A Rich Harvest of Bitter Fruit: CIA, MI6, and Covert Action in Cold War Albania | Stephen Long

[00:00:00] Lock your doors, close the blinds, change your passwords. This is Secrets and Spies. Secrets and Spies is a podcast that dives into the world of espionage, terrorism, geopolitics, and intrigue. This podcast is produced and hosted by Chris Carr.

[00:00:29] Hello and welcome to Secrets and Spies. On today's episode, we're taking a look at CIA and MI6 covert action in Albania during the Cold War. I am joined by author and scholar Stephen Long. Stephen's research focuses on US foreign policy and intelligence history during the early part of the Cold War. On this episode, we discuss what he found during researching his book, A Harvest of Bitter Fruit. Hope you find this episode interesting. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. Take care.

[00:00:58] The opinions expressed by guests on Secrets and Spies do not necessarily represent those of the producers and sponsors of this podcast. Stephen, welcome to Secrets and Spies. Before we dive into your excellent book, could you just tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, as of what first drew you to Cold War intelligence history in this particular story?

[00:01:27] Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me on, first of all. Pleasure. So, I'm a scholar of US foreign policy, US intelligence history. I look at the early Cold War period. That's my area of interest. I was first drawn to this as a student, an undergraduate student and then a postgrad student at the University of Birmingham back in, well, gosh, I hate to admit it now, but sort of 20-25 years ago.

[00:01:57] To link that to this book, early on, studying about the early Cold War, which I just found a really interesting, fascinating period of history, I quickly learned that Albania was a really important operation at the beginning of the Cold War story and a story that sort of stretches beyond the Cold War to the post-Cold War era and the modern age.

[00:02:23] And so, you know, I always had a hope and intention, I suppose, that I might be able to write an extended study of the operation. And then in the summer of 2014, I was on a research trip to the US National Archives in Washington. And I just was really fortunate to stumble upon a collection of declassified CIA files about the Albanian operation and I just couldn't believe my luck.

[00:02:52] And so that then really was the basis for this book project. As I dug deeper, I found other kind of caches of policy papers, intelligence files, and also lots and lots of, you know, hundreds of interview transcripts with intelligence officers and Albanian agents who'd been involved in the operation and also communist Albanian officers as well.

[00:03:15] So I was, you know, able to develop quite a good sort of well-rounded picture of what had taken place. Yeah. And that's been my life for the last 10 years. Have you been to visit Albania and some of the archives physically there? Um, I haven't gone into the archives. I did try. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to gain access. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:03:35] But I have been able to access some files through a couple of contacts that I have. Um, and also, uh, use of memoirs and lots of kind of internet, um, accounts, uh, you know, some web pages and things like this. Um, so yeah, sort of first person testimony by several of the communist intelligence officers who were directly involved in trying to counter the British and American operation. Uh, which is, you know, fascinating reading.

[00:04:05] Um, and then lots of transcripts as well, because what the communist government was very good actually, uh, giving an account sort of pushing back really through propaganda. But so they would often through radio Tirana, they would broadcast very detailed, you know, their side of the story in a very detailed way.

[00:04:25] Um, such as when there were trials of, of captured agents and this sort of thing. Uh, and the Western services then, you know, recorded the radio Tirana transcripts, you know, they took transcripts of those, of those radio broadcasts so that they could better understand what had happened, you know, to their agents and, you know, the limitations of their activities. So you get a pretty good picture, um, through various different sort of approaches.

[00:04:53] Well, for listeners unfamiliar with the operation, what was BG Fiend stroke valuable and why did Albania suddenly become such an important kind of Cold War battleground in 1949? Yeah, it's probably, you know, a seemingly slightly obscure country to, to pick or to take on such significance. Um, BG Fiend Valuable, first of all, to tackle these, this weird word or, you know, a couple of words. Yeah, it's a hilarious name, isn't it? It's so fascinating.

[00:05:23] So these are the code names. BG Fiend was the CIA's code name for their side of the Albanian operation and operation valuable is what the British, what MI6 called it, the secret intelligence service, which is better known as MI6.

[00:05:37] So, you know, we, I say we, you know, historians or, you know, writers about this subject use BG Fiend valuable as the sort of shorthand for the operation. Um, the actual provenance of the code names is, is uncertain. It's unclear. Um, yeah. I wonder whether valuable, the British side of it, that was slightly cynical, but the British saw the greatest value in the operation. I argue, uh, overall, I think in just staying close to the Americans.

[00:06:07] So I don't know whether there was kind of cynicism on the British side, naming it valuable because I'm not convinced they actually thought Albania itself was terribly important. Um, the American side, I know that they, they just randomly created a lot of their code names. Um, so BG, I think was the sort of geographical prefix, um, for either Albania or for the region.

