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Philip Agee

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Philip Burnett Franklin Agee (July 19, 1935 – January 7, 2008[1]) was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) case officer and writer, best known as author of the 1975 book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary[2], detailing his experiences in the CIA. Agee joined the CIA in 1957, and over the following decade had postings in Washington, D.C., Ecuador, Uruguay, and Mexico. After resigning from the Agency in 1968, he became a leading opponent of CIA practices.[3][4][5] He died in Cuba in January 2008.[6]

Early years

Agee was born in Tacoma Park, Florida. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1956.[7]

Leaving CIA

Agee stated that his Roman Catholic social conscience had made him increasingly uncomfortable with his work by the late 1960s leading to his disillusionment with the CIA and its support for authoritarian governments across Latin America. He and other dissidents took encouragement in their stand from the Church Committee (1975-6), which cast a critical light on the role of the CIA in assassinations, domestic espionage, and other illegal activities.

In the book Agee condemned the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City and wrote that this was the immediate event precipitating him leaving the agency.

While Agee claims that the CIA was "very pleased with his work"[2], offered him "another promotion"[2] and his superior "was startled"[2] when Agee told him about his plans to resign, the journalist "and longtime Communist conspiracy fighter" John Barron reports his resignation was forced "for a variety of reasons, including his irresponsible drinking, continuous and vulgar propositioning of embassy wives, and inability to manage his finances".[8]

Possible KGB involvement

Oleg Kalugin, former head of the KGB’s Counterintelligence Directorate, states that in 1973 Agee approached the KGB's resident in Mexico City and offered what Kalugin called a "treasure trove of information." But the KGB was too suspicious to accept his offer.[9]

Kalugin states that:

Agee then went to the Cubans, who welcomed him with open arms...The Cubans shared Agee's information with us. But as I sat in my office in Moscow reading reports about the growing revelations coming from Agee, I cursed our officers for turning away such a prize.[9]

While Agee was writing Inside the Company: CIA Diary, the KGB kept in contact with him through Edgar Anatolvevich Cheporov, a London correspondent of the Novosti News Agency.[10]

Book published

Because of legal problems in the US, in 1975, Inside the Company was first published in Britain, while Agee was living in London.[10] It was eventually published worldwide, in 27 different languages.[citation needed] Playboy Magazine (August 1975) published excerpts from his book in the article titled What You Still Don't Know About The CIA! Ex-Company Man Philip Agee Tells All

Agee acknowledged that "Representatives of the Communist Party of Cuba also gave important encouragement at a time when I doubted that I would be able to find the additional information I needed." [2]

The London Evening news called Inside the Company: CIA Diary "a frightening picture of corruption, pressure, assassination and conspiracy". The Economist called the book "inescapable reading". Miles Copeland, Jr., a former CIA station chief in Cairo, said the book was "as complete an account of spy work as is likely to be published anywhere" [11] and it is "an authentic account of how an ordinary American or British 'case officer' operates . . . All of it . . . is presented with deadly accuracy."[12]

The book was delayed for six months before being published in the United States, it became an immediate best seller. [10] The head of the Western Hemisphere Division of the CIA, Ted Shackley, was tasked with stopping the publication of Agee's CIA Diary.[citation needed]

Inside the Company

Inside the Company identifies 250 CIA officers and agents.[3]

Agee's first overseas assignment was in 1960 in Ecuador where his primary mission was to force a diplomatic break between Ecuador and Cuba, no matter what the cost to Ecuador's shaky stability, using bribery, intimidation, bugging, and forgery. Agee spent four years in Ecuador penetrating Ecuadorian politics. He states that his actions subverted and destroyed the political fabric of Ecuador.[5]

Agee helped bug the United Arab Republic code room in Montevideo, Uruguay, with two contact microphones placed on the ceiling of the room below.[5]

On December 12, 1965 Agee explains how he visited senior Uruguayan military and police officers at a Montevideo police headquarters. He realized that the screaming he heard from a nearby cell was the torturing of an Uruguayan, a name he had given to the police as someone to watch. The Uruguayan senior officers simply turned up a radio report of a soccer game to drown out the screams.[5]

Agee also ran CIA operations within the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games. He then went to Cuba to do some research, in May 1971 and May 1972, and began to be monitored by the CIA in Paris.[5][13]

