Operation Valuable
Part of the Cold War
Top left: American Forces in Munich Germany, Recruiting Paramilitary Soldiers Top right: U.S. Colonel F. H. Dunn inspecting the anti-communist "Kompania 4000" during training at Hohenbrunn in Bavaria in November 1950. Bottom left: The Sigurimi with a captured CIA agent. Bottom right: Tito gives green light to U.S General John C. H. Lee to take down fellow communist ruler Enver Hoxha.
Date 1949–1956 Operation Valuable: 1949–1954 (5 years) Operation BG/Fiend: October 1950–May 1956 Location Albania Result Communist Albanian victory Western allied forces fail to overthrow Hoxha's regime[1][2][3]
Belligerents
People's Socialist Republic of Albania	United States  United Kingdom  Yugoslavia KEVA  Italy
Commanders and leaders
Enver Hoxha Mehmet Shehu Kadri Hazbiu	Harry S Truman[4] Dean Acheson Frank Wisner Franklin Lindsay James G. McCargar Roman Rudkowski (Ex-Colonel of the Polish Air Force) Clement Attlee[5] David Smiley Julian Amery Peter Kemp Alexandros Papagos[6] Josip Broz Tito Vlado Popović
Units involved
Albanian People's Army Sigurimi	United States Army CIA Kompania 4000 O.P.C British Army MI6 Italian Navy UDBA
Strength
unknown	Initial invasion: / 500 Agents[7] / 2,000 paramilitary soldiers[8] 5 submarines 180 C-47 aircraft 80 landing craft assault boats 6 landing craft utility 7,500 commandos[9]
Casualties and losses
unknown	1949–1954 / 300 Anglo-Americans killed[10] 961 Western Allied forces killed[11] 33 Yugoslav agents of the UDBA were captured or executed[12] 60 Western Agents were killed[lower-alpha 1] [13]
400 civilians executed

Operation Valuable, also known as the Albanian subversion (Albanian: Përmbysja e Shqipërisë) was one of the earliest covert paramilitary operations in the Eastern Bloc. The main goal of the operation was to overthrow the government of Communist Albania.^[14]

MI6 and the CIA launched a joint subversive operation, using Albanian expatriates as agents. Other anti-communist Albanians and many nationalists worked as agents for Greek and Italian intelligence services, some supported by the Anglo-American secret services. Many of the agents were caught, put on trial, and either shot or condemned to long prison terms at penal labour.

Background

Albania was in an unenviable position after World War II.^[15] Greece claimed Albanian lands.^[15] The Western Allies recognized neither King Zog nor a republican government-in-exile, nor did they ever raise the question of Albania or its borders at major wartime conferences.^[15] No reliable statistics on Albania's wartime losses exist, but the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration reported about 30,000 Albanian dead from the war, 200 destroyed villages, 18,000 destroyed houses, and about 100,000 people made homeless.^[15] Albanian official statistics claim higher losses.^[15]

British plans for the overthrow of Hoxha and the Communist regime in Albania had existed since 1946.^[16] The Russia Committee, established in 1946 by the British Foreign Office, was created to oppose the extension of Soviet control by promoting civil strife in Russia's Western border nations.^[17]

Operational plans

The operation began October 1949.^[18] The plan called for parachute drops of royalists into the Mati region in Central Albania. The region was known as a bastion of Albanian traditionalism and moreover praised for their loyalty to King Zog, himself an offspring of one of the regional clans. The original plan was to parachute in agents, in order to organize a massive popular revolt, which the allies would supply by air drops. In time, this revolt would spill out a civil war. The trouble that this would cause Soviet politics was considered by the British to be worth the risk, and if it did succeed, then it could be the starting point of a chain reaction of counter-revolutions throughout the Eastern Bloc. The chief of SIS, Stewart Menzies, was not enthusiastic about the paramilitary operation but saw it as a way to appease the former SOE “stinks and bangs people.”

The British wanted the United States to finance the operation and to provide bases. Senior British intelligence officer William Hayter, who chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), came to Washington, D.C. in March with a group of Secret Intelligence Service members and Foreign Office staff that included Gladwyn Jebb, Earl Jellicoe, and Peter Dwyer of SIS and a Balkans specialist. Joined by SIS Washington liaison Kim Philby, they met with Robert Joyce of the US State Department’s Policy and Planning Staff (PPS) and Frank Wisner, who was the head of the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), and other U.S. intelligence officials such as James McCargar and Franklin Lindsay. McCargar was assigned to liaise with Philby on joint operational matters. Unbeknownst to the SIS and CIA, Philby was a communist and a spy for Soviet foreign intelligence, and has subsequently been blamed for the failure of the operation.^[19]

