustrate, I wouldn't ascribe this to Philby. I would ascribe this to the penetration of the emigre communities outside Albania, particularly in Greece and Athens, where the agents tended to congregate and socialise.

22:45The Cold War Conversations Team:And because these were not professional intelligence agents, these were just down on their luck young men who'd got thrown into this higher cause of, as they saw it, trying to liberate their homeland. They talked about it. They even, I'm sure some of them probably bragged about it because this was suddenly this really lofty, important mission that they were going to go on. And the Sigrimi was really adept at tapping into those networks. We know that they penetrated these groups as well as on the CIA side, they penetrated a guard company in West Germany, from which they were able to also identify individual agents and the likely locations that they would target on missions.

23:25The Cold War Conversations Team:Yeah, this was astonishing for the British and for the Americans who were obviously talking to MI6, And pretty quickly, they started to try to adapt, to change the way they recruited their agents, to try to make the Sigurimi's job more difficult to identify individual agents and break down the security of the operation. But this was always a very difficult challenge for the Western intelligence services. I'm not sure that they were terribly successful overall.

23:57Stephen Long:one of the things that did fascinate me which i hadn't realized was going on is they there was a radio station set up in athens called the voice of free albania that was obviously broadcasting but also there were printed material dropped over albania 70 million pieces and food aid drops um what was the intention around the food aid drops

24:24The Cold War Conversations Team:So the food aid was really quite an innovative aspect of the operation. They were trialling a new technique, essentially. So what they absolutely weren't doing was trying to alleviate hunger in Albania. This wasn't a sort of a development or an aid program. This was a subversive weapon, a psychological weapon, as the British and the American intelligence services saw it. So this was run both by the CIA and MI6. They coordinated their activities. And they really hoped that by dropping bundles of tinned food or material goods, stuff like razor blades, woolen socks, all this kind of stuff, soap bars, they hoped that they could have a symbolic impact on the Albanian population.

25:14The Cold War Conversations Team:This was all done in the name of the National Committee for a Free Albania. I should emphasise, this was not the CIA declaring that it was trying to provide for the Albanian people. This was the political leadership in exile that were providing for the Albanian population in ways that, so they would have it, the communist Albanian government wasn't able to, because at that time, wartime rationing was still in place and there was hardship. There were food shortages inside Albania. So by doing this, the Western intelligence services were hoping to strike a psychological blow against the regime, drive a wedge between the population and the government.

25:56The Cold War Conversations Team:But it all backfired. It wasn't very successful because for a start, those sections of the population that were against the government were basically terrorised by the early 1950s. and there were really severe punishments. If you were caught in possession of any of these NCFA food bundles, you'd go to prison for 10 years, 15 years, without many questions being asked. Your property would be confiscated, your family would be persecuted. It was an extremely repressive regime. By terror, the population was too afraid, generally, to take any food bundles if they landed near them. But also the Communist government was very adept at reacting, responding very agile encountering any anything that was thrown at it by the western services so when it came to the food aid operation the communist government quickly announced that actually the western powers were putting poison into the food bundles and they were doing this too because at the same time there was a bigger campaign that was accusing the western powers of using germ warfare in their campaign in the korean war and so they were striking a chord with this broader propaganda campaign against the Western powers in Korea.

27:12The Cold War Conversations Team:And this really shook up the CIA and MI6, who basically backed off. They suspended the food aid drops as a result of this propaganda campaign by the Albanian communist government. So all in all, even though CIA and MI6 thought it was valuable, they thought it was a useful operation and it could have some impact, They were outsmarted by Hodges' government.

27:36Stephen Long:And I'm presuming at this point, Albania doesn't have an air force or any sort of anti-aircraft defence against these overflights. Yeah, correct.

