Colby then spent much of the 1950s based in Rome, under cover as a State Department officer, where he led the Agency's covert political operations campaign to support anti-Communist parties in their electoral contests against left wing, Soviet Union–associated parties. The Christian Democrats and allied parties won several key elections in the 1950s, preventing a takeover by the Communist Party. Colby was a vocal advocate within the CIA and the United States government for engaging the non-Communist left wing parties in order to create broader non-Communist coalitions capable of governing fractious Italy; this position first brought him into conflict with James J. Angleton.