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Expanded - Phillip B. Agee, Presente! Heroic CIA Dssident Dies in Havana
at 72
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
[Some minor typos corrected and a little addtional info added. We'll be
sending out a bibliography and more material later. -NY Transfer]
Phillip Agee, A Real CIA Dissident, Dies in Havana at Age 72
A True US Hero and Courageous Revolutionary
NY Transfer News
We'll be publishing more about this modern-day hero in the coming days.
Agee was a real product of the cold war; he believed completely in the
post-World War II American mythology, joined the CIA, became a "CIA
Case Officer" (covert operative) and served in a variety of stations,
mostly in Latin America, in the 1960s. Most shocking and disillusioning
to him, perhaps, was his time in Quito, Ecuador where he became
acquainted with the dirty tricks and torture of innocent people
first-hand. He left the agency, went public in a way VERY FEW "CIA
dissidents" ever have. He did not sit comfortably and silently
collecting a CIA pension; he did not submit his written memoir to the
CIA review board for censorship and permission to publish.
He told the unvarnished truth. He named names and was hunted for it all
over the world. His US passport was taken away from him. The US
government told outrageous lies about him and claimed he was
responsible for the deaths of CIA officers -- when in fact their
identity was already known to a great many people and it was the CIA
itself, in its imperial arrogance and carelessnes, that refused to
do anything to protect them. A law called the Agents Identity
Protection Act was passed in the US making morally admirable actions
such as outing the crimes of the CIA illegal. (In fact, it was the
George W. Bush regime who outed an actual CIA operative, Valerie Plame,
who was truly undercover.)
Agee wrote many articles and papers, was published by journals such as
Covert Action Information Bulletin (Now Covert Action Quarterly) and
Counterspy, collaborated with other anti-imperialist writers on various
books such as "Dirty Work" and "Dirty Work II," as well as "On the
Run," an account of what happened to him, and his family, after the
publication of his courageous first book. He was interviewed for a
number of videos that revealed the seamy side of what the CIA was
really all about. He also helped to expose the truth about actions by
many of the so-called "Brave 52" "diplomat" hostages seized at the US
Embassy in Tehran following the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and Jimmy
Carter's granting sanctuary to the deposed US-backed tyrant Shah
Mohammed Reza Pahlevi.
Agee provided inspiration, and an education, to the Vietnam War
generation of US dissidents and activists. His work taught
countless scholars, historians and FOIA document analysts about the
standard operating procedures, methods and techniques of US
intelligence and its covert operations and counterintelligence --
its crimes, dirty tricks, assassinations, torture and cover stories. He
assisted patriots in many countries -- including Cuba, Grenada, Jamaica,
Nicaragua and Venezuela -- to detect and expose the manipulated stories
and faked events designed to destabilize their countries and overthrow
their leaders. He cracked open the secret vault, exposed the teeming
worms under the earth, and showed the world the ugly truth behind the
red-white-and-blue mask. His work led directly to the Church Committee
hearings on the CIA in the mid-1970s, and contributed to its attempted
reforms, now largely un-done.
He continued to fight against the evil of the US empire for the rest of
his life, including important analytic work that helped
revolutionaries dissect the contemptible actions of the US, its CIA
and its many front groups. He lived in Germany and in Cuba, and also
ran a travel agency that helped promote tourism to the island. Agee was
a courageous, heroic example to US citizens who can open their eyes and
use their own anger at being deceived to help fight against those who
have corrupted and betrayed the US Constitution and committed
horrendous crimes in the name (and with the money) of the US taxpayer.
Phillip Agee, Presente!
Jan 9, 2008 15:04
***
Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN)
http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles
Friend of Cuba Phillip B. Agee Passes Away in Havana
Havana, Jan 9 (acn) Phillip B. Agee, a friend of Cuba and restless
defender of the people's struggle for a better world, passed away in
Havana on Jan 7, Granma newspaper reported.
A US citizen, Phillip Agee was a CIA official until 1968 when he left
the agency for ethical reasons. In 1974, he published a book on the CIA
entitled, "Inside the Company: A CIA Diary," after which he dedicated
himself to denouncing the terrorist, destabilization and subversive
activities of the United States government against governments,
progressive individuals and revolutionaries in Latin America and the
Caribbean.