[00:06:31] So I've seen other operations in other countries also with the BG prefix. So it's not clear at first. I thought it was actually connoting Albania. Anyway, this is all rather technical, but we're, we're unsure exactly why, but yeah, those are the code names. So, but the more important part of your question is, you know, why Albania? Why was it so important? And it's really to do with the kind of geopolitical situation at that time.

[00:06:57] So in 1948, 1949, when the operation is sort of coming to life, there are various things happening in that part of the world, which mean that the British government and the US government, both separately to begin with, but then joining together, look at Albania and think this is where we should be focusing. You know, we've got an interest here that's seems to, you know, focus in on Albania.

[00:07:24] So there was a civil war in Greece. Uh, so there was a pro Western monarchist government that was being threatened. And at one point very seriously threatened, uh, by communist rebellion and Albania to Greece's North was supporting the, the communist rebellion. And this was very important for much bigger strategic reasons, you know, the sort of sea lanes in the Mediterranean, the, you know, the communication lines, the oil, um, resources in the Middle East. Yes.

[00:07:54] So that was, you know, Albania suddenly was connected to a much bigger strategic concern, uh, because of Greece's vulnerability. And then to Albania's North, we have Yugoslavia at this time. And Yugoslavia is a communist state, but its ruler Tito fell out with Stalin, the Soviet premier in the middle of 1948.

[00:08:16] And suddenly the Western powers saw an opportunity to cause trouble for the Soviet bloc from within, because suddenly you've got this divisive sort of actor within the communist bloc who, you know, he's a pariah communist sort of state. You know, Tito becomes a sworn enemy of Stalin. So the Western powers wanted to do everything they could to help Tito stay in power because he was a thorn in Stalin's side, basically. Hmm.

[00:08:45] So Albania suddenly, for reasons that I came to conclude, didn't have much to do with Albania itself, it suddenly took on this big significance because if you could get rid of the communist regime or at least make life difficult for it, then you could help the Greek government and you could help the Yugoslav government. And all of that would help the Western, you know, efforts to prosecute the Cold War at a very early stage of the Cold War, of course. Hmm. Hmm. Yeah, yeah.

[00:09:13] Yeah, indeed. And how new was the idea of sort of peacetime covert action at this point? You know, what did Washington and London believe secret operations could realistically achieve behind the Iron Curtain? Well, I mean, it was completely new at this time. This was an unprecedented thing to do. So particularly on the US side, you know, the United States had never engaged in peacetime covert action.

[00:09:38] Before World War II, this was seen as ungentlemanly conduct, unbecoming of the United States as, you know, an exceptional power and all of the rest of that sort of strain of ideology within US foreign policy thinking. Yeah. So they set up an intelligence, a foreign intelligence and special operations capability during the Second World War. But then they've demobilized at the end of the war. So OSS is disbanded, the Office of Strategic Services.

[00:10:05] But they're very quickly sort of saying, we need to set something else up for the Cold War now. Once they basically decide that the Soviet Union, Stalin is a core threat to Western civilization, certainly, you know, US global interests as they now stood at, you know, post-45.

[00:10:27] Then they had to set up not just an intelligence capability, but also increasingly they decide, no, we've got to be more proactive and we've got to take on a kind of special operations or covert action capability abroad. And so that is done. The CIA is set up in July 47 and then December 1948, they, through a top secret directive, NSC 4A, National Security Council Directive 4A is the kind of code for it.

[00:10:56] This authorizes the CIA to engage in foreign propaganda and kind of secret financing of political groups. So they intervene in Italy and Western Europe for that. So that's more about containing communism, making sure the Western bloc stays in the Western camp. But then in June 1948, they authorize another directive, which is the crucial one, which was called NSC 10-2.

[00:11:23] And that's where they set up a kind of covert special operations unit, the Office of Policy Coordination. It was called OPC, kind of loosely housed within the CIA. And this was the office, the agency that was tasked with challenging international communism around the world. And at the beginning, they were focusing on Eastern Europe. And Albania was the first test case of this new unit and its new capability.

[00:11:52] Yeah, brilliant. Thank you for that. And what's interesting as well is your book makes clear that Britain and America were not kind of fully aligned in their goals. So how did their motivations differ? And how much tension did that create inside the operation? Yeah, it was one of the things I particularly enjoyed about doing the research was, especially as a kind of British historian. I think if you're British or American, you might sort of enjoy some of the tension and the conflicts.

