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

”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 operational level intelligence would have directly led to the disastrous landings that took place throughout the operations life span.

This assertion is disputed by Richard Aldrich. That Philby had access to the operational planning is without doubt, and while Bethell feels that he was in a position to hand over tactical intelligence, Aldrich felt that his operational knowledge would have been insufficient to do more than warn the Soviets of the intentions of the operation, and its broad strokes.Aldrich notes that in September 1949 when the first disasters were besetting the operation Philby had only just arrived in Washington, that he had strategic rather than tactical intelligence to hand over to his Soviet paymaster and that Earl Jellioe was in charge of the tactical side of the operation rather than Philby. This contention is backed up by Verrier. As he details the planning phase of the operation he makes note that while the treachery of Philby, “compounded, it did not cause failure”That the Soviets would risk such a highly placed asset as Philby by rolling up agents involved in the Albanian operations seems unlikely to Aldrich, who feels that the Soviets had easier ways to penetrate the operation. What is especially disturbing about the betrayal is that even though the Americans suspected that there was a mole in the ranks they continued with the operation, thus re-enforcing the success of Philby’s betrayal and sending more agents to their deaths. It would be a disservice to the study of intelligence to simply place the entire culpability on Philby’s shoulders. As Dravis writes,” Philby’s penetration, serious as it was, did at least offer a convenient excuse for the failure of the initiatives, which enjoyed limited prospects for success”  Other operational factors played their parts and these factors had grave implications for the operation.

Poor operational planning and tradecraft can destroy a covert operation, regardless of the inclusion of treachery within the operations ranks. The planners of OVF, made a series of mistakes, which accompanied by the treachery of Philby, struck the death knell for the operation long before its eventual demise in the early 50s. It is in the acquisition of intelligence and its use that the real value of intelligence can be seen. For covert paramilitary operations the use of pre-operational intelligence is vital. If one cannot defeat the enemy by espionage alone, if the use of covert military action is all that is available to you, then that operation must be prepared with good intelligence and staffed and equipped accordingly. It appears that for OVF the Allies failed to do so adequately.

OVF was based on native intelligence gained from the Albanian émigré population. The Albanian émigré community, from which the operation drew both its agents and its native intelligence, was hopelessly fractured. In any expatriate community there will be a large body made up of smaller sections. While these sections may have united under a common cause, this may not be enough to quell division within the ranks.  On the basis of information, sourced from a frayed and disparate group of anti-communist forces, the operation was given the green light. However according to Dravis this intelligence was “arrested political analysis”. From this analysis the Allies determined that Albania was ripe for the plucking and that there would be support for the operation and that native Albanians, restive under the rule of Hoxha would respond with popular revolution. According to an early CIA report from December 1949, “90 percent of the Albanian population were opposed to the rule of Enver Hoxha”. Once on the ground it became apparent that the political leadership and command cadre of the operation had, “grossly miscalculated the intensity of counter–revolutionary fever amongst the population” OVF was slated to include a pre-operation propaganda offensive designed to win over the Albanians and pave the way for support elements within the country to begin to gather Albanians to the cause. However a ban on the Foreign Office conducting propaganda in Communist countries was not lifted until 1949, after the operation had begun. Even after the ban was lifted British Intelligence threw little resources at the propaganda war. It appears to be a case of win by arms alone. The Allies had no direct contact with the Albanian population, no embassy in Tirana and the BBC only broadcast brief 15 minute broadcasts to the region which was sent 90 minutes before the power was turned on in Albania cities. This miscalculation meant that there was never enough local support for the endeavour and that the formation of a popular revolution would never have succeeded.

There were other miscalculations on the part of the Anglo-American planners. The use of a compromised émigré population meant that the talent pool for the operation was muddy to say the least. Trahair suggests that the émigré population of the Albanian exiles was most likely penetrated by the Soviet and Albanian security forces.  While supporting the premise that the blame lays with Philby even Bethell notes that the émigré community was compromised. Before Phiby’s betrayal was common knowledge, the Albanians involved felt that they had been betrayed, by the loose talk of compromised compatriots. Aldrich believes that the initial influx of Albanian émigré agents from the displaced persons camp made it a certainty that a number of these émigrés were already in the employ of the Soviet security forces.  This influx of compromised individuals meant that the Soviets had excellent counter intelligence on the operation and the means to roll up agents as they arrived in country. Nevertheless loose security may not have be the sole fault of the émigrés involved. Aldrich noting the free talk amongst the training and planning staff, describes an operation that, “fell foul of the danger that awaits all large scale covert paramilitary operations, namely that they require forces on a scale that makes them impossible to screen.” This is reinforced by Davies who felt the entire operation was penetrated, from training camps right up to the joint UK/USA Planning Committees. Over the length of the operation several hundred people were involved in the planning, highlighting one of the key issues with early Cold War covert planning: a lack of security and understanding of secure communications. Vague orders lacking in military precision, often verbalised rather than clearly written, coupled with the idea that cat burglars and other shadowy characters were often the best suited for toppling regimes, leads to the a scenario where without Philby’s betrayal it could be surmised that intelligence could have leaked out of the planning staff. Compromised operatives and the lack of operational security meant that security for the operation was minimal leading Verrier to write, “Security is harder to maintain when secrecy matters”.  

