James Hugh Angleton was the President of the US Chamber of Commerce in Milan in the 1930s; having arrived in Milan as Vice-President appointed by NCR, the largest American cash register production and distribution company, to follow the Italian branch and its branches in the colonies, he knew how to get into the ‘right places’ and as a Freemason, Knight of Malta, and member of the Rotary Club, he managed to build up a network of acquaintances useful for keeping his finger on the pulse of the country’s economic and political situation.
The Angletons left Milan in September 1941; the atmosphere had become too hot even for the still neutral Americans. Back home, once the United States had also entered the war James Hugh returned to the army ranks and with the rank of lieutenant colonel joined the staff of General Clark, commander-in-chief of the 5th Army that would lead and win the Italian campaign. Angleton disembarked in Salerno in 1943 and then went to Rome after the liberation from the Germans. In the capital he was assigned by the OSS (Office of Strategic Services, which after the war would be transformed into the CIA), to re-establish contacts with Italian industrialists, intelligence services, magistrates, prefects, local leaders, delicate operations that required interaction with figures from the fascist regime to ensure post-war stability. This strategy had significant implications in the context of the Cold War, where the fight against communism became central. Rome was also home to his eldest son James Jesus, also serving in the OSS, from where he took his first steps into the world of intelligence that he would one day dominate.
After the war, James Hugh and his wife choose to settle in Rome, where James Angleton resumes selling office machinery, also taking over the leadership of the American Chamber of Commerce in Italy. He would like his eldest son Guido Jesus to resign from the Army Services to take over the family business, but he refuses; his career is now taking off, so much so that he has become the head of the Italian station of the former OSS – now CIA.
In the mid-1960s, James Hugh sold his company to the NCR and returned to live in the US with his wife, where he died in March 1973. He was president emeritus of the American Chamber of Commerce for Italy, a decorated army veteran and OSS veteran, and the recipient of an Italian medal for military valour. During the funeral ceremony, which was attended by his sons and daughters, who had come from Italy where they had married and where they lived with their families, no mention was made of the fact that the deceased was also the father of one of the most powerful men in the CIA, something of which even among the deceased’s many friends and family members not many were aware. Jefferson Morley, in his The Ghost, brings a melancholy conclusion to the farewell between father and son, while his community and the obituaries of many newspapers, including national ones, honoured him with whole paragraphs: ‘At times [James Angleton] had failed his father. He had let him down by choosing a career in the CIA over the family business. And he had never spoken to his father about his working life. With his father dead and his family gone, Angleton had never been more alone in his grief. (…)”.
Angleton’s story is linked, in Italy, to that of Marco Brunelli the entrepreneur who was to become one of the protagonists of large-scale distribution in Italy was born as an antiquarian, and one of the most highly regarded in Milan. His was the organisation of a memorable exhibition at the Villa Reale, in 1955, dedicated to the ‘Venetian 18th century’; among the lenders of the works were the most beautiful names in the city and beyond, including my grandmother Marianne [Maire in Caprotti]. And among the most important art collectors of the period who were also Brunelli’s clients was James Hugh Angleton, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Italy…
…It was James Hugh Angleton, a key man in commercial relations between Italy and the United States, an art collector as well as the father of James Jesus, the first head of the CIA station in Rome, who spoke to Brunelli about the American tycoon’s idea of opening a chain of supermarkets in Italy [the future Esselunga] as he had already done in other parts of the world. Rockefeller, among others, founded IBEC in 1947, a company whose aim was to combine the goal of fair profit for investors with the philanthropic one of helping the poorest countries in the development of the basic economy, in order to improve their bleak living conditions…
Sources:
U.S. ARCHIVE.ORG, James Hugh Angleton OSS Personnel File, 10 October 1945.
GENEANET – T. DOWLING, Family Tree of James Hugh Angleton.
“James H. Angleton Dead at 84; National Cash Register Officer“, The New York Times, March 7, 1973, Page 46.
Bibliography:
J. MORLEY, The Ghost. The secret life of CIA spymaster James Angleton, New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2017.
Spartacus Educational, James Angleton.
@FaceBook group, post 12 January 2021.
G. CAPROTTI, Le Ossa dei Caprotti. Una storia italiana, Milan, 2024/3.
ID., Le Ossa dei Caprotti. The Caprottis and the Supermarkets: James Hugh Angleton, father of James Jesus, 1960s. Cues from the book.
ID., Le Ossa dei Caprotti. The Caprottis, the birth of Esselunga and US counter-espionage: James Hugh and James Jesus Angleton. Cues from the book.
ID., James Hugh Angleton, the spy who facilitated the birth of Esselunga, 17/11/23.
ID., Le Ossa dei Caprotti. An Italian story, beyond the false myth of Esselunga’s founder, 09/02/2024.
