Cleveland Cram

Cleveland C. Cram (December 21, 1917—January 9, 1999) was an American station chief and historian for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Cram was born on December 21, 1917, in Waterville, Minnesota. He went to Saint John's University, a Benedictine in Minnesota. He then obtained a master's degree in history at Harvard University.

After completing his education, Cram joined the United States Navy and served in the South Pacific during the Second World War. After the war, he returned to Harvard for his Ph.D. with the intention of becoming an academic. However, in 1949, he was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency.

In 1953, Cram moved to London for work, where he met British spy Kim Philby. As deputy station chief in London, Cram was responsible for the CIA's liaison with British intelligence services MI5 and MI6. In 1958, he returned to head office in the US where he ran the British desk. Later, he moved on to become station chief in the Netherlands and Canada.

Cram retired from the CIA in 1975. The following year, he met intelligence officers George T. Kalaris and Theodore Shackley in Washington. Kalaris, who replaced James J. Angleton, as Chief of Counterintelligence, asked Cram for the possibility of returning to work, specifically to do a study of Angleton's work from 1954 to 1974. Cram did return to work and after six years, he completed the twelve-volume "History of the Counterintelligence Staff 1954–1974" (1981), which remains classified.

In his 1992 book Molehunt: The Secret Search for Traitors that Shattered the CIA, noted American journalist and author David Wise said of Cram, "When Cram finally finished it in 1981... he had produced twelve legal-sized volumes, each three hundred to four hundred pages. Cram's approximately four-thousand-page study has never been declassified. It remains locked in the CIA's vaults."

Cram continued to do research work for the CIA on counterintelligence matters and in 1993, he completed the monograph "Of Moles and Molehunters: A Review of Counterintelligence Literature, 1977–92". In this document, which was declassified in 2003, Cram is highly critical of the work of American investigative journalist Edward Jay Epstein (known for books Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald and Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA), saying: "Legend… gave Angleton and his supporters an advantage by putting their argument adroitly – if dishonestly – before the public first. Not until David Martin responded with Wilderness of Mirrors was an opposing view presented coherently."

Cram died on January 9, 1999, at the age of 81.