Within the confines of [Angleton's] remarkable life were most of America's secrets. "You know how I got to be in charge of counterintelligence? I agreed not to polygraph or require detailed background checks on Allen Dulles and 60 of his closest friends ... They were afraid that their own business dealings with Hitler's pals would come out. They were too arrogant to believe that the Russians would discover it all. ... You know, the CIA got tens of thousands of brave people killed. ... We played with lives as if we owned them. We gave false hope. We — I — so misjudged what happened." I asked the dying man how it all went so wrong. With no emotion in his voice, but with his hand trembling, Angleton replied: "Funda- mentally, the founding fathers of U.S. intelligence were liars. The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted. These people attracted and promoted each other. Outside of their duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power. I did things that, in looking back on my life, I regret. But I was part of it and I loved being in it... Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, Carmel Office, and Frank Wisner were the grand masters. If you were in a room with them you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell." Angleton slowly sipped his tea and then said, "I guess I will see them there soon."

From Joseph Trento's Secret History of the CIA