Source: Albanian Life, No. 30/No. 3 1984
Transcription/Markup: The American Party of Labor, 2018
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2018). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
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| Albanian Life No. 3, 1984 |
It has long been known that in 1950 the British and American intelligence services cooperated in organising an invasion of Albania. But the official records of this operation have never been passed to either the Public Record Office in London or to the National Archives in Washington, and attempts to gain access to them through the American "Freedom of Information Act" have been refused on grounds of "national security"; similarly, those who were involved in the operation have been threatened with dire consequences under the Official Secrets Act if they revealed any details. Recently, however, many conscientious British civil servants have objected to the use of the pretext of "national security" to keep secret official records which are merely embarrassing to Ministers - such as those relating to the sinking of the Argentine cruiser "General Belgrano" - and have' courageously leaked such documents, so that recently Whitehall has come to resemble a canal rather than a street.
It is, therefore, now possible for the first time to present a coherent picture of this serious breach of international law.
Both the British Foreign Office and the American State Department have long maintained that the capitalist system of profit-making private enterprise is so eminently sensible - if not divinely inspired! - that any country which follows the different road of planned socialism must have had this system imposed upon its people against their will by force and repression. Consequently, according to this view, such a society must be so inherently unstable that the slightest measure of "destabilisation" from outside would be sufficient to bring about a mass uprising which would restore the country to the community of "civilised" nations. The 1950 invasion of Albania was based on this view, and its disastrous failure illustrates the folly of believing one's own propaganda!
The preparations for the invasion go back at least to 1944-45, when the British government assisted as many as possible of Albania's collaborators and war criminals to flee the wrath of the Albanian people. Contrary to inter-Allied agreements, it then refused to return any of these to Albania for trial, granting them the status of "political refugees".
During the summer of 1949 Neil McLean and Julian Amery, who had acted as British Liaison Officers with Abaz Kupi during the last stage of the war, along with Auberon Herbert (of an aristocratic family which had been active in pre-war Albania) and two officers of the American Central Intelligence Agency, made a tour of these "refugees", who were living mainly in Italy, to persuade than, on behalf of the British and American governments, to unite into a committee aimed at overthrowing the Albanian government.
On August 26th, 1949, with the backing of the British Foreign Office, leading elements among these war criminals - including Mithat Fräsheri, leader of the "Balli Kombëtar" (National Front), Abaz Kupi, leader of the monarchist "Legaliteti" (Legality), and Seit Kryeziu, all of whom had fought the Albanian National Liberation Army alongside the Nazi occupation forces - were formed into a "Committee for Free Albania" in Paris. Fräsheri told the press:
"The present Albanian regime of Marshal Enver Hoxha is so weak that it may collapse at any time".
A report to the State Department from the US Embassy in Athens in this month noted:
"British government's dislike of Hoxha regime is well-known and consequently eventual elimination of Hoxha, which would arouse no regret in England, might result in recently formed committee being considered as de facto legal government of Albania".
In the following month, September 1949, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin visited Washington. A Briefing Paper prepared by the State Department for his visit declared:
"The US would like to see the present Moscow- dominated regime disappear, but the question would then be what kind of regime would take its place, Most preferable would be a Western-oriented regime such as is desired by the Albanian National Committee, a group of exiled leaders now in Rome and Paris. It could not be expected that Albania would be governed democratically...
RECOMMENDATIONS:
that the US act in coordination with the UK and France in the Albanian situation as it develops;
that the US do what it can.. to weaken the position of the present Soviet-dominated regime in Albania; ...
that the US give moral support to pro-Western Albanian elements".
In his secret discussions in Washington on Albania, Bevin is on record as saying:
"The British had followed a policy of unrelenting hostility to the Hoxha Government...
Bevin asked whether we would basically agree that we try to bring down the Hoxha Government when the occasion arises? I said yes.
... He asked what government would replace Hoxha if he is thrown out? Are there any kings around that could be put in?"
Next month, October 1949, the State Department presented a memorandum to Hoyar Millar, Counsellor at the British Embassy in Washington, which described the US objective in Albania as:
"... the weakening and eventual elimination of the Soviet-dominated regime...
US believes that these refugees should play an important role in determining the future of Albania...
The US and UK Governments should maintain continuing contacts with a view to controlling any action on the part of the Albanian National Committee, presently planning action looking forward to the overthrow of the Hoxha regime".
Meanwhile the military side of the invasion was being planned by Colonel Harold Perkins, of the British intelligence agency MI6. Another MI6 officer, Colonel David Smiley, who had been a British Liaison Officer with Kupi in Albania during the war along with McLean and Amery, was charged with organising the training of the Albanians recruited for the purpose by the "Committee for Free Albania". The operation itself, however, was to be conducted jointly with the US Central Intelligence Agency.
In the spring of 1950 Smiley set up his training school in Malta, where as a cover he was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff at the garrison. The Albanians were trained in secret at Fort Bingémna, an isolated post which could be reached only by a rough track, the course consisting mainly of weapons training and radio operation. Smiley's staff included three Albanian interpreters, a weapons training officer, a quartermaster, and two radio operators. These last were responsible both for communications with London and for training the Albanians in radio techniques. Smiley's wife, who had been a cipher expert during the war, undertook the coding and decoding of signals. During training, the Albanians were divided up into small units of 4-6 men, according to the area of the country from which they came, each unit being equipped with a pedal-powered radio.
By midsummer the training programme had been completed, and the groups left Malta at intervals aboard a fishing-boat manned by Royal Navy personnel; in the Adriatic they were transferred to a caique and landed at night on an isolated, rocky part of the coast. The plan was that they should make their way inland to where they had friends and relatives, and signal back the prospects of organising an uprising. When all the groups had departed, the Malta base was closed down, and Smiley moved to Greece, where he was appointed to the British Military Mission as cover. A radio base was set up on Corfu.
But the operation was a complete fiasco, most of the groups being killed or captured immediately on landing. A few managed to escape over land to Greece, from where they were taken to Britain at the taxpayers' expense. Smiley returned to join his regiment in Germany.
Later those involved in the operation blamed its failure on the fact that the liaison officer between the British and US intelligence services for the operation was the double-agent Kim Philby. The Albanians do not accept this hypothesis, as Enver Hoxha makes clear in his book "The Anglo-American Threat to Albania":
"The imperialists had pinned all their hopes on these degenerate elements who, with a dagger in one hand and gold in the other, tried to intimidate our people or bribe them into becoming their followers...
They had not reckoned on the cleverness, determination, vigilance and swiftness in action of our organs of security and people's defence...
We forced the captured agents to make radio contact with their espionage centres.. totally deceiving those centres... Things went so far that they dropped us whatever we dictated to their agents who had fallen into the trap... We put them on trial and after all their filthy deeds had been exposed, we gave then the punishment they deserved...
Our famous radio game, the wisdom, justice and revolutionary vigilance of the Albanian people brought about the ignominious failure of the plans of the foreign enemy, and not the merits of a certain Kim Philby, as some have claimed. Those who tried to bite Albania left not only their teeth, but their bones in this sacred land".