 Another factor relating to the recruits utilised for the operation was the sole use of émigré operatives. That is not to say that émigré operatives are of less value that British or Americans, but as Harclerrode points out, due to worry about embarrassment should any Anglo-American agents be caught, potential operatives would be sourced only from resistance groups native to Albania.  That the Allies only employed the resources of eager amateurs, men who begged for an opportunity to engage the Hoxha regime, was a mistake. While the émigrés should have certainly made up sections of the teams, the lack of trained commandos  meant that the teams lacked the strength of special operations operatives, men who were still in rotation within Anglo-American intelligence and military circles. That the Anglo-Americans had this skill set and chose not to exercise it, for the sake of operational deniability, ensured that the operation never had the resources of well trained and experienced men, until the use of the exile King Zog’s personal body guard,  which by then it was far to late.

Different operational tactics between the British and the Americans and the failure to resolve the differences between them also causes problems for OVF. On an organisational level the British preferred the unite intelligence under a single authority, while the Americans favoured a more de-centralised version. This lack of cohesion and bickering led to internecine feuds which according to Dravis “seriously compromised the effectiveness of the program and further reduced what slim chances it had for success”.   Amongst the tactical operational differences were the methods for infiltrating agents. The British preferred the use of small boats and cross border infiltrations, while the Americans argued for low level parachute drops. The British considered these drops nearly suicidal and the difference led to fractured discussions at the planning level of the operation.  The use of the parachute drops as a method of infiltration and re-supply in the later stages of the operation proved disastrous. So much so that Dravis feels that it was on par with the damage done by Philby’s betrayal. The poor planning and the worse instruction of the Albanians, in some cases only three weeks training, led to accidents, agents continually landing in the wrong area and masses of equipment going missing.  If this was not a cause for the operations failure it was certainly a factor in it.

The lack of planning spilled over into poor procurement for the operation. Covert operations depend as much on the kit carried by the operators as on the operators that carry it. In the case of OFV, despite the huge amounts of money the Americans poured into the operation, the equipment remained outdated and poorly maintained. Communications are a key element of any intelligence operation. For covert paramilitary operations they are paramount and the kit issued to the Albanians was of substandard quality.  Even as the operation was in the final planning stages, American and British intelligence officers were scouring Vienna for operational radio sets that they could use. If an operation cannot rely on in its communication equipment, they are bound to suffer setbacks. The radios that the operation utilised were of poor quality, outdated and susceptible to electronic interception by the Albania and Soviet security forces.

The interception of signal intelligence by the Sigurimi was not the only operational skill set the allies underestimated. The strength of the Sigurimi was far greater than assumed by the OVF planners. The fear of reprisal actions by the Sigurimi was significant. For covert operatives to work in country they must be able to do so with the consent of at least some of the native population. That the Albanians so feared the security forces meant that few villagers would risk reprisal by not denouncing agents that landed in their locale.  Once they had captured the agents they turned the tables on the Allies by using a radio deception operation to fool OFV commanders that all was well. The use of compromised agents to send corrupted information to headquarters displays the sophistication of the Sigurimi. While not a new ploy, the lack of awareness on the part of the Anglo-American operations team shows that the Sigurimi were more than deft in their use of corrupted signals.  The damage caused to the America side of the operation in its later stages cannot be laid at the feet of Philby. He had been recalled to Britain by the time the Sigurimi were deftly manipulating the captured agents to give the all clear message that led to capture of additional agents.  Those agents that were captured, from the early stages of the operation right to its biter end gave the Sigurimi vital counter intelligence. The tactically based information; names, dates, times of landings and methodology and tradecraft, gave the Sigurimi a wealth of information to counter the operation. The failure of the Anglo-Americans to appreciate the sophistication of the Albanian security apparatus is a black mark on their records. To underestimate an enemy so cunning and vicious, that resulted in the deaths of many men who trusted their safety to the plans of strangers is a reminder that arrogance can hurt an operation as much as betrayal.