Agee stated that President José Figueres Ferrer of Costa Rica, President Luis Echeverría Álvarez (1970-1976) of Mexico and President Alfonso López Michelsen (1974-1978) of Colombia were CIA collaborators or agents. [13]

Expulsion

Agee became somewhat of a minor celebrity in the United Kingdom after the publication of Inside the Company. Agee revealed the identities of dozens of CIA agents in their London station.[10] After numerous requests from the American government as well as an MI6 report that blamed Agee’s work for the execution of two MI6 agents in Poland, a request was put in to deport Agee from the UK.[citation needed] Although Agee fought this and was supported by dozens of left wing MPs, journalists, and private citizens, he eventually left from the UK on June 3 1977, and traveled to the Netherlands.[14] Agee was also eventually expelled from Holland, France, West Germany, and Italy.

On January 12, 1975, Agee testified before the second Bertrand Russell Tribunal in Brussels that in 1960 he had conducted personal name checks of Venezuelan employees for a Venezuelan subsidiary of Exxon. Exxon was "letting the CIA assist in employment decisions, and my guess is that those name checks... are continuing to this day." Agee stated that the CIA customarily performed this service for subsidiaries of large U.S. corporations throughout Latin America. An Exxon spokesman denied Agee's accusations.[12]

In 1978, Agee and a small group of his supporters began publishing the Covert Action Information Bulletin, which promoted "a worldwide campaign to destabilize the CIA through exposure of its operations and personnel." Mitrokhin states that the bulletin had help from both the KGB and the Cuban DGI.[14] The January 1979 issue of Agee's Bulletin published the FM 30-31B forgery.[15]

In 1978 and 1979, Agee published the two volumes of Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe, and Dirty Work: The CIA in Africa which contained information of 2000 CIA personnel.[14]

Agee told Swiss journalist Peter Studer that “The CIA is plainly on the wrong side, that is, the capitalistic side. I approve KGB activities, communist activities in general. Between the overdone activities that the CIA initiates and the more modest activities of the KGB, there is absolutely no comparison.”[16][17]

Agee's US passport was revoked in 1979.[18][19] In 1980, Maurice Bishop's government conferred citizenship of Grenada on Agee, and he took up residence in that island. The collapse of the Grenada Revolution removed that safe haven, and Agee then was given a passport by the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. After a change of government there, this passport was revoked in 1990, and he was given a German passport, the nationality of his wife, ballet dancer Giselle Roberge. They later lived in Germany and Cuba. Agee was later readmitted to both the U.S. and United Kingdom.[20] Agee's own description of his odyssey was published in his autobiography, On the Run, in 1987.

Intelligence Identities Protection Act

In 1982, the United States Congress passed the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA), legislation that seemed directly aimed at Agee's works. The law would later figure in the investigation into the Valerie Plame scandal into whether Bush administration officials leaked a case officer's name to the media as an act of retaliation against her husband.

Late activities

Until his death, Agee ran a website in Havana, Cubalinda.com[21][22] which uses loopholes in American law to arrange holidays to Cuba for American citizens, who are generally prohibited by the Trading with the Enemy Act statute of US law from spending money in Cuba. In the 1980s NameBase founder Daniel Brandt had taught Agee how to use computers and computer databases for his research.[23] According to an author's biography attached to an essay by Agee in March, 2007 in the Alexander Cockburn-edited magazine Counterpunch, Agee "has lived since 1978 with his wife in Hamburg, Germany. He travels frequently to Cuba and South America for solidarity and business activities." The Cubalinda travel service was begun in 2000.