Anti-communist Albanians were recruited in the Displaced Persons camps in Greece, Italy, and Turkey. The manpower for what the British codenamed VALUABLE Project and the Americans FIEND, consisted of 40% from the Balli Kombëtar (BK) National Front, a fascist collaborationist organization formed during World War II, 40% from the monarchist movement, known as Legaliteti and the rest from other Albanian factions.^[20]

Valuable Project/Fiend

A dozen Albanian émigrés were recruited and taken to Libya to train for a pilot project that would become known as Operation Valuable. The SIS, with U.S. Army Col. 'Ace' Miller as a liaison, trained these men in the use of weapons, codes and radio, the techniques of subversion and sabotage. They were dropped into the mountains of Mati throughout 1947, but failed to inspire the inhabitants of the region into a larger revolt. The operation continued into 1949. There were sabotage attempts on the Kuçova oilfields and the copper mines in Rubik but no real success in raising a revolt. Then, the US government weighing up the political situation, decided to lend a hand. In September 1949, British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin went to Washington, D.C. to discuss Operation Valuable with US government officials. The CIA released a report that concluded that “a purely internal Albanian uprising at this time is not indicated, and, if undertaken, would have little chance of success.” The CIA asserted that the Enver Hoxha regime had a 65,000 man regular army and a security force of 15,000. There were intelligence reports that there were 1,500 Soviet “advisers” and 4,000 “technicians” in Albania helping to train the Albanian Army.

British and U.S. naval officials were concerned that the USSR was building a submarine base at the Karaburun Peninsula near the port of Vlora. On 6 September 1949, when NATO met for the first time in Washington, Bevin proposed that “a counter-revolution” be launched in Albania. US Secretary of State Dean Acheson was in agreement. NATO, established as a defensive military alliance for Western Europe and North America, was now committed to launching offensive covert operations against a sovereign nation in the Balkans. The US and UK, joining with their allies, Italy and Greece, agreed to support the overthrow of the Hoxha regime in Albania and to eliminate Soviet influence in the Mediterranean region. Bevin wanted to place King Zog on the throne as the leader of Albania once Hoxha was overthrown.

This time a better quality of commandos were sought and an approach was made to King Zog in exile in Cairo to recommend men for the job. However, British negotiator Neil 'Billy' McLean and American representatives Robert Miner and Robert Low were unable to bring Zog in because no one would name him head of a provisional government in exile. In August 1949, an announcement was made in Paris that Albanian political exiles had formed a multiparty committee to foment anti-communist rebellion in the homeland; actually the "Free Albania" National Committee was created by American diplomatic and intelligence officials for political cover to a covert paramilitary project, with British concurrence. The British made the first organizational move, hiring on as chief trainer Major David Smiley, deputy commander of a cavalry (tank) regiment stationed in Germany. The leaders of the Balli Kombetar, an exile political group whose key policy was to replace the Albanian Communist regime with a non-royalist government, had already agreed with McLean and his cohort, Julian Amery, to supply 30 Albanian émigrés, some veterans of World War II guerrilla and civil wars, as recruits for the operation to penetrate Albania

Fort Binġemma, where Albanian recruits were trained.

In July 1949, the first group of recruits, were transported by British special operations personnel to Fort Binġemma, on the British crown colony of Malta. Labeled as "The Pixies" by the SIS, they spent two months training as radio operators, intelligence gatherers, and more sophisticated guerrillas than they had been as members of cetas (guerrilla bands) during World War II. On 26 September 1949, nine Pixies boarded a Royal Navy trawler which sailed north; three days later, a Greek style fishing boat, known as a caïque and named "Stormie Seas', sailed from Malta.

With a stop at an Italian port, the two vessels sailed 3 October, rendezvoused at a point in the Adriatic Sea, and transferred the Albanians to the caïque. Hours later that same night, the Pixies landed on the Albanian coast, some distance south of Vlora, which was the former territory of the Balli Kombetar, others further north. Albanian government security forces soon interdicted one of the two groups on commandos. The Communists killed three members of the first group, and a fourth man with the second group. The first three deaths and disappearance of a fourth man to join his family wiped out one group, while the surviving four from the covert landing exfiltrated south to Greece.

For two years after this landing, small groups of British-trained Albanians left every so often from training camps in Malta, Britain and West Germany. Most of the operations failed, with Albanian security forces interdicting many of the insurgents. Occasionally, the Albanian authorities would report on “large but unsuccessful infiltrations of enemies of the people” in several regions of the country. Some American agents, originally trained by Italian or Greek officials, also infiltrated by air, sea, or on foot to gather intelligence rather than take part in political or paramilitary operations. The most successful of these operatives was Hamit Marjani, code name Tiger, who participated in 15 land incursions.^[20]

The last infiltration took place a few weeks before Easter 1952. In an effort to discover what was going on Captain Shehu himself, with Captain Branica and radio operator Tahir Prenci, were guided by veteran gendarme and guerrilla fighter Matjani and three armed guards to the Mati region northeast of Tirana. Albanian security forces militia were waiting for them at their rendezvous point, a house owned by Shehu's cousin, a known supporter of Zog. The militia forced Shehu's operator to transmit an all clear signal to his base in Cyprus. The operator had been schooled to deal with such situations, using a fail-safe drill which involved broadcasting in a way that warned it was being sent under duress and therefore should be disregarded. But the militia seemed to know the drill. The all clear signal went out and, nearly a year later, four more top agents, including Matjani himself, parachuted into an ambush at Shen Gjergj (Saint George), near the town of Elbasan. Those not killed were tried in April 1954.

