“Film fans who have seen the Robert De Niro film released in 2006 called The Good Shepherd [- The Shadow of Power, 2006 ] may know that the main character, played by Matt Damon, is inspired by James Jesus Angleton, one of the most legendary and controversial figures in American intelligence during the Cold War period. (…) (p. 44).
However, the figure of James Hugh [Angleton], the father, is also of extreme interest. (…) [During the war] He had been assigned to the staff of General Mark Clark (…) and, following him, had landed in Salerno in 1943 (*), and then entered Rome after the liberation from the Germans. In the capital he had been instructed by theOSS to reconnect with Italian industrialists, intelligence services, magistrates, prefects and local leaders. (…)
[In the last months of the conflict], father and son had both found themselves in Rome working for theOSS intelligence services.
After 1945 their professional paths had separated, although they had both continued to live in the capital: James Hugh had resumed his leadership of the American Chamber of Commerce in Italy and his work with the NCR, settling in Rome, where in the meantime his son Guido Jesus had become CIA station chief. (…)
[James Hugh] Angleton was aware of [Nelson] Rockefeller ‘s intentions to expand [with IBEC] also on this side of the Atlantic and he was sounding the ground, in the hypothesis that local partners were needed who were willing to support the American tycoon. (…)’ (pp. 44 – 46).
James Hugh Angleton (his father) was to return to Milan where he had lived eight years before the war, at Corso Venezia 47, and where he met Marco Brunelli, at the exhibition of “Il Settecento veneziano”, organised by the art dealer at Villa Reale in 1955.
From that first contact came the birth of Esselunga two years later.
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(*) sources found later mention Caserta. The stay of the father James Hugh and son James Angleton in Rome is, however, certain.
From left to right the father and son, both spies.