[00:12:19] Because we're sort of raised to assume, maybe not in the age of Trump so much, but previously at least, the existence of this special relationship. And that nowhere within the special relationship is it closer than the intelligence relationship. So I really enjoyed reading about lots of the tensions and frictions between the two sides. In fairness, I have to say there was also a lot of harmony and they did also cooperate.

[00:12:47] But in terms of the different objectives and motivations, the British were always approaching this issue in a limited way. And the Americans were much more ambitious. They were much more grand in their designs. So for the British, the reason why they turned to Albania was Greece, because they had the traditional close links to the Greek government.

[00:13:11] And despite all of their limited economic power at the end of the Second World War, they were still trying to help Greece prosecute the civil war against this communist insurrection. And of course, that was, as I mentioned, was receiving support from communist Albania. So the British, they just went in hoping to kind of harass the Greek communist rebels

[00:13:40] behind, you know, within the Albanian territory, if you like, sort of behind those lines. So, you know, inside Albania, they had rebel camps, they had field hospitals, their supply lines ran through Albania. So the British were really just hoping to target where the Greek communist presence was in southern Albania to support the Greek government in its civil war.

[00:14:08] The Americans agreed that Greece was important, but they were coming at this from a much kind of bigger, broader, grander perspective of prosecuting the Cold War. And as I mentioned, you know, after NSC-10-2 was authorised by President Trump in June 1948, the Americans have, you know, Dave, the State Department has basically said, you know,

[00:14:31] we want to try to challenge and roll back communist power in Eastern Europe's traditional Russian boundaries. 10-2 doesn't actually say that. It gives the authorisation for another policy paper, actually sort of sets that out. But so the US government has officially, secretly committed to trying to challenge and overthrow communist governments in Eastern Europe, which is, you know, very contentious, very controversial, but this is what they think they need to do at this stage of the Cold War.

[00:15:00] So they're looking at Albania as being kind of isolated and kind of relatively weak communist state. It's isolated because it's cut off from the rest of the Soviet bloc once Tito's Yugoslavia has fallen out of the Soviet Union. So, you know, it doesn't connect, it doesn't border another communist state within the Soviet bloc. And it's the weakest and poor, well, it's the poorest European country at that time.

[00:15:26] So, you know, there are lots of these reasons why the Americans think Albania is a good target to choose. And we can use it as a, almost like a laboratory to test out the capability that CIA is now developing. But also at the beginning, they're thinking strategically, we can test out whether rollback is viable in this part of the world as well. So, you know, two very different approaches.

[00:15:51] But when the British and the Americans learn that they're both developing covert operations in Albania, they ultimately say, you know, let's join together. Let's run a joint operation because we don't want to conflict with each other and upset each other's operations. And we might also be able to benefit from drawing upon each other in this operation. And so, you know, that makes sense. That's a sensible decision at that point. Let's take a break and be right back with more.

[00:16:33] At this stage of the Cold War, how close was Albania to the Soviet Union? And what role did Soviet intelligence play inside Albania's security services? In truth, the Soviet Union was not particularly important at the beginning. Yugoslavia was much more important. Before the Tito Stalin repped, Yugoslavia is the key power that dominates Albania.

[00:16:57] So Yugoslav partisans in the war have, you know, developed very extensive links with the Albanian communist partisans. Tito basically controls Hoxha, who emerges as the Albanian leader. And yeah, so, you know, Yugoslavia has a strong political, military security, economic presence in Albania.

[00:17:21] But then that all changes, you know, with the Tito Stalin rift, Enver Hoxha, the Albanian communist leader, has a decision to make. Do I side with Tito or do I side with Stalin? And for him, it's a no-brainer, if you forgive the phrase, because he's not really very pro-Yugoslav. And he probably would have been purged if he'd stuck around and, you know, if Yugoslav influence had been maintained.

[00:17:49] So for him, it's obvious, you know, get rid of the Yugoslav influence, side with Stalin. And that's his way of securing his own primacy. So then at that point, suddenly Stalin becomes Albania's patron. But Stalin, in truth, always didn't really trust Hoxha, didn't really like Hoxha from, you know, what I've read about this.

[00:18:13] Sort of saw him as, you know, having lots of Western influence, being, you know, a bit of a petit bourgeois. He'd been educated for a time in France, had lots of, you know, he was a quite a, Hoxha was a quite a sort of decadent individual. You know, he enjoyed lots of the trappings of leadership, which was, you know, not really sort of poor Marxist values on display.

[00:18:37] So Stalin was always suspicious of Hoxha and also saw Albania as being vulnerable for just the same reasons as the Western powers. You know, thought, well, Albania could get picked off. It could fall to the West or, you know, it's not worth putting too much prestige or resources into that particular country. So there's a relationship that develops, but it's not a particularly close relationship, even before it breaks down in the kind of Khrushchev years.

