The Albanian secret police did not play around

    by CircuDimirCombo

    11 Comments

    1. CircuDimirCombo on

      Context: During the cold war the CIA and MI6 (with communist Yugoslav support) launched a covert operation against communist Albania to overthrow the government with trained Albanian refugees between 1949 and 1954.

      During that time, the Albanian secret police, the Sigurimi, was always one step ahead of them, frequently intercepting agents within 48 hours of entering Albania. One notable incident occurred in 1952 where multiple operatives were captured, forced to send all clear signals to other operatives. The operatives tried to send a fake “under duress” signal but the Albanian already knew about the backup codes, and forced them to send the real all clear.

      All in all, over 300 CIA/MI6 agents were killed, close to 1000 anti-communist Albania refugees trained by them were killed, and 90+ Yugoslav agents were killed, with very little loss to the Albanians.

    2. Big_Red_Machine_1917 on

      From what I’ve read, The Albanian Subversion (or Operation Valuable) suffered from the same problem that the CIA had during during it’s Tibetan Program. Their operatives were almost all drawing from the former ruling class and extremely unpopular with the general population, so it was effective impossible for them build up any sort of support base.

    3. Yeah they talk about this in the bunker museum in Tirana.

      Another thing that stuck with me is that apparently at one point the Americans were sure the Albanians were spying on the embassy (I think it was the embassy) but they couldn’t figure out how. They didn’t know where the fricking microphones were. They looked everywhere, cleaned the building inside out. Nothing.

      They were in the fucking broomsticks the help carried 😂

    4. Aggressive_Jury_7278 on

      Long time lurker here.

      On Netflix, Turning Point: The Bomb And The Cold War is a documentary that has an episode that does a decent job covering this.

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