A critical examination of the failure of Joint Anglo American Covert Paramilitary Operations in Cold War Albania

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A critical examination of the failure of Joint Anglo-American Covert Paramilitary Operations in Cold War Albania


In the late 1940s and early 1950s a joint Anglo-American operation to destabilise the communist regime in Albania was launched from the cabinet rooms and corridors of Whitehall and Washington. This operation was titled ‘Valuable’ by the British and ‘Fiend’ by the Americans. Designed to deny the USSR harbours for their navy and destabilise Hoxha’s Albanian regime, the operation was an appalling failure. The historical narrative that concerns the operation has been chronicled by a number of scholars. The task here is not to chronicle the operation but rather to critically examine the reason for its failure. The knowledge that the operation was betrayed by Harold Philby, the Soviet Cambridge mole, has meant that other important factors responsible for the operations failure have been overlooked. This paper aims to examine the impact of the betrayal by Philby and compare that to the list of incompetent actions that assisted the demise of the operation. Actions that included poor intelligence and a reliance on a splintered community, a lack of pre-operational propaganda, the lack of basic security and tradecraft amongst the émigré operatives and mission overseers, discord over policy and mission development decisions, derisory equipment and training for the émigré operatives and a gross underestimation of the Sigurimi.  Actions that meant had Philby not compromised the operations security, the likelihood of success was minuscule.

In order to critically evaluate OVF one must define the measure of success when tested against an intelligence operation. The success or failure of any intelligence operation can be defined in these terms – were the mission parameters achieved in such as way as to improve the strategic goals of the operations battle space. Dravis defines paramilitary operations as the nosiest of covert actions available to an intelligence operation, which can be directed towards achieving one or all of three specific goals.  First, subverting a target regime; second bolstering a friendly government and lastly; as ancillary support for a larger war effort. In the case of OVF the operation was directed toward the first and last objectives. OVF was at its heart a paramilitary operation to destabilise the Soviet satellite state of Albania, rather than an intelligence operation designed to gain information about Albania. It is “the only occasion when direct paramilitary intervention was applied to overthrown a Soviet Satellite”.  In the early stages of the Cold War the USSR was a battle space where the intelligence services could not secure sources or methods of orthodox intelligence gathering.  Paramilitary actions against a satellite state were seen by the Anglo-Americans as a viable alternative to established espionage. The creation of a non Soviet battle space within the larger sphere of Soviet influence could act as a bulwark against the Soviets and encourage further popular revolt against Moscow.  When the US State Department raised concerns about the operation they were informed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that the operation was an experiment to see if roll-back operations against the Soviets were feasible. From the British perspective relations with Albania were already at a low point. They were involved in a vicious civil war in Greece, supporting the government against the communists. As Stalin refused to send aid to the Grecian communist guerrillas, they turned to Albania for succour, receiving funds and arms from the Hoxha administration. In 1946 British warships came under fire in the Corfu channel. The targeting of Albania may have been a measure of pay back by the British for this attack. As a result Albania was targeted by Whitehall and Washington as a viable location for covert action. What followed was 6 years of abject failure, internal division between allies and a significant win for the Soviet intelligence apparatus. According to Dravis a paramilitary operation succeeds if its policy objects are achieved while plausible deniability is protected. If we measure the success of a covert paramilitary operation aimed at overthrowing an unfriendly regime by the actual overthrow of that regime, then OVF failed. The subsequent revelation of the operations failure in Philby’s post defection autobiography meant that OVF failed to remain covert, and that plausible deniability was not maintained. Thus OFV can be seen as an abject failure. The question remains why did it fail?  

While certain commentators, chief amongst them Nicolas Bethell, lay the blame at the feet of Philby, there are other more prosaic reasons for the operations failure. However it would be a disservice not to examine the impact that Philby had on the operation. Ever attentive to the damage he could inflict on the British and American Intelligence Community (IC), Philby accepted the position as liaison officer in Washington because it took him to the “middle of intelligence policy making”, giving him a “close up view”  of the US IC. As Secret Intelligence Service representative to the Special Policy Committee or covert planning section of American intelligence, Philby was essentially the co-commander for OVF .As befitted this position Philby had access to the most sensitive information pertaining to OVF which he passed along to his Soviet handlers. That Philby’s betrayal was a significant factor in the demise of the operation is without question. As the affidavit of one of the American officer states,

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”There is no little question that Philby not only informed Moscow of overall British and American planning, but provided information on the dispatch of individual agents before they arrived in Albania”

Bethell, citing the primacy of the Philby betrayal, notes that before Philby had reached Washington he had already placed in jeopardy the sanctity of the operation. Bethell reasons that before Philby left London he met with his controllers, giving them tactical level intelligence on the operation that included the initial landing sites and infiltrations. Alongside the larger strategic overview that Philby surely gave his Soviet handlers, this tactical ...

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