[00:19:06] So who were the Albanian emigres recruited into these operations? And how difficult was it to build a kind of coherent anti-communist movement from exile groups that were often deeply divided themselves? The groups that they recruited from, there were kind of two different sections of Albanian society, if you like, that they recruited from. So the first was a kind of elite group.

[00:19:32] So these were exiled anti-communist emigres, you know, the kind of leadership in exile. And those people were recruited into a front organization that the Western intelligence services created and then sort of financed and directed, which was called the National Committee for a Free Albania. So that was the kind of leadership.

[00:19:55] And then they also tried to recruit kind of ordinary working class, often sort of uneducated young men. Well, not always young men, but often young men, people kind of typically from a rural peasant background. And those people typically were to be found in the refugee camps in post-war Europe.

[00:20:20] So these were people living in pretty terrible conditions, you know, they were destitute, stateless, in pretty desperate mental and physical condition. So not really ideal agent material. But nonetheless, those were the people that were recruited by the CIA and MI6 to run agent infiltration missions into Albania. So that's sort of, that's one way to answer your question.

[00:20:44] But then another way to look at it is sort of politically that there were at least two or three important different political groups. The leaders and the kind of younger peasant kind of agent recruits were, you know, members of these two or three different political parties. So you had one group which was called Legalitet or Legality, which was the kind of monarchist political party.

[00:21:14] So loyal to the former King Zog, who'd fled Albania at the start of the Second World War, the Italian invasion in 39. Then you had a Republican movement, the Bally Combitatge. So this was kind of Republican, anti-Zogist, anti-monarchist, but also anti-communist. And then you had a collection of other groups, which you could kind of cluster into one nebulous group, which was basically independence.

[00:21:41] So you had Kosovar nationalists, you had people loyal to particular tribal warlords. You had an agrarian party, you had all of these different kind of other smaller units, if you like. And so the big problem facing Western intelligence, and well, to be fair, facing the Albanian exiled community, was, you know, how do you unite all these disparate groups who pretty much hated each other as much as they hated Hodja and the communists?

[00:22:11] And the Western powers were never able to overcome this. And to give agency to the Albanians themselves, they were never able to overcome their differences, you know, and it all kind of fell apart. The British and the Americans did their best for a few years during the operation, but it all sort of fell apart by 54, that kind of time.

[00:22:33] It was just impossible to transcend some of the differences that were just as important to these different groups as were their differences with the Communist Party. For listeners unfamiliar with communist Albania at the time, could you explain how the Sigurimi operated and why it became such an effective counterintelligence service and whether Western intelligence underestimated it?

[00:22:56] It's certainly true that the Western intelligence services underestimated the Sigurimi because they admit to this themselves in some of the operational files. They sort of say, oh, we didn't realize that the Sigurimi was going to be quite so effective and, you know, we're up against a tougher adversary than we initially reckoned with. So, yeah, there's definitely an element of truth to that.

[00:23:21] In terms of how it operated, I suppose one caveat to throw in here is that it was a young organization, a bit like the CIA. So it was learning by doing, but it was gaining an awful lot of experience because, you know, you had the CIA and MI6 and you also had Yugoslav intelligence, Greek intelligence and Italian intelligence all running operations against Albania in this period. So it's not just the Western services that are running operations.

[00:23:51] So the Sigurimi really is up against it. So they have to adapt and learn and develop very quickly. And the Western services come into this a bit later than everyone else. So the Sigurimi is already sort of, you know, learning its trade and improving by the time that the Western Albanian operation, BG Fiend Valuable, is launched. How they do it is through kind of good organization, really, overall.

[00:24:19] So Sigurimi has its central headquarters in the capital city in Tirana, but they have then district headquarters in every single, you know, district, every region of the country. But then they also have a kind of a presence and an influence all the way down to the village level.

[00:24:39] So they have, you know, both like at least one party representative in each village overseeing the kind of political ideological sort of harmony of that particular village. But they also have a web of secret informants throughout the country, all the way down to the village level. And alongside the capabilities that they create.

[00:25:03] So, you know, they get pretty good at foreign intelligence espionage, you know, penetrating the Albanian emigre communities in, you know, places like Italy and Greece, West Germany. So they get very good at that. But then inside the country, they also set up, you know, the Sigurimi itself has kind of elite detachments of pursuit brigades.

[00:25:29] They have the army, they have the regular police, they have border guard units, they have civilian militia. So the regime arms loyal members of the citizenry at the village level. So if you're, you know, if you're trained up by the CIA or MI6 and you're sent into Albania, this is pretty much the most hostile environment you could possibly imagine.

