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Still Another Guardian Obit: Philip Agee, ex-CIA agent, whistleblower
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
[See also the earlier Guardian news article from Jan 9, already
distributed but repeated here below. Date of death corrected in
this obit, which mistaken said Jan 7, 2007. -NYTr]
The Guardian - Jan 9, 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2238010,00.html
Obituary
Philip Burnett Franklin Agee, ex-CIA agent, whistleblower, author,
born July 19 1935; died January 7, 2008.
Philip Agee
CIA agent turned whistleblower branded a traitor by Bush
by Duncan Campbell
"Why did I leave the CIA?" the former agent Philip Agee, who died this
week aged 72, once asked himself at a public meeting. "I fell in love
with a woman who thought Che Guevara was the most wonderful man in the
world."
It was this mixture of commitment and romance that was to characterise
the man who was denounced as a traitor by George Bush senior,
threatened with death by his former agency colleagues and de****ted from
Britain as a threat to the security of the state.
Agee had left the CIA in 1969 after 12 years working mainly in Latin
America, where he gradually became disgusted by the agency's collusion
with military dictators in the region and decided to blow the whistle
on their activities. The Mexico City massacre of student protesters in
1968 also stiffened his resolve. His 1975 book, "Inside the Company: CIA
Diary," spilled the beans on his former employers and enraged the US
government, not least because it named CIA operatives.
"It was a time in the 70s when the worst imaginable horrors were going
on in Latin America," he told the Guardian in an interview published a
year ago tomorrow. "Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay,
Guatemala, El Salvador - they were military dictator****ps 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."
To carry out his work, Agee moved to London in the early 70s with his
then partner, Angela, a left-wing Brazilian who had been jailed and
tortured in her own country, and his two young sons by his estranged
American wife. He worked with the magazine "Time Out" and other
publications to expose the CIA's work internationally. His activities
had already alerted the then US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger,
who urged the prime minister, Jim Callaghan, to de****t him.
After an arcane legal process, Agee was de****ted in 1977, along with a
young American journalist, Mark Hosenball (now a senior investigative
writer with Newsweek), who had worked at "Time Out." The then home
secretary, Merlyn Rees, who issued the de****tation order, claimed -
falsely and maliciously, according to Agee - that he was behind the
deaths of two British agents. Their case became a liberal cause celebre.
Banished from Britain, Agee found the door closed to him in France and
the Netherlands, and he faced prosecution and jail if he returned to
the US, where his pass****t was revoked in 1979. His relation****p with
Angela ended under the pressure and he met and fell in love with a
well-known ballet dancer, Giselle Roberge. At her suggestion, they
married, which gave him the right to stay in Germany. Until the time of
his death, he lived between their home in Hamburg and an apartment in
Havana. He continued his exposes of the CIA in the "Covert Action
Information Bulletin" [later renamed "Covert Action Quarterly" -NYTr].
A former philosophy and law student from a comfortable Roman Catholic
Florida family, who graduated from Notre Dame university in 1956, Agee
had initially seemed perfect CIA material: bright, sharp-witted,
bilingual and cultured. His career path seemed assured, but