Sunday, January 13, 2008

Ex-CIA agent Philip Agee dead in Cuba

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080109/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/obit_agee

Ex-CIA agent Philip Agee dead in Cuba
By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press Writer
1-9-8

Former CIA agent Philip Agee, a critic of U.S. foreign policy who infuriated American intelligence officials by naming purported agency operatives in a 1975 book, has died, state media reported Wednesday. He was 72.

Agee quit the CIA in 1969 after 12 years working mostly in Latin America at a time when leftist movements were gaining prominence and sympathizers. His 1975 book "Inside the Company: CIA Diary," cited alleged CIA misdeeds against leftists in the region and included a 22-page list of purported agency operatives.

Granma, Cuba's Communist Party newspaper, said Agee died Monday night and described him as "a loyal friend of Cuba and fervent defender of the peoples' fight for a better world."

Bernie Dwyer, a journalist with state-run Radio Havana, said in a Tuesday message posted to a Cuba e-mail group that Agee's wife called him to say he had died after ulcer surgery in a hospital where he has he been since Dec. 15.

"He had several operations for perforated ulcers and didn't survive all the surgery," Dwyer wrote, adding that Agee was cremated Tuesday and that friends planned a memorial ceremony for him Sunday at his Havana apartment.

Agee's U.S. passport was revoked in 1979. U.S. officials said he had threatened national security. After years of living in Hamburg, Germany — occasionally underground, fearing CIA retribution — Agee moved to Havana to open a travel Web site.

The site, cubalinda.com, is designed to bring U.S. tourists to Cuba, offering package tours and other help that is largely off-limits to Americans because of the U.S. trade embargo. Agee opened the site in 2000 with European investors and a state-run travel agent as his partners.

There was no mention of Agee's death on the site Wednesday.

The author of several other books besides "Inside the Company," one of Agee's last essays was published in Granma International newspaper in 2003 and came shortly after a Cuban government crackdown led to the arrest of 75 leading dissidents and political activists.

"To think that the dissidents were creating an independent, free civil society is absurd, for they were funded and controlled by a hostile foreign power and to that degree, which was total, they were not free or independent in the least," he wrote.

Agee has been 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 report.

Barbara Bush, the wife of former President George H.W. Bush — himself a one-time CIA chief — in her autobiography accused Agee's book of exposing a CIA station chief, Richard S. Welch, who was later killed by leftist terrorists in Athens in 1975. Agee, who denied any involvement in the killing, sued her for $4 million for defamation, and she revised the book to settle the case.

Agee's actions in the 1970s inspired a law criminalizing the exposure of covert U.S. operatives.

But in 2003, he drew a distinction between what he did and the exposure of CIA officer Valerie Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a prominent critic of President Bush's Iraq policy.

"This is entirely different than what I was doing in the 1970s," Agee said. "This is purely dirty politics in my opinion."

Agee said that in his case, he disclosed the identities of his former CIA colleagues to "weaken the instrument for carrying out the policy of supporting military dictatorships" in Greece, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil.

Those regimes "were supported by the CIA and the human cost was immense: torture, executions, death squads," he said.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

there are rumors on the net that philip agee is hiding somewhere in latin america.
fidel castro retired just five weeks after philip agee supposedly "died" in havana. now raul castro is in control. if i were him, i would stay in hiding and NEVER surface again!
there are rumors that he passed the baton to some younger guy whose code name is sundance. however, there is some confusion as to who that individual could be, and we are not sure if that individual is acting alone. historians will ponder over this mystery within century or so.

butch said...

it's ludicrous to think he faked his death. he was already protected.

rigoleto22 said...

Philip Agee, un hijo de puta que se acuesta con Caroline Kennedy me dijo que estas vivo, cabron! Ese hijo de puta tenia una borrachera arriba del carajo! Fumaba marijuana y me dijo que Caroline Kennedy tiene tremendo culo, bien rico y sabroso! Parece que le hace cosquillas en el culo de Caroline Kennedy con la lengua...
Quedate escondido! Sabemos que estas vivo!

tungcheehwa said...

Hugo Chavez le dijo a Vicente Fox: "Usted que es hombre de caballos.Hay una copla en mi llano.Yo soy como el espinito que la savana florea. Le doy aroma al que pasa y espino al que me menea. No se meta conmigo, caballero, porque sale espinao!"
Philip Agee y Fidel y Raul Castro estaban detras de ese incidente.
Philip Agee, you are not fooling anybody! Take the money they gave you and stay on the run.
Giselle Roberge was on the cover of National Geographic in May of '89--the Baltic Region. NG opened it's piece on the Baltic with an American defector who was ex-NSA.
Philip Agee y Giselle Roberge Agee, no se metan conmigo porque salen espinados!

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tungcheehwa said...

I got the messages about Amazon.com, Phil. Sudden Impact, Jennifer Spencer. February of 2011, the American intelligence community stooped to an all-time LOW! I did my best to tell her the truth! I can only go so far! It has only gotten WORSE since you were with the FIRM Phil. Don't do too much cosmetic surgery to try and hide. I outed the facial recognition garbage. Grow a beard and wear large glasses and sun glasses. Keep a very low profile and stay on the run!
Butch and Sundance