Philip Agee

58
Philip Agee bigraphy, stories - Former CIA agent; author; expatriate American

Philip Agee : biography

July 19, 1935 – 7 January 2008

Philip Burnett Franklin Agee (July 19, 1935 – January 7, 2008)Will Weissert, , Associated Press (sfgate.com), January 9, 2008. was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) case officer and writer, best known as author of the 1975 book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, 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. p. 230 A co-founder of CovertAction Quarterly, he died in Cuba in January 2008.

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.

Inside the Company

Inside the Company identified 250 alleged CIA officers and agents. The officers and agents, all personally known to Agee, are listed in an appendix to the book.Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, Allen Lane, 1975, pp 599-624. While written as a diary, it is actually a reconstruction of events based on Agee’s memory and his subsequent research.Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, Allen Lane, 1975, p 9.

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.

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

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 a Uruguayan, whose 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.

Agee also ran CIA operations within the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games and he witnessed the events of the Tlatelolco massacre.

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.

Following this he details how he resigned from the CIA and began writing the book, conducting research in Cuba, London and Paris. During this time he alleges he was being spied on by the CIA.Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, Allen Lane, 1975, pp 573-583

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.Andrew p. 230, referencing 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."

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 labor 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 Anatolyevich Cheporov, a London correspondent of the Novosti News Agency.Andrew, p. 231