27:46The Cold War Conversations Team:So at the beginning, essentially no air force, no way of defending against the CIA overflights in particular because the CIA dropped agents as well as bundles of supplies and as well as the propaganda, the printed propaganda materials. they did start to get a limited number of soviet fighter jets but these never posed a threat to or during the albanian operation this was came later they did develop some anti-aircraft capabilities by towards the end of the agent infiltration campaign so by 53 54 they did have some limited capacity to attack the kind of covert overflights by the western services but at the beginning yeah they the western services had free reign over albania and there's a story about the the first cia overflight in november 1950 the polish anti-communist air crew that is recruited to run these overflights after they dropped their agents over their target areas they then flew down the main street of tirana they buzzed the main street of tirana on their way back to to the airfield in Athens just because they could just just for the sort of sheer audacity of it

29:03Stephen Long:brilliant brilliant now you mentioned the agent drops that the CIA were doing it's interesting the details that you've got in the book in there because in at least two or three cases I think certainly in the 1950 drops their agents are saved from instant capture by navigation errors the Sigurimi was waiting for them to land in their designated drop zone. But because the navigation error meant they got dropped somewhere else, they avoided that welcoming party.

29:39The Cold War Conversations Team:Yeah, that's right. So you can imagine the agents were initially pretty furious at being dropped in the wrong place, but then within a matter of minutes, extremely grateful when they started to sense that actually there was a security presence in the vicinity, but not exactly where they had been dropped. And those initial parties did understand and were told by locals, they managed to talk to some local villagers who didn't betray their presence. And they were told, yeah, that the Sigurimi are waiting. They've been here for a number of days. They've set up ambushes and they're mounting patrols in the area.

30:16The Cold War Conversations Team:They know you're coming. So that really did save the lives of a number of these agents at the beginning. And this again goes back to the successful penetration of the, I think, primarily the guard company in West Germany. This was the main source of intelligence for these early CIA agent infiltrations, because although the Sigurimi probably didn't penetrate the secret training school, they did penetrate the guard company from where the agents were recruited. And as soon as the Sigurimi could see, oh, this guy has disappeared from the guard company, they pretty much knew that the most likely destination was the secret training school.

30:54The Cold War Conversations Team:If they knew the identity of that person, they could also quickly identify his hometown. And from there, they knew it's just going to be several weeks. And then this guy is going to be popping up in that particular area. Because the Western services, at least originally, sent agents to their hometowns because they thought this is where they can have the biggest impact. This is where they will meet like-minded people who will sympathise with the cause. This is where they can have most effects. But that also ended up causing a lot of danger for these agents.

31:29Stephen Long:And in 1951, the CIA upped the volume of the drops they're doing there. But there's some quite harrowing accounts of what happens to some of these teams there's one where they parachute into an ambush and two members commit suicide with hand grenades to avoid capture

31:54The Cold War Conversations Team:such is the fear of what's going to happen to them yeah it's it was difficult to research this project sometimes because i was never far away from the pretty stark reality of the experiences of these people. It was constantly brought home to me that these were real people with lives that they went through absolutely awful experiences. Whatever your sort of political loyalties, whatever side of the political spectrum you fall on, it's difficult not to be moved by some of the experiences. And these agents did go into this with their eyes open. They knew that they were going into a very dangerous difficult terrain they went in with suicide capsules they went in with no intention of being captured alive because that was a fate worse than death for many of these agents and yeah so that story of two guys who basically mutually agreed to commit suicide by blowing themselves up with a grenade and i think only one of them actually was killed in the blast and the other guy had to shoot himself.

33:00The Cold War Conversations Team:It was just appalling. Some of the agents were injured on landing because they didn't receive proper parachute training by the Americans and they were dropped at very low altitude. So a number of agents broke their legs when they landed and then they were just sitting ducks and none of those agents survived or managed to escape. There was another experience, another team that ended up surrounded, trapped in a house, betrayed by a local resident who went and brought the communist security forces. So they were surrounded and the house was burned down with the three agents inside. So they were basically burned alive, but they didn't go out.

33:40The Cold War Conversations Team:They didn't flee the burning building because again, it would have just been absolutely awful to be captured by the government and tortured, imprisoned at best but possibly executed many of the agents who were captured were then executed after going on trial so these were really harrowing experiences that these people

34:01Stephen Long:went through yeah and the trauma stays with them as well there's one um person you describe who shot two communist soldiers a point-blank range to escape but he was so traumatized by his experience he was unable to answer his case officer's questions during the flight back to Athens and refused to ever go on another mission again.