On December 16 2007, Agee was admitted to a hospital in Havana, and surgery was performed on him due to perforated ulcers. His wife said on January 9 2008 that he had died in Cuba on January 7 and had been cremated.[1]

Quotes

Agee's personal convictions began to waver in Uruguay in 1965 when Lyndon Johnson sent U.S. forces into the Dominican Republic. The revolution was put down, Agee argues, "not because it was Communist but because it was nationalist."[5]

Reforms of the FBI and the CIA, even removal of the President from office, cannot remove the problem. American capitalism, based as it is on exploitation of the poor, with its fundamental motivation in personal greed, simply cannot survive without force - without a secret police force."[7]

... what the Agency [CIA] does is ordered by the President and the NSC [National Security Council]. The Agency neither makes decisions on policy nor acts on its own account. It is an instrument of the President.[24]

Bibliography

  • Agee, Philip (1975). Inside the Company: CIA Diary. Penguin. ISBN 0-14-004007-2. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  • Agee, Philip (1978). Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe. Lyle Stuart. ISBN 0-88029-132-X. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • Agee, Philip (January 1979). Dirty Work 2: The CIA in Africa. Lyle Stuart. ISBN 0-81840-294-6. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  • Agee, Philip (June 1987). On the Run. L. Stuart. ISBN 0-8184-0419-1. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  • Agee, Philip (1982). White Paper Whitewash. Deep Cover Books. ISBN 0-940380-00-5. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)


See also

References

  1. ^ a b Will Weissert, "Ex-CIA Agent Philip Agee Dead in Cuba", Associated Press (sfgate.com), January 9, 2008.
  2. ^ a b c d e p. 551 Cite error: The named reference "diary" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b Andrew, Christopher (2000). The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-00312-5. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) p. 230
  4. ^ Agee, Philip (1975). Inside The Company: CIA Diary. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-004007-2.
  5. ^ a b c d e f Kapstein, Jonathan (1975). "Philip Agee: The spy who came in and told; Inside the Company: CIA Diary". Business Week: 12. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  6. ^ "Former CIA agent Agee dies in Cuba at age 72". msnbc.com. 2008. Retrieved 2008-01-09.
  7. ^ a b "The Spooks who Rush Into Print". Newsweek: 28. January 27. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  8. ^ Barron, John (1983). KGB Today: The Hidden Hand. Readers Digest Assn. ISBN 0-88349-164-8. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) pg. 227-230
  9. ^ a b Andrew p. 230, referencing Kalugin, Oleg (1995). Spymaster: The Highest-ranking KGB Officer Ever to Break His Silence. Blake Publishing Ltd. ISBN 1-85685-101-X. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) p. 191-192 Andrew states: "The KGB files noted by Mitrokhin describe Agee as an agent of the Cuban DGI and give details of his collaboration with the KGB, but do not formally list him as a KGB or DGI agent. vol. 6, ch. 14, parts 1,2,3; vol. 6, app. 1, part 22."
  10. ^ a b c d Andrew, p. 231
  11. ^ Andrew, p. 231 referencing Agee, Philip (June 1987). On the Run. L. Stuart. ISBN 0-8184-0419-1. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: year (link) p. 111-112, 120-121.
  12. ^ a b "Book details CIA activities". Facts on File World News Digest: 37 B3. 1975. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  13. ^ a b "Secret agent; Inside the Company: CIA Diary. By Philip Agee. Penguin. 640 pages. 95p". The Economist: 87. 1975. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  14. ^ a b c Andrew, p. 232-233.
  15. ^ CovertAction, Number 3, January 1979.
  16. ^ Horowitz, David (1991). "The Politics of Public Television". Commentary Magazine. 92 (6). {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  17. ^ William E. Simon (December 1980). "You can't trust the news". The Saturday Evening Post.
  18. ^ Andrew, p. 231, incorecctly states Agee's passport was revoked in 1981.
  19. ^ "U.S. Revokes Agee Passport". Facts on File World News Digest: 991 C2. 1979. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  20. ^ Duncan Campbell (2007-01-10). "The spy who stayed out in the cold". The Guardian. Retrieved 2007-03-10.
  21. ^ "Cuba Travel Agency". cubalinda.com. Retrieved 2006-07-30.
  22. ^ "Spy's Tourist Agency". cvni.net. Retrieved 2006-07-30.
  23. ^ Hand, Mark (January 3 2003). "Searching for Daniel Brandt". CounterPunch
  24. ^ Agee, CIA Diary Inside the Company p. 37.

Further reading

  • Andrew, Christopher; Mitrokhin, Vasili. The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World. Basic Books (2005)
  • Andrew, Christopher; Mitrokhin, Vasili. The Sword and the Shield. Basic Books (2001)
  • Barron, John (1983). KGB Today: The Hidden Hand. Readers Digest Assn. ISBN 0-88349-164-8. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)


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