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[edit] Albania 1949
[edit] Covert action
In October, 1949, Frank Wisner, head of the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), in conjunction with British intelligence, sent two small commando teams into Albania. At the time, CIA did not have its own covert action capability. Insertion of these agents, recruited among exiled Albanians, would continue until 1952 in spite of a total lack of success resulting in the death of in all about 200 agents. Wisner had hoped to build an armed resistance movement against the rule of Enver Hoxha inside Albania.[1]All of these operations were betrayed to the Soviet Union by Kim Philby.
OPC was an interim organization before it was absorbed by the CIA when the CIA Directorate of Plans was formed. See Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action for the history of the OPC and how it became part of CIA, under DCI Walter Bedell Smith. [2]
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