[00:25:55] Because unless you just hide in a cave in a mountain, and what's the point of that? Your presence is immediately going to be detected and people with guns are going to start chasing you. And that's exactly what happened to these very brave agents that went on these missions. So, yeah, it was impossible. It was an impossible operational environment to do anything much beyond surviving. You know, that was pretty much, you know, the best outcome. Yeah, totally.

[00:26:25] And the Apple team's sort of operation sits at the dramatic center of your book. So what was the mission and how did it sort of unravel into such a sort of devastating double cross for the CIA and MI6? Yeah, it was an extremely important mission for the operation because I suppose one way of putting it is to say it was the kind of final roll of the dice by the CIA in the Albanian operation. Because the operation had been running for several years. The Apple mission is staged in 1952.

[00:26:55] So we've had, you know, 1950, 51 and 52. So three operational seasons, effectively, where the CIA has been running agents. And with not really much success and a lot of setbacks, a lot of agents that were lost, you know, lots of harrowing experiences. So the CIA's leadership by 1952 is getting a bit twitchy about the Albanian operation. And Walter Beadle Smith was the CIA director at the time. He really didn't like covert action.

[00:27:24] He had already tried to ship it out of the CIA unsuccessfully. And Truman's National Security Council had pushed back and said, no, you've got to do more of this because of the Korean War. So Beadle Smith was on the warpath. He was looking for covert operations that weren't doing well that he could cut. And the Albanian operation was near the top of his list. So the CIA, you know, the field officers involved in this operation and, you know, the project team that say in HQ and in the field were desperate for a success.

[00:27:54] And they placed all of their hope basically in Apple. And what they did with Apple was they tried to recruit higher quality agents. So they went to King Zog. They hadn't really been recruiting from Zog's retinue before, but they went to King Zog, who was in Egypt at the time, and said, can you provide us with some good quality agents?

[00:28:16] And we'll then try and use those agents to tap into, you know, loyalists to, you know, people who's sympathetic to your return to Albania in sort of in his heartland in central Albania, sort of near the capital. So Zog was keen to do this because he had pretensions to, you know, reclaim the throne.

[00:28:36] So he supplied the CIA with several important people, basically members of his personal bodyguard, people with political clout in the country, and then a kind of legendary resistance figure. The top guy in the resistance movement also joined it as the kind of deputy commander of the mission, a guy called Hamid Matiani.

[00:29:00] Who the communist government was desperate to get their hands on because he'd run at least a dozen infiltration missions for Greek intelligence, for Italian intelligence, and also for US intelligence before this operation. So yeah, so the CIA recruits this top quality group of agents for the first time.

[00:29:20] They're really pleased with the people they're working with, and they've got high hopes that Apple can go into Albania, can start kind of connecting with Zogist loyalists, you know, people loyal to the deposed king, anti-communist groups, reach out to people even within the communist party, within the government, within the security services.

[00:29:43] They're hoping to recruit moles, so people that stay in place and provide intelligence about the government and so on. And they hope to recruit defectors, so people who will, you know, flee the country and this will disrupt the governance of the country and embarrass the regime and so on, and add to the prestige of the exile movement. So Apple has, you know, hugely grandiose, ambitious mission objectives.

[00:30:14] You know, it's a tough nut to crack, let's say. But anyway, they're sent in, and for the first couple of months, they do pretty well. They operate undetected. Two or three agents slip back across the border to Greece and debrief the CIA, but two agents stay in place. The commander of the operation, Zeno Shehu, and the radio operator who's relaying messages back to a CIA radio base in Athens. His name is Tahir Prentsi.

[00:30:43] And disaster strikes about eight weeks into the operation when they are both captured alive by the Sigurimi. So a trap is laid. Once the Sigurimi eventually realizes that they're operating inside the country, they then carefully prepare an ambush and they manage to take them alive. And so this is then just a total calamity for the, not just for Apple itself, for that individual mission, but for the entire project.

[00:31:10] Because the Sigurimi is able to dupe the CIA and dupe Zolg and the emigre community into believing that Apple is still freely operating independently. And so they relay messages through the captured radio and they lure in, I think it's nine agents in total that come in afterwards. And they're all either immediately captured or they're killed on landing. They send in more supplies, they send in equipment.

[00:31:40] Sometimes the agents are carrying sensitive information. So it is betraying the CIA's tradecraft as well. So in every way, this is a total disaster. And when it's finally unmasked, so they're captured in June 1952. And the operation is officially unmasked in December of 1953. But the CIA realizes that the operation has blown in October of 53.

[00:32:09] Because the Albanian communists tried to shoot down their supply plane in October 53. So that's when they realize, oops, this is not going very well. So yeah, at that point, this just kills the morale of the operation. You know, CIA intelligence officers now, they're the, you know, the emigres and the intelligence officers in the field, they are the most committed people to the operation.

