One of the stories I will tell in The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton is how the British secret intelligence services pressured Harold Wilson, the leftist Labour leader, into retiring early.
Some would credit Angleton with good counterintelligence instincts. Others might see a witch hunt or the workings of the so-called “deep state.” In any case, it was vintage Angleton, as Alex Cockburn explains.
Source: “Ashes & Diamonds” by Alexander Cockburn”
CIA spymaster James Jesus Angleton was one of the most powerful unelected officials in the United States government in the mid-20th century. Beginning in World War II through the Cold War, Angleton operated beyond the view of the public, Congress, and even the president.
So far as I can recall Harold Wilson was suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease and w anted to leave public life while still mostly in command of his faculties. His condition did subsequently deteriorate. I once saw him in St James’s Park in central London with his wife Mary. Wilson’s face was like a mask.
It is true that the Security Service ,MI5, had been out to “destabilize” him on the daft theory that he was some kind of Soviet agent, for which no shred of proof has ever been made public. Angleton might have been in the background egging them on.
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB493/docs/intell_ebb_026.PDF