Final_Judgment

160 Thick as Thieves [99]
"The documents," says Blitzer, "showed that Israeli intelligence
agencies, mostly in the 1950's, had blackmailed, bugged, wire-tapped, and
offered bribes to U.S. government officials in an effort to gain sensitive
intelligence and technical information." 270
The U.S. was apparently also spying on Israel, although this didn't
appear in the report. However, when it was necessary for the CIA and the
Mossad to reach a joint accord, it was James Jesus Angleton who stepped
in, and, according to Blitzer, "was said to have been largely responsible for
arranging the deal." 271
ASSASSINATION PLOTS
The CIA and the Mossad had many joint ventures over the years, all
conducted under Angleton's watchful eye. Some of those ventures, of
course, included assassination plots. In fact, after President Eisenhower
commented that he hoped that "the Nasser problem could be eliminated" 272 —
(referring to what he perceived to be an intransigence by the Egyptian)—CIA
Director Allen Dulles and Angleton launched a plan to kill Nasser. However,
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (brother of the CIA director) intervened
and called off the CIA dogs.
The CIA was also engaging in covert actions against Israel's enemies in
Syria. One CIA conspiracy in 1958 to overthrow the nationalist government
of Syria—which anti-communist fanatics such as Angleton considered to be
"leftist"—fell apart when the CIA's paid henchmen, Syrian nationals (who
evidently were patriots), turned themselves in and exposed the CIA's plot to
the Syrian government. At the time, CIA director Dulles commented, "I
guess that leaves Israel's intelligence service as the only one on which we
can count, doesn't it?" 273
ANGELTON'S ZR/RIFLE TEAM
The CIA's now-best known assassination plot, of course, was the
agency's collaboration with organized crime in a scheme to kill Cuban
leader Fidel Castro. (We will examine the Castro assassination plot in much
further detail in Chapter 11.) It is interesting to note, however, at this
juncture, that as part of the plot against Castro the CIA established its nowinfamous
ZR/Rifle Team, incorporating a wide array of foreign assassins
and mercenaries—skilled and dangerous men who were trained in murder.
The ZR/Rifle Team, in fact, was one of Angleton's pet in-house CIA
projects which he ran in conjunction with his CIA colleague, William
Harvey. 274 This, in the long run, as we shall see in Chapter 16, gave
Angleton and his Israeli allies access to the "talent" necessary to achieve a
successful operation in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas on November 22,
1963.
A FIRM ALLIANCE