[00:32:33] It takes an awful lot to persuade them that this has run its course and it's futile now. Where the CIA's leadership is already sort of reaching that conclusion. The field officers want to keep pushing, you know, but once Apple is exposed as a double cross, no one, you know, it just saps the morale and the will to persevere with the operation. Yeah, definitely. Kim Philby inevitably hangs over this story.

[00:33:01] But reading your book, it feels like the Albania operation had much deeper problems than just him. Can you talk to us a bit about that? Yeah, I argue in the book that Philby's role is exaggerated. You know, it's difficult to know for certain because there is very little kind of smoking gun evidence either way. You can argue Philby is central to the failure of the operation or its setbacks at least.

[00:33:26] Or you can argue that other factors were more important because we still don't know for certain. Because really, unless documents turn up in some of the archives that show that Philby was, you know, providing detailed evidence in advance or intelligence in advance to the Soviets and that that was being passed on to Albania, we will never know.

[00:33:48] But the fact that that information hasn't shown up in the archives, either the Soviet archives or the Albanian archives, is one sort of piece of evidence in itself. You know, the absence of evidence suggests. But I think there are stronger arguments beyond Philby. And also when we just analyse Philby's role, you know, within the operation, he's only around for about 18 months.

[00:34:17] And he has a very particular kind of political role in Washington. So he doesn't have advance information, even if he wanted to pass it on to the Soviets. But he's not really, you know, the operation is compartmentalised and it's actually the field officers in Italy and Greece and on the American side also in Germany. They are the people that have much more of a direct day-to-day role in planning and undertaking the operation.

[00:34:45] And, you know, Philby has some access to those people, but it would absolutely raise suspicions if he was trying to get daily, you know, intelligence reports about the planning down to those intricate levels. His role is representing the Foreign Office in Washington, essentially, and MI6 in Washington, making sure that the Foreign Office and the State Department agree on their policy towards Albania,

[00:35:12] which then sets the boundaries for what MI6 and CIA can do in the country. So I would argue that, and because he's only around till April, May 1951, the operation runs for several years beyond that, you know. So even if he was responsible for that limited period of time, we have to look for alternative explanations for the setbacks that were experienced afterwards anyway.

[00:35:38] The Soviets and the Albanians never said Philby was integral to the problems that the Western powers encountered. You know, the Soviets, I'm confident they would have boasted about this, you know, if they had used Philby to subvert the operation, why would they not have then celebrated that publicly later on, you know? And Philby himself was ambiguous about it.

[00:36:05] He didn't really say that he was integral to its failings. So if we look elsewhere to understand the setbacks, then I think we should give agency to the communist Albanian security services. That, to me, is the most likely reason why the obstacles, the challenges that were encountered, you know, that they were encountered in that particular way,

[00:36:33] because the Sigurimi was adept at penetrating, for example, a labor camp in West Germany, where the CIA recruited agents from this labor camp and then sent them to a secret training school in West Germany. And the Sigurimi penetrated the labor camp. They probably didn't penetrate the secret training school, but they didn't need to, because once they knew that agents had disappeared from the labor camp,

[00:36:59] they had a good idea that they were being sent for secret training. And if they knew who they were and they knew where they were from, then they pretty much knew they were going to turn up in their hometown in a number of weeks. And so they set ambushes. And they penetrated the exile communities, you know, the networks of the social networks in Rome and in Athens. Because these, you know, young guys,

[00:37:26] typically they were suddenly recruited into this really important mission. They thought they were going in to liberate their homeland, essentially. You know, they didn't understand it as a limited operation. And so they talked about it. You know, they were excited. After, you know, weeks before that, languishing in a refugee camp with no prospects, suddenly they're being sent on the most important calling of their life to try and topple the communist regime in Albania.

[00:37:55] So they were easy penetration targets. And the Sigurimi just hoovered up all of this information and prepared their networks inside the country to, you know, to await the agents when they came in. So I think that's much more credible as an explanation to understand the problems that were encountered. Let's take a break and be right back with more.

[00:38:31] One of the most surprising arguments in your book is that the West never really truly pursued regime change in Albania in many ways that people would assume. So how did the operation sort of quietly evolve into something kind of quite different? So it started out as a regime change operation, at least the way the Americans conceived it. So, you know, as I mentioned, the differences at the beginning between the British and the Americans. So the British never were really interested in regime change from what I've been able to read.

[00:39:01] But the Americans did see it in those terms. But because the British and the Americans fused their operations together, they had to think of a way to do that coherently. So what they decided was, we have a phased approach to the operation. We have phase one, which is sort of limited operations, subversion, harassment, reconnaissance, that kind of stuff. And then if we successfully create the conditions for regime change, then we can move to phase two.