He was known for his solidarity with Cuba, Nicaragua, Grenada and
Venezuela, among others.
***
The Guardian - Jan 9, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2237937,00.html
Renegade CIA agent Agee dies
by Fred Attewill and agencies
Philip Agee, a former CIA agent who became a bitter critic of
Washington's Cuba policy, has died aged 72, Cuban state media reported
today.
Agee quit the CIA in 1969 after 12 years in which he mainly worked in
Latin America. He was later denounced as a traitor by George Bush Sr
and was threatened with death by his former colleagues.
His famous 1975 book, "Inside the Company: CIA Diary," cited alleged CIA
misdeeds against leftwingers in the region and included a 22-page list
of people he claimed were agency operatives.
Granma, Cuba's communist party newspaper, said Agee died on 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 Agee had
been in hospital since last month, where he died following several
operations for perforated ulcers. Dwyer said friends planned a
remembrance ceremony for him on Sunday at his Havana apartment.
In comments published last year, Agee defended his decision to expose
the CIA: "It was a time in the 70s when the worst imaginable horrors
were going on in Latin America.
"Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Guatemala, El Salvador -
they were military dictatorships with death squads, all with the
backing of the CIA and the US government. That was what motivated me to
name all the names and work with journalists who were interested in
knowing just who the CIA were in their countries."
His intent to destabilise the organisation by revealing the identities
of CIA agents infuriated his former employers. In Britain, he worked
with journalists to list the names of the agents, leading to many of
them being sent back to Washington with their cover blown.
Agee wanted to settle in Cambridge with his partner, Angela, a leftwing
Brazilian who had been jailed and tortured in her own country, and his
two young sons by his estranged wife.
He planned to continue exposing the CIA but his plans were ruined when
he was deported in 1978 as a threat to the security of the state.
He believes [sic] the US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, urged the
prime minister, Jim Callaghan, to act because of a belief that Agee had
disrupted the Jamaican elections in favour of leftwinger Michael Manley
by exposing CIA activities there.
He settled in Germany with his new lover, a ballet dancer called
Giselle Roberge, and later split his time between Hamburg and Havana.
In 1979, his US passport was finally revoked and was never returned.
However, Agee had no regrets about his decision to blow the whistle on
the CIA. He said: "There was a price to pay. It disrupted the education
of my children [Phil and Chris, then teenagers] and I don't think it
was a happy period for them. It also cost me all my money. Everything I
made from the book, I had to spend.
"But it made me a stronger person in many ways and it ensured I would
never lose interest or go back in the other direction politically. The
more they did these dirty things, the more they made me realise what I
was doing was important."
Under the US Freedom of Information Act, Agee was able to discover the
CIA had accumulated 18,000 pages of information on him.
Agee was repeatedly blamed for the death of Richard Welch, the CIA
station chief in Athens who was assassinated in 1975.
"George Bush's father [George Bush Sr] came in as CIA director in the
month after the assassination and he intensified the campaign,
spreading the lie that I was the cause of the assassination. His wife,
Barbara, published her memoirs and she repeated the same lie, and this
time I sued and won, in the sense that she was required to send me a
letter in which she apologised and recognised what she wrote about me
was false.
"They've tried to make this story stick for years. I never know what
government hand or neocon hand is behind the allegations, and I don't
pay too much attention, but I know I haven't been forgotten."
Agee was a great supporter of what he regarded as Cuba's progressive
policies providing universal healthcare and education, and he regarded
the current US president as the "antithesis" of those achievements.
Writing in the Guardian last year, he said: "All Cuba's achievements
have been in defiance of US efforts to isolate Cuba. Every dirty method
has been used, including infiltration, sabotage, terrorism,
assassination, economic and biological warfare and incessant lies in
the media of many countries."
Agee denied claims from a former Cuban intelligence officer he had
received $1m from Cuban intelligence.
Despite the long-running bitterness between him and the US authorities,
Agee was allowed to return to the US many times without being arrested
and was allowed back into Britain under John Major's government.
In the 1990s, he set up a company to bring visitors to Cuba. Many
travellers came from the US, even though Americans are forbidden by law
from visiting the country and can be fined heavily if caught.
Until his death, Agee remained committed to exposing the CIA. Last
year, he was working on a book about the CIA's activities in Venezuela.
*
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