34:26The Cold War Conversations Team:Yeah these guys I that was a particularly moving account I read several interview transcripts by this guy Shakir Kabashi this particular agent a number of his siblings his cousins and brothers were also involved in the operation in different agent infiltration operations, I should say. He lost family members during the operation and colleagues, compatriots, fellow agents on mission. So he was completely traumatised. And it was very poignant reading his account. Decades later, he was interviewed in the 1980s, I think it was, 80s, maybe early 90s. So this was three, four decades later. And he still had survivor's guilt.

35:08The Cold War Conversations Team:he still felt trauma even 30-40 years later describing the events that he'd gone through as a young man and yeah they were just appalling experiences.

35:20Stephen Long:You said earlier the CIA director Walter Beadle-Smith he's not keen on these covert operations and these failures aren't helping but really I guess the turning point is a mission called the Apple mission. Can you just describe what went on there?

35:43The Cold War Conversations Team:So Apple was an individual mission of the operation and it encapsulates the highs and lows of the broader operation, I would say. So it embodied the CIA's attempt to recruit higher quality agent personnel and to undertake more ambitious missions within the operation. And so this was taking place in 1952, as I mentioned at the beginning, a couple of years into the CIA's part of the operation. So Apple was a Zogist team. So it recruited high-level, high-ranking members of the former King Zog's Royal Guard, primarily. So these were important people. They had standing, they had influence in Albania, in the kind of loyalist Zogist heartland of central Albania.

36:30The Cold War Conversations Team:And these were people who were more physically up to the job, more intelligent, just higher caliber agents, as the CIA would put it. They also, the deputy commander of the Apple team was a legendary anti-communist resistance figure called Hamid Matiani, who had run a dozen or so infiltration missions before the Apple mission, working both for the Italian intelligence service, for the Greeks, and also for the CIA, for its intelligence collection branch. So Matiani was very experienced and he had a big reputation and the communist government in Albania was desperate to capture him. He was their sort of prized target.

37:13The Cold War Conversations Team:So he was a big asset to Apple but of course if he was captured it would strike a devastating blow to the morale of the anti-communist emigre community. So Apple was recruited in early 52, it was trained up outside Albania by the CIA and then it was sent in. Basically, they go in overland from Greece. They're not dropped by parachute because by 52, the CIA is starting to realise that this is a sort of haphazard way of doing things. So they sneak in across the frontier from Greece and they make their way successfully to central Albania. And for the first couple of months, the operation goes really well.

37:52The Cold War Conversations Team:They start to reach out to local sympathisers, start even to talk to a couple of members of the communist government who are basically sceptical about Enver Hodges' regime. so things are looking good and several of the agents then go back to greece to report back to the cia but two agents the commander of the operation zeno shehu and the radio operator to hear prentzi stay in place in the field base in central albania and just a couple of weeks after their colleagues get back to greece these two agents are captured by the sigurimi and this is just a complete disaster it's difficult to overemphasize the importance of this moment because from this point on the cia is completely disadvantaged it's duped by the sigurimi who can now call the shots in the operation so they gull the agency into sending more agents into albania from this point on by sending fake messages over the captured radio back to the cia radio base in Athens.

38:59The Cold War Conversations Team:CIA becomes increasingly suspicious, but they basically decide to give Apple, these captured agents of course, but who they hope are operating independently, they basically give them the benefit of the doubt. And they end up compounding the initial disaster by sending in nine more agents who are all either killed when they arrive in Albania awaiting an ambush, or they are captured and then put on trial. And all but one of these agents is either killed or executed by the communist regime. So it's a total disaster. That said, it could have been worse because the Sigurimi planned to shoot down the CIA's resupply plane.

39:40The Cold War Conversations Team:The kind of crowning sort of glory of the double cross operation was meant to be to shoot down this resupply plane in October 1953 when the Sigurimi basically got tired of running the double cross. How long are the CIA going to be fooled by us? When they thought they couldn't get any more sort of advantages out of the deception operation, they decided let's try and shoot down the CIA's plane as one sort of final blow. They did manage to hit the CIA plane, but they didn't actually shoot it down. It limped back to an airfield in Italy and just about survived the attack. So it could have been worse, but it was pretty bad.

40:17The Cold War Conversations Team:Yeah, an abject failure, really.

40:21Stephen Long:It's interesting some of the ways that the CIA was trying to verify that it was their agent at the other end of the radio. I think the detail I found really interesting was the cufflink test.

