Operation Valuable/Fiend
Narrative
In February, 1949, British foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, approved the MI6 operation to overthrow the Hoxha regime of Albania.
The British wanted the United States to finance the operation and to provide bases.
In March, 1949, senior British intelligence officer, William Hayter, who chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), went to Washington with Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) members and Foreign Office staff, Gladwyn Jebb, Earl Jellicoe, and Peter Dwyer, of MI6, and a Balkans specialist, to meet with Robert Joyce, State Department’s Policy and Planning Staff (PPS) and Frank Wisner, head of the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC), administered by the CIA.
Frank Wisner had been an attorney who had represented the financial interests of wealthy Albanian refugees who had been members of the Nazi-fascist collaborative group, the Balli Kombetar.
The British planned to recruit Balli Kombetar insurgents in the regime change against the Hoxha government, and proposed the operation be headed by the military commander of the Balli Kombetar, Abas Ermenji.
Narrative
On May 20, 1949, Harold Perkins, director of the Special Operations Branch, Neil McLean and Abas Ermenji flew to Roma to meet with Midhat Frasheri, wartime leader and founder of the Nazi/fascist Balli Kombetar.
Julian Amery cites: “clandestine operations directed at Hoxha would lead to a major uprising” the success of which would “depend on the million odd Albanians living in the Yugoslav Kosovo region.”