Philip Agee

Name	Philip Agee
Birth place	Tacoma, Florida
Death date	(aged 74)
Death place	Cuba
Education	University of Notre Dame University of Florida
Occupation	Central Intelligence Agency
Spouse	Giselle Roberge Agee

Philip Burnett Franklin Agee (July 19, 1935 – January 7, 2008) was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) case officer and writer, best known as author of the 1975 book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, He died in Cuba in January 2008.

Early years

Agee was born in Tacoma, Florida. He graduated cum laude from the University of Notre Dame in 1956, and attended the University of Florida College of Law. offered him "another promotion" and his superior "was startled" when Agee told him about his plans to resign, the anti-communist journalist John Barron claims that Agee's 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".

Agee was accused by U.S. President George H.W. Bush of being responsible for the death of Richard Welch, a Harvard-educated classicist who was murdered by the Revolutionary Organization 17 November while heading the CIA Station in Athens. Bush had directed the CIA from 1976 to 1977.

Possible KGB/Cuban intelligence 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 a "treasure trove of information". The KGB was too suspicious to accept his offer.

Kalugin states that:

For his part, Agee claimed in his later work On the Run that he had no intention of ever working for the KGB, which he still considered the enemy, and that he worked with the Cubans to assist left-wing and labour organizations in Latin America against fascism and CIA meddling in political affairs.

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.

Agee was accused of receiving up to $1 million in payments from the Cuban intelligence service. He denied the accusations, which were first made by a high-ranking Cuban intelligence officer and defector in a 1992 Los Angeles Times report.

A later Los Angeles Times article stated that Agee posed as a CIA Inspector General in order to target a member of the CIA's Mexico City station on behalf of Cuban intelligence. According to the article, Agee was identified during a meeting by a CIA case officer.

Book published

Because of legal problems in the United States, Inside the Company was first published in 1975 Britain, while Agee was living in London.

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" and it is "an authentic account of how an ordinary American or British 'case officer' operates...All of it...is presented with deadly accuracy."

The book was delayed for six months before being published in the United States; it became an immediate best seller. While written as a diary, it is actually a reconstruction of events based on Agee's memory and his subsequent research.

Agee writes that his first overseas assignment was in 1960 to 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.

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. Agee was also eventually expelled from the Netherlands, 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 what is now 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.

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.

Agee's US passport was revoked in 1979. 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. 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 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. 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. }}

Bibliography

See also

Frank Snepp

John Stockwell

Ralph McGehee

Lindsay Moran

Victor Marchetti

L. Fletcher Prouty

Allegations of state terrorism committed by the United States

Peter Wright

References

Further reading

Andrew, Christopher; Mitrokhin, Vasili. The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World. Basic Books (2005)

External links

Category:1935 births Category:2008 deaths Category:University of Florida alumni Category:American memoirists Category:American foreign policy writers Category:American political writers Category:American expatriates in Cuba Category:American spies Category:American whistleblowers Category:Deaths from ulcers Category:Espionage writers Category:Historians of the Central Intelligence Agency Category:People of the Central Intelligence Agency Category:University of Notre Dame alumni