40:35The Cold War Conversations Team:So there were different ways of signalling. Agent teams went into a controlled territory or a hostile territory, in full knowledge that they could be captured. And of course, so their Western sponsors also had this knowledge. So there were meant to be safeguards against this. So the first safeguard was to run coded danger signals. You would send back a coded message that would indicate that you were captured but would not betray this coded message to your captors. when that failed or when that when the results of that kind of layer of security failed to provide the cia with reassurances they then probed the apple agents with these with a different kind of coded message or with a different radio message to verify whether they were acting freely or whether they had been captured so basically the commander was asked where did you put your cuff links before you went on your mission.

41:36The Cold War Conversations Team:And the idea was that only the agent would know this information and that he wouldn't betray this information to his captors. He would stay loyal to King Zog, to Queen Geraldine, Zog's wife, who he was the personal bodyguard of the Queen, and also to the CIA. But although the evidence suggests, because we have communist records as well as CIA records about this particular incident. The records suggest that Shehu himself just answered matter-of-factly, but without giving much detail. Nonetheless, the CIA was perplexed by the answer because it wasn't exactly the answer they were expecting, but it was good enough to reassure them that, okay, Shehu is probably just saying, why are you bothering me with such a sort of mundane question when we've got much bigger matters to deal with here?

42:29The Cold War Conversations Team:Because the The message that went back to the CIA was rather flippant and they're in my luggage. Let's talk about more important details, please. So, yeah, the CIA is satisfied that even though it's not exactly the answer they're expecting, it's good enough to prove his independent status at that time. And they're basically just making the mistake of being too close to these agents. It's a kind of human weakness. They've bonded with these guys. They want them to succeed. They desperately hope they've not been captured. So they believe the best rather than believing the worst. And this is a really serious mistake that the CIA makes as a kind of young and naive agency.

43:10The Cold War Conversations Team:And of course, this then has terrible consequences because more agents are dropped into Albania and are then captured as a result of this.

43:20Stephen Long:and it's details like that i think really brings the book alive it's not like a grand strategy book you really get into the detail of the personal stories in in there

43:33The Cold War Conversations Team:did you know sam's club isn't a store it's actually a club with cool finds and like a whole community it's a club of course jason it's in the name sam's club oh yeah come join us sam's club.

43:49Stephen Long:Now, if you've listened this far, you must be enjoying the show. At least I hope you are. The reason I say this is on the Spotify app, you can now leave comments on individual episodes. So do me a favour and hit that pause button and leave a comment. It'd be great to hear from you and your interactions help push Cold War conversations up the Spotify rankings. Whatever you do, thanks very much for listening. And now back to your episode. So, Beedle Smith decides enough is enough at some point?

44:23The Cold War Conversations Team:Well, Beedle Smith is director until Eisenhower comes into office in 1953. So, Beedle Smith, he's director from 1950 to early 1953. He's done his best. He tried to cut back covert action or even have it shipped out of the CIA in the early 50s. When he came into the directorship in 1950, he was horrified by all of these covert operations. because he thought, this agency is called the Central Intelligence Agency. I thought this was an agency that does intelligence, not covert action. So he was trying to limit or even ship out the covert action side of it. But that kind of backfired when the Truman administration basically said, no, CIA needs to do this.

45:09The Cold War Conversations Team:The Korean War's broken out. The Soviets have now got atomic weapons. The Cold War is intensifying. The Communist Revolution in China. Things are going pretty badly in the early 1950s from the Western perspective. And so covert action is seen as a really important way to counterpunch. So Bedlesmith is told, no, you've got to run these operations. But he then responds by trying to cull any operations that he thinks aren't going very well. And so Albania is always quite vulnerable. With the Apple debacle, when it's exposed as being captured in late 53, At that point, Alan Dulles, the Beatlesmith's successor, pulls the plug on the operation.