1950 Albanian coastline ambushes

The 1950 Albanian coastline ambushes or Raids on the Albanian coastline in 1950 involved a conflict between Albanian Hoxhaist secret forces (Sigurimi), and multiple British teams supported by MI6.^[21][20]

1950 Albanian coastline ambushes
Part of Operation Valuable
Date September and November, 1950 Location Albania, Albanian Coastline Result Communist Albanian victory
Belligerents
Communist Albania	United Kingdom Supported by: CIA United States Air Force
Commanders and leaders
Kadri Hazbiu	Peter Dwyer Air Support: Roman Rudkowski
Units involved
Sigurimi	MI6
Strength
Unknown	three British teams
Casualties and losses
none	All British troops were captured or killed

In preparation for the landing of British SIS troops, several C-47 aircraft and boats were used, the planes were piloted by CIA and ex-Polish Air Force colonels. The British Chief Peter Dwyer was in charge of the British SIS during the raids.^[22][23]

It was one of the most disastrous parts of the covert operation as all of the British agents were killed or captured.^[21]

Aftermath

Operation Valuable was a failure, with 300 MI6 and CIA agents killed during its duration.^[24]

Shehu, Sufa, Matjani and others were put on trial, which found all guilty. Shehu, Sula and the royal guards were to be shot, Matjani to be hanged. Many of the local inhabitants who were suspected of having helped the guerrillas, were jailed or forcibly located elsewhere in Albania. Whatever remained of the anticommunist resistance was virtually erased.

Up to 300 agents and civilians who helped them were likely killed during the operation. Abaz Ermenji, co-founder of Balli Kombetar (BK) stated: “Our ‘allies’ wanted to make use of Albania as a guinea-pig, without caring about the human losses, for an absurd enterprise that was condemned to failure.” Halil Nerguti stated: “We were used as an experiment. We were a small part of a big game, pawns that could be sacrificed.”

John H. Richardson Sr, Director of the CIA's South-East Division, terminated Operation Fiend. By 1954, Company 4000's 120 members focused on guarding a United States Air Force chemical weapons dump south of Munich. CIA training facilities outside Heidelberg, West Germany shut down, as did a CIA base on a Greek island. Over time, the remaining Albanians were resettled in the UK, US and Commonwealth countries.

The operation was one of the most carefully concealed secrets of the Cold War. In 2006, some 2,300 pages of documents laying out major parts of the Albania Project under its two major cryptonyms, BGFIEND and OBOPUS, were declassified by a U.S. government interagency working group acting under the terms of the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act.

See also

• Banda Mustafaj
• Bay of Pigs invasion – similar operation in Cuba

Notes

References

Sources

• Prados, John (2006). Safe for democracy : the secret wars of the CIA. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. ISBN 978-1-61578-011-2. OCLC 812925034.
• Nicholas Bethell (1985). Betrayed. New York: Times Books. ISBN 0-8129-1188-1. OCLC 2215298.
• Colonel David Smiley LVO, OBE, MC, "Irregular Regular", Michael Russell, Norwich, 1994 (ISBN 0-85955-202-0). The Mémoirs of a Royal Horse Guards officer, SOE agent in Albania and Thailand, and later MI6 agent in Poland, Malta, Oman and Yemen. He trained the Pixies in Malta in 1949. Translated in French by Thierry Le Breton, Au cœur de l’action clandestine. Des Commandos au MI6, L’Esprit du Livre Editions, France, 2008 (ISBN 978-2-915960-27-3). With numerous photographs.
• Dorril, Stephen. MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations, Fourth Estate, University of Michigan: 2000 (ISBN 978-1-857020-93-9)
• Bruce Page; David Leitch; Phillip Knightley (1968). The Philby Conspiracy. New York: Doubleday. OCLC 165938.
• Paul Hockenos (2003). Homeland calling: exile patriotism and the Balkan wars. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-4158-7. OCLC 52165767.
• Noble, Andrew. “Bullets and Broadcasting: Methods of Subversion and Subterfuge in the CIA War against the Iron Curtain.” MA dissert. University of Nevada, 2009
• Stavrou, Nikolaos A. “Searching for a Brother Lost in Albania’s Gulag”. Mediterranean Quarterly 19, no. 2 (2008): 47-81