[00:39:31] But creating the conditions for a regime change was always well beyond the Western powers' capabilities. It also required, you know, diplomatic cooperation of Yugoslavia, Greece and Italy. And Yugoslavia in particular was never going to countenance an anti-communist regime on its doorstep, you know. So they were never able to move to that second phase anyway. But then in six months into the operation,

[00:39:59] the State Department and the Foreign Office jointly agreed that they would suspend that second phase objective anyway. Even though they hadn't moved towards that part of the operation yet, they basically said, we're not going to go for this because they recognized the dangers of being too aggressive in Albania. And again, this goes back to, you know, their original motivations. They were looking at Yugoslavia in particular, and they were worried that, you know,

[00:40:28] if we're too aggressive in Albania, we're just giving Stalin an excuse to go in and overthrow Tito in Yugoslavia. And the Western powers thought Yugoslavia was much more important, frankly, than Albania. Tito was a much bigger asset than any hypothetical sort of post-Hodja anti-communist government would be in Albania. And the Greek civil war had come to an end, you know, across Albania's southern border.

[00:40:56] So there was no need to push aggressively against Albania for that reason as well. You know, that part of the original objective had receded by late 1949. So the Western powers, basically, the Western governments, the policymakers basically said, look, we'll let the operation run, but we won't allow our intelligence services to push too hard in Albania. You know, they've set the operation up. It's useful to gather intelligence.

[00:41:25] It's useful to keep the spirit of resistance alive in the country, but we're not going to push too aggressively. We don't want to, you know, bring Hodja down because suddenly this could, you know, create all sorts of problems for Tito. And also it could create instability. You know, Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia all had pretensions to, you know, exert influence or even claim territory in Albania. So they also, you know, the Western powers also thought, yeah, this could be a tinderbox.

[00:41:54] We could create geopolitical chaos by knocking out Hodja, you know. So it's one of the big ironies of the operation that actually they come to recognize the communist ruler, Enver Hoxha, as being a kind of pillar of stability in Albania. And they sort of end up saying, we're better off leaving him in power because our anti-communist allies or anti-Soviet allies in the region, you know, all hell could break loose between them if we actually topple the communist government.

[00:42:22] So that's an issue that transcends the Cold War, essentially. Yeah, yeah, indeed. So your conclusion suggests that sort of the Albanian operation obviously became less about Albania itself and more about building a permanent covert action capability. Do you see a direct line then between sort of lessons learned there and operations in like Iran, Guatemala, and elsewhere? Yeah, I do think there are some connections. I think on the sort of tactical level, just in terms of the capabilities that they were developing in Albania

[00:42:51] because it was the first one of these types of operations. So a lot of the kind of methods, the tradecraft is then adopted. Some of it, you know, it's not always exactly like a template that you exactly adopt and replicate somewhere else, but a lot of the different propaganda operations, the agent infiltration activities, the plans to create a kind of paramilitary strike force, they don't end up doing that in Albania,

[00:43:20] but they plan for it in Albania originally. And of course, that's striking when we think about, you know, Guatemala or the Bay of Pigs in Cuba down the line. So there was definitely some kind of lineage, direct lineage there. And also like they learned an awful lot. The CIA as a fledgling organization learned the hard way, learned from their mistakes in Albania. You know, everything you can really think of, all aspects of the operation,

[00:43:49] you know, how to recruit agents and propaganda officials, how to conduct the various types of propaganda that they were doing, improving the equipment that they were using, you know, the stuff that the agents were carrying in on infiltration missions, how to improve security, how to better communicate with your agents on missions, how to work with emigres more effectively, all of that kind of stuff, you know, that all of the nuts and bolts of the tradecraft,

[00:44:19] they were learning their trade in Albania. So it was hugely important. And they were undoubtedly then applying the lessons they were learning for future operations. So one thing I kept sort of thinking when reading the book was whether covert actions sometimes exist, not simply just to change the reality, but to reassure governments that they're doing something in moments of geopolitical anxiety. Do you think there's a sort of truth in that? Yeah, I think there is a truth to it. I think, you know, the Western governments, the US government in particular,

[00:44:48] had committed to doing something in the Soviet bloc. So not just in Albania, but behind the Iron Curtain, you know, as Churchill put it. So there was a commitment to try to destabilize or even roll back communist power. But it always, you know, the Albanian operation really set the tone for that only ever existing at the kind of aspirational or rhetorical level. They never moved beyond that