45:47The Cold War Conversations Team:And really, the operation has run its course in terms of being a top priority for the CIA. It's really shifting to other theatres by 1953 and 1954 anyway, moving away from the Soviet bloc towards the developing world, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, rather than focusing on Eastern Europe. so it's served its purpose by that stage anyway

46:15Stephen Long:we've mentioned kim filby and historically the blame for the failure of the albanian operations is generally laid at his door but from your research you believe that's been overcooked

46:30The Cold War Conversations Team:yeah first of all i would say that framing this operation as a failure is to some extent problematic because that speaks to the notion that it's an operation that was trying to overthrow the communist government and the regimes prevailed or the regime survived and therefore the operation failed. It was a rollback failure. That itself, I think, is a misreading of the overall objectives. But then also the sort of extension of that argument has been that Kim Philby was at the heart of thwarting this rollback effort. And my research into this hasn't found conclusive evidence either way. Philby will be absolutely delighted.

47:15The Cold War Conversations Team:In his grave, he'll be delighted that we still can't quite pin things on him. He's still elusive and slippery. But I would say the kind of the balance of evidence suggests that his role has been overstated and his impact on the operation has been overstated. And there are a number of reasons for that. First of all, he's often considered to be the kind of overall commander of the British side of the operation. But actually, it was a guy called Harold Perkins at MI6 headquarters in London, who had overall command of the operation. Philby was in Washington, he had a very important position in Washington.

47:52The Cold War Conversations Team:But in terms of his role for the Albanian operation, it was a limited kind a policy role. So he was basically responsible for making sure that foreign office and State Department policy aligned towards Albania and the Balkans. The policymakers were setting the limits, they were setting the guidelines for MI6 and the CIA to run their operations in the field. But there were field commanders who were actually involved in the day-to-day planning and running of the operation. And those were the guys that had the detailed knowledge of the coal face of the operation. So if anyone was in a position to really do damage to the operation, it was actually the people in the field rather than Philby in Washington.

48:37The Cold War Conversations Team:But also I would suggest because we've not found kind of smoking gun evidence from the Soviet archives, from the Albanian archives, to prove that Philby had passed on intelligence about the Albanian operation. I think that suggests, that lack of evidence suggests that he only passed on a limited amount of intelligence, if at all. One document has turned up in the Soviet archives, which was a very general kind of summary of the initial British infiltration probes in the autumn of 1949. So this was a document, I think it's dated in September or maybe early October 1949. and it's a report that goes to Molotov and to Stalin in the Kremlin, and it basically just says the British are going to send in four teams in the next couple of weeks, and it also interestingly says we've passed on this information to Tirana.

49:30The Cold War Conversations Team:So there was a relationship. The Soviets did pass on that intelligence to the communist Albanian government, but nothing else to my knowledge has turned up in the archives. and I think if you look at this from the different perspectives of the actors I think we can argue I think it's more realistic to argue that probably Philby would have been reluctant to pass on too much intelligence because his number one priority was preserving his own security not exposing his own role as a Soviet mole the more he gave away about Albania the higher the risk of being outed And also the Soviets. Filby was the jewel in the crown.

50:14The Cold War Conversations Team:And they saw Albania as a bit of a liability, a marginal ally, not really a state that was important enough to risk losing somebody like Filby over. when you think that Philby was passing on such important intelligence, nuclear weapons secrets, all this kind of stuff. That was much more important in the greater scheme of things to the Soviet Union than Albania. And the Soviets never suggested that Philby had provided intelligence about the Albanian operation. And I find it hard to believe they wouldn't have boasted about this at some point down the line. And then on the Albanian side, The communist Albanian regime always said Philby had nothing to do with it.

50:59The Cold War Conversations Team:Our successes were our own. And of course, they might want to champion their own sort of effectiveness. But they basically said Philby played no part in our counterintelligence effort. We did this by penetrating the emigrarian networks and by working out where these agents were coming in from our own sort of initiative. but yeah I think Philby it's it's a I was going to say maybe this is the not the most appropriate word to use but it's a wonderful story to tell of this sort of master spy the some the master of his craft being the architect of the downfall of this operation but actually I think that's too perfect a history and the reality is that other factors were more important.

51:47Stephen Long:I think you outline that very well in the book, particularly the penetration by the Sigurimi in West Germany and in other locations as well. We talked at the start about Albania being used as a laboratory to test out some of these theories around covert action. did MI6 and CIA learn from those and were some of those lessons used in later CIA operations in the Cold War?

