JAMES J. HITCHCOCK DIES
CIA INTELLIGENCE OFFICER
April 17, 1998 at 8:00 p.m. EDT
James Johnston Hitchcock, 77, a former Central Intelligence Agency intelligence officer and State Department congressional liaison official who had been active in church groups, died of heart and respiratory ailments April 15 at Suburban Hospital.
He joined the Central Intelligence Group in 1946, then the CIA when it was established the next year. His posts included a tour as an assistant to Allen Dulles, when Dulles served as director of Central Intelligence. Mr. Hitchcock transfered to the State Department in 1973, where he did liaison work with the two congressional intelli committees. He retired from State in 1983.
He had served as vestryman, treasurer and Sunday school teacher at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Bethesda and as vice chairman of the Bethesda-Chevy Chase YMCA.
Mr. Hitchcock, who had lived in Bethesda since 1949, was born in Taiwan and grew up in Japan, where his father worked for the State Department. He received his Navy commission after graduating from Yale University in 1941.
A speaker of Japanese and Russian, the Navy sent him to Harvard University for graduate language training and assigned him to the Office of Naval Intelligence. He worked on Japanese code-breaking projects during World War II. He entered Nagasaki with the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey team after the war to investigate damage caused by the atomic bomb. He retired from the Navy reserve in 1980 as a captain.
In retirement, Mr. Hitchcock lectured on international affairs at the Jewish Community Center in Rockville and grew roses. In the mid-1960s, he had been a director of the Yale Club of Washington.
His first marriage, to Audrey Hitchcock, ended in divorce. His second wife, Pauline Hansel Hitchcock, to whom he was married 35 years, died in 1984. A son by his second marriage, Henry Hensel Hitchcock, died in 1995.
Survivors include two sisters, Sally Suddell of Northport, N.Y., and Evelyn Benjamin of Basking Ridge, N.J.; and three grandchildren.