“Among the most important [art] collectors who were also Brunelli’s clients in those years was (…) James Hugh Angleton (…) president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Italy. (…)
Brunelli told me that Angleton (…) had revealed to him Nelson Rockefeller’s idea of studying the opening of a chain of supermarkets in Italy during the exhibition on the ‘Venetian 18th century’ [curated by Brunelli]. The former colonel of the OSS was one of the points of reference for Italy of the International Basic Economy Corporation (IBEC), the company set up by Rockefeller in 1947 that had already opened supermarkets in several Latin American countries in the first half of the 1950s (…).
Angleton was aware of Rockefeller’s intentions to expand on this side of the Atlantic as well and was sounding out the terrain, assuming that local partners were needed who were willing to support the American tycoon. (…) IBEC had (…) a peculiarity: it had to ‘combine philanthropic aims of promoting development especially in the basic sectors of local economies and guaranteeing an adequate profit for investors’, writes Scarpellini. (…)
The whole operation did not lack political implications and, probably, this is also where the interest of James Hugh Angleton, former OSS agent and father of the CIA station chief in Rome [James Jesus Angleton], is explained. IBEC was indeed meant to show the potential of the production system based on private initiative in stimulating a country’s economic development. (…)’ (pp. 44 – 48).
Below: Marco Brunelli ‘s contact person, James Hugh Angleton