52:20The Cold War Conversations Team:Yeah it's an interesting question I think they did learn some lessons I think at the tactical level particularly for the CIA the Albanian operation was a steep learning curve there's no doubt about it and so they did develop they did improve some of their practices how they recruited agents, security measures, security protocols. They learned a lot from the Apple double cross, for example. They improved the gear, the equipment that agents carried in. They tested out different techniques. So we talked about the food aid drops earlier. They perfected mass airdrops, mass bundles of these printed leaflets, this anti-communist literature that they airdropped over Albania.

53:03The Cold War Conversations Team:So all of this stuff, arguably, we could put that in the plus column for this operation, that there were some limited achievements, or certainly that the operation was of some value to the CIA, which was learning pretty quickly on its feet here. I think they also, at the policy level, I think the Foreign Office and the State Department also learned politically that rollback regime change in the Soviet bloc wasn't viable, wasn't feasible. They didn't do this by testing the theory because they never actually pursued rollback in Albania. They shifted away from it before they actually put it to the test.

53:44The Cold War Conversations Team:But I think Albania was useful in showing them that, look, if we mess around in the Soviet bloc, This could create all sorts of messy complications. It could be extremely counterproductive for us strategically. The Balkans, historically a rather volatile region, but also in other parts of Eastern Europe where they basically shied away from pressing too hard and being too aggressive. So the Albanian test case served a purpose, I think, in that sense. But when it comes to its importance in showcasing the limitations of covert action in general, I think the CIA missed a trick. I think they took their eye off the ball with the Albanian operation.

54:26The Cold War Conversations Team:I think because it slipped down their list of priorities as they started turning towards the developing world and places like Guatemala and Iran, Indonesia, then notoriously, of course, Cuba in the early 60s. I think they didn't recognise that the dangers, the unpredictability of running these kinds of covert action operations in hostile territory or in places where they want to affect regime change, because even if you can bring about a short term success, very often the longer term consequences can be pretty calamitous for the sponsoring intelligence service and their government. So yeah, those bigger picture lessons weren't really picked up from the Albanian operation, I would argue.

55:13Stephen Long:Because to my knowledge, there was nothing similar tried out in any of the other Eastern Bloc countries during the Cold War.

55:22The Cold War Conversations Team:Not much is known about the other operations, but they were running pretty similar operations in Bulgaria, in Romania. Poland was a major effort, a major covert action effort that was undone by an absolutely disastrous double cross operation, just like the Apple operation in Albania, but on a much bigger scale. So they were running these operations throughout Eastern Europe, throughout the Soviet bloc. Albania was the first one, but they very quickly, once they developed that capability, for example, the Bulgarian operation shared facilities with the Albanian operation, propaganda and training facilities.

56:02The Cold War Conversations Team:But because of the lessons of the Albanian operation, they put the shackles on these other operations as well. So they didn't push aggressively for regime change, because very pragmatically, you had to set up the conditions for a revolution before you could pursue it anyway. And they never got to that point in any of the operations. But in Poland, they hoped that they were moving towards that position. But then late 1952, the Polish communist government announced on their radio station, they broadcast to the world that this had all been an elaborate double cross. and this resistance movement that the CIA thought numbered several thousand anti-communists inside the country that they'd been supplying for two or three years.

56:45The Cold War Conversations Team:It'd been penetrated, that there were no resistance fighters within that movement. It was an artifice of the communist regime. They did try these operations, but they, yeah, they never pushed too aggressively.

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57:40The Cold War Conversations Team:Yeah, that is it. I would absolutely love to look at some of these other operations, but I think Albania was really unique in terms of the amount of operational files that have been declassified, policy level files as well. So the British even, who are not as transparent as the Americans in general, but the British have declassified some foreign office files. There are also some MI6 documents turn up in the CIA files, which is great from a historian's perspective. And then also there were two caches of oral testimony, interview transcripts by researchers doing interviews in the 1980s while some of these agents were still alive.

58:18The Cold War Conversations Team:So there was this huge body of materials that I was able to draw upon. And to my knowledge, that kind of evidence just doesn't exist for the other operations. So I am going to do some fishing. I am looking for my next book project now. So I will do some digging, but I've got a nasty feeling that this was a kind of one-off treasure trove. So yeah, I do have some files on the Bulgarian and Romanian operations, so much smaller quantity of documents, but I'm hoping to at least be able to publish a couple of articles on those operations. But yeah, this Albanian operation, it was incredible, the insight that I was able to gather and learn about the real experiences of these agents and also the CINMI6 officials, all of the frustrations, all of the fears, all of the ambitions of all of the actors that were involved to be able to tell this story on a human level and not just on a sort of dry or abstract policy or kind of theoretical level.