[00:45:16] to a real tangible effort to actually overthrow the communist governments from the research I've conducted, you know. So there was an aspiration there. But then, you know, those are the policymakers. But I think it's always important to differentiate between officials working in London or Washington and intelligence officers working at the coalface in the field. And those guys, you know, men and women, but almost always men who were doing this,

[00:45:46] you know, they were deeply committed to the cause. A lot of these people that served during the Second World War in these countries, you know, that they were now targeting with their operations. So the Albanian operation recruited a lot of former SOE and OSS officers who had Albanian knowledge and expertise from their wartime experience. And the people, the Albanians they were working with were their brothers in arms. You know, they were the people that fought alongside. Some of these people

[00:46:15] had saved their lives during the war, you know. So they had a deep, genuine commitment and conviction to the anti-communist cause, just as the communists on their side had their own deep convictions and beliefs and, you know, sort of ideological framework. So it wasn't just, you know, it wasn't just an institutional thing where, you know, there was some sort of untangible institutional forces

[00:46:44] acting to, you know, give life to this operation. You know, there were individuals who believed in it and who were intelligence officers, say, you know, pushing boundaries, trying to get permission to be a bit more aggressive in their operations. But then State Department and Foreign Office pushing back and saying, no, you know, there are limits to what you're allowed to do and that kind of thing. So there was a desire to act. In the field, there was almost a kind of desperation

[00:47:14] to, you know, to act decisively, but it always came up against that brick wall of the policymakers and the policy level, strategic level decision to not risk taking, you know, dangerous, provocative, potentially provocative, you know, operations inside the country. Let's take a break and be right back with more.

[00:47:52] After spending so many years of research and history, what has stayed with you most personally? Is it the intelligence lessons, the geopolitical implications, or the kind of human costs for people caught up in the operation? All three have been there. All three of those elements have been there while I've been doing the research, but undoubtedly it's the human side of it, you know, that really stood out all the way through. Once I was able to start reading interview transcripts of the Albanian emigres that served

[00:48:22] and the intelligence officers, you know, the human story made me realize this is a, at its heart, it's a deeply tragic human story. And so I always, you know, I was always really aware of that and I was always did my best to treat the subject very sensitively and sort of delicately because it's a subject that, you know, hugely divided Albanian society

[00:48:52] and as a foreign historian, as a British historian, as an outsider, I also wanted to be respectful of somebody else's history. but also, you know, it's a subject that still, I think, is a very emotive, a very important emotive subject for Albanians because, you know, these were real lives. These were people that went in risking everything and sometimes losing everything and not only their own lives but the lives of their families and friends,

[00:49:22] you know, inside Albania. So there was an awful lot of suffering on all sides of the operation and, yeah, I found it very moving, you know, a lot of the experiences of the agents as well, you know, just harrowing traumatic experiences during some of the missions that it was impossible not to be moved by, you know, some of the accounts of survivors. Yeah, definitely. If listeners take away one thing from A Rich Harvest of Bizz of Fruit,

[00:49:52] what do you hope it is? Yeah, it's a really good question. I think it would have to be the same answer as to the previous question. I think it's the human side of the story and, you know, the fact that with these types of operations there's a certain sort of glamorizing of intelligence agencies and mystique to what they do but actually when it comes down to it they are bureaucracies, they are organizations and they have human beings working in them and there was so much sort of pain and suffering experienced in this operation

[00:50:22] that I think remembering the human side of the story and being respectful of that I think is certainly something I take away from it and I think to broaden that out a lesson for practitioners is also that these operations often seem very attractive and appealing to policy makers but they can be very kind of unpredictable and volatile in the outcomes that they trigger. So, you know,

[00:50:52] this operation in Albania in a lot of ways it caused a lot of harm a lot of counterproductive results for the western powers so I think if we're learning lessons let's say then perhaps in an age where we now states use these types of capabilities as a normalized sort of standard fare I think policy makers would be wise to always consider the potentially divisive or negative

[00:51:21] consequences of engaging in covert action operations. Well said. Well, finally then the most important question where can listeners find out more about you and your work? Yeah, I don't have much of a social media presence I like to tell my students that I'm a bit of a dinosaur but I'd be happy if anyone you know any listeners are interested in this story and they want to get in touch with me they can contact me on my work email address so that is

[00:51:50] if I give that to you now it's steve.long at xjtlu.edu dot cn so I'd be happy for anyone to send me an email if they want to talk about this more my profile is up on the university web page as well so people can find out about me there so it's abbreviated to xjtlu the full name is Xi'an Jiaotong liverpool university fantastic

[00:52:20] thank you very much for that well steve good luck with the book launch and thank you so much for joining me today thanks so much thanks really

[00:52:57] thanks for listening this is secrets and spies