The Albanian Operations of Valuable and Fiend were an ill conceived and poorly planned jaunt into territory that the Allies should have better understood. It failed to achieve its tactical and strategic goals and failed to maintain plausible deniability. After recently fighting a hot war in that region, the failure to understand the local geopolitics as well as the loose tradecraft and poor standard of procurement and supply were mistakes that could have been avoided. That the operation was betrayed from within is an unfortunate aspect of espionage. There will always be betrayals and Phiby’s betrayal alone cannot be seen to be the sole reason for the failure of the escapade in Albania. The litany of reasons is long indeed; poor pre-operational intelligence and a reliance on a fractured dissident community, together with a lack of  pre-operational propaganda, the lack of basic security and tradecraft amongst not only the émigré operatives but the planning and training staff, division over methodology and critical mission planning decisions, woefully inadequate equipment and training for the émigré operatives and a gross underestimation of the Albanian security forces all contributed to the fiasco that was Operation Valuable-Fiend. These factors in conjunction with the betrayal by Philby ensured that the operation was bound to fail. So poorly planned and executed was the operation that had Philby never betrayed his colleagues, it can be surmised that the operation would have failed to achieve its lofty goal of removing Hoxha and clearing a safe zone for further operations against the Soviets. Rather than a seriously planned, well executed and adequately supplied effort, OVF has all the hallmarks of the worst sort of boys own adventures masquerading as covert action. If the public has a poor level of regard for covert direct action by intelligence agencies we can see in OFV a viable reason for that distrust and derision. For intelligence agencies to be a useful tool of government policy they must run operations that are safeguarded against the sort of mistakes that spelled the inevitable downfall of the Albanian Operations of the early Cold War. For Anglo-American intelligence agencies the mistakes of OVF should have sounded a warning bell about the replacement of standard military operation with covert paramilitary operations. Throughout the Cold War we see the mistakes repeated, in the proxy wars in Cuba and Nicaragua. Noisy operations that failed to achieve their purposes or remain deniable. This is not to say that covert paramilitary operation do not have their place. When operated at their best level they can produce the sunning results seen in America’s proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, still a benchmark for covert paramilitary operations. If covert paramilitary operations are all that is left when a country decides that regular espionage is ineffective or unavailable and when standard military action is not an option, that country must ensure that the operation is supplied with good intelligence that is used effectively. It must ensure that its operatives are well trained and committed, that levels of tradecraft are maintained and that the operation is not subject to compromise. In short it must ensure that the mistakes that so crippled Operation Valuable-Fiend are not repeated.

References

Book and Journal resources

Aldrich, Richard J. The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence, London: Kohn Murray, 2001

Bethell, Nicholas. The Great Betrayal: The Untold Story of Kim Philby’s Biggest Coup, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1984

Davies, P. H. J. “From Special Operations to Special Political Action: The 'rump SOE' and SIS Post-war Covert Action Capability 1945-1977”, Intelligence and National Security, Vol 15 Iss 3, 2000 pg 55 — 76

Defty Andrew. “Close and Continuous Liaison: British Anti-Communist propaganda and Co-operation with the United States 1950-51”, Intelligence and national Security, Vol 17, Iss 4 2002 pg 100 -130

Dravis, Michael W. “Storming Fortress Albania: American Covert Operations in Microcosm, 1949-54”, Intelligence and National Security, Vol 7 Iss 1, 1992. pg 425 - 442

Garthoff, Raymond. “Foreign Intelligence and the Historiography of the Cold war”, Journal of Cold war Studies, Vol 6, Iss 2. 2004 pg 21-56

Harclerode Peter. Fighting Dirty: The Inside Story of Covert Operation from Ho Chi Mihn to Osama Bin Laden, London: Cassell, 2001

Rositzke Harry. CIA’s Secret Operations, New York: Reader’s Digest Press, 1977

Steifler Todd. “CIA’s Leadership and Major Covert Operations: Rouge Elephants or Risk Adverse Bureaucrats”, Intelligence and National Security, Vol 19, Iss 4.2004: 632- 654

Trahair, Richard. Encyclopaedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies and Secret Operations, London: Greenwood Press. 2004

Verrier Anthony. Through the Looking Glass: British Foreign Policy in an Age of Illusion, London: Jonathan Cape, 1983