59:21Stephen Long:You mentioned some of the personalities of the intelligence officers. One of the stories that I picked out and is brilliant is Joe Lieb, who's a former advertising executive, and he's using his nephew, who's only 11 years old, as a courier.

59:39The Cold War Conversations Team:Joe Lieb was really ill-suited to this operation. He didn't have an intelligence background. He was a kind of advertising PR man, very flamboyant. just not subtle, not covert in any way. His kind of covert story, his cover story was that he was extremely rich and wealthy and got to live in a really luxurious villa and drive around in an open-top car. So yeah, he engaged in questionable behaviours, let's say, and one of these was to get his wife and his nephew, who he was looking after at that time, to act as a courier. running messages. So go and meet certain mysterious figures in a park in Rome or wherever and pass on these messages.

1:00:28The Cold War Conversations Team:Drop something under a park bench and then step away and wait for a lady with a bicycle or whatever to turn up and take the message and then return home.

1:00:37Stephen Long:His nephew apparently had to look out for women wearing purple shoes because that was one of the signs that they were the person to pick up the message.

1:00:47The Cold War Conversations Team:And this is all told by the nephew who was interviewed in the 1980s. We have the first-hand account of this. Quite remarkable. Lee was really an interesting figure to research, extremely colourful and a fascinating guy. It's easy to be critical of him. I think he stands out as being the person who just behaved the most improperly, the most inappropriately. But in fairness to him, he was committed to the operation and he meant well by the operation. He just didn't have the expertise and the sort of professional background to do a good job. Most of his colleagues, American colleagues, I should add, he was working for the CIA.

1:01:32The Cold War Conversations Team:He was good friends with Jacevic, the operational commander of the operation at that time. That's why he got the gig, basically. But most of the guys around him, Fuller working out of Athens, for example, the kind of CIA's field commander in Athens, absolutely hated him and just thought this guy is a nightmare. He's a liability. He's so noisy and loud and flamboyant that he's just a sort of a dream for the Sigurimi. He's a dream penetration target for the Sigurimi. but yeah unpopular and divisive but i think his heart was in the right place even if slightly

1:02:07Stephen Long:misplaced but anyway loads of great detail like that in there and love to see that even the british have a guy called david smiley no relation to george i presume that's right absolutely yeah

1:02:21The Cold War Conversations Team:but quite a legendary figure in wartime and cold war intelligence circles he'd worked with soe during the war he'd done two tours in albania during the war then smiley was involved training up the first group of british infiltration agents on in malta in 1949 went on to serve in other locations as well in yemen and other places in the 1950s and 1960s so a very kind of decorated and quite a senior respected intelligence officer and this kind of belies the fact that western intelligence they were at the beginning they were trying to recruit their best officials for this operation that shows the importance of the project at the beginning even though it slipped down the list of priorities later on they were really trying to get their best minds and their anyone with albanian expertise and anyone who had served in albania in the war for example it was an obvious choice to get those people to then come and serve for this kind of new cause in the early cold war And a lot of these people like Smiley, Julian Amory, another important figure at the beginning of the operation, Alan Hare, these were all people who'd served with British intelligence during the war.

1:03:39The Cold War Conversations Team:And they had a loyalty to the anti-communist groups that they were their brothers in arms during the war. and a lot of the British officers felt guilty that the communist partisans had taken power at the end of World War II and they certainly had a loyalty to these guys. Yeah, people like Smiley were very keen to join up and do their best to help the cause.

1:04:05Stephen Long:You have been listening to Stephen Long, the author of A Rich Harvest of Bitter Fruit, CIA and MI6 COVID action in communist Albania at the dawn of the Cold War. There'll be links in the episode information for you to buy the book and help support the podcast. Don't miss the episode extras such as videos, photos and other content. Just look for the link in the episode information. The podcast wouldn't exist without the generous efforts of our financial supporters. And I'd like to thank one and all of them for keeping the podcast on the road. If you'd like to help, go to coldwarconversations.com slash donate.

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