FOIAzona

James Jesus Angleton is one of the most prominent intelligence officials in American history.

He served in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and later became a founding officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, and his legacy, spanning some of the intelligence community’s most tense moments, has been the topic of significant debate since his death in 1987.

For the purpose of this blog post, I offer no opinion on that debate. I have, though, always found Angleton to be a fascinating character of history and enjoy reading about his life and career whenever I have the chance. So, when I heard earlier this year that his parents met in Nogales, a border town a few hours south of me, I decided to search government agencies across Arizona for new records about him.

I didn’t uncover anything Earth-shattering by any means but I did track down a series of records that hopefully will add a little value to the Angleton library.

1) Divorce proceedings

Cicely d’Autremont, Angleton’s wife, told a historian decades ago that she filed for divorce at the tail end of his OSS days, but to my knowledge the filings have never been made public.

I had no luck at Santa Cruz County Superior Court (where his parents met in Nogales) and their surnames don’t appear in Pima County Superior Court’s online database (where his wife’s family is from in Tucson), either. But then I came across a miniscule courthouse bulletin in the June 15, 1946, print edition of the Tucson Citizen—a “complaint [was] filed” that week by woman named Cicely Angleton—so I asked Pima County to conduct a hand-search of their paper archives for me, which the Clerk’s Office was kind enough to do for an exceedingly low fee … and voila!

Click here to see Case Number C27163

The case file is 22 pages long.

The couple married in Battle Creek, Michigan, on July 17, 1943—the marriage certificate may be available at the Calhoun County Clerk’s Office—and d’Autremont filed for the dissolution of their marriage on June 14, 1946. In her petition, she claimed that Angleton “has been guilty of cruel treatment towards the plaintiff” and “has become so engrossed and absorbed in his work that he regards his marriage with plaintiff as an impediment that should be removed.”

A summons was published in the Southwest Veteran, a weekly newspaper, and mailed to the American Embassy in Rome, Italy, where Angleton personally hand-signed the return receipt. However, because he refused to file an answer in the case, an attorney named Robert A. May mailed a letter to the Embassy a few months later notifying Angleton that the court had selected him as court-appointed counsel; May asked the Postmaster to “trac[e]” the letter after not receiving a return receipt.

There is no filing indicating so explicitly, but the archived docket states that the case was dismissed on October 22, 1948.

2) Miscellaneous records

I obtained a few other civil and probate case files from Pima County Superior Court—including but not limited to the estates of his mother-in-law Helen Congdon d’Autremont (PG36710, 6/7/1966), wife Cicely d’Autremont (PB20130628, 6/6/2013), and son James C. Angleton (PB20220006, 1/3/2022)—to see if they contained any details about Angleton himself.

The records were fascinating to look at, but he either wasn’t named or was mentioned so casually that it’s not noteworthy, so I’m not going to upload them here out of respect for his family’s privacy.

I’ll keep searching around for new records when I have time. It’s cool to know that this historic figure from the intelligence community has such longtime (and continued!) ties to Arizona. What a place to live.

“You don’t have to be a great or large or wealthy country to have a good intelligence service. As long as you have the norms, as long as you have the disciplines, as long as you have the motivation, the singleness of purpose, you can be a small service, have one great penetration, and you can move the world.” — James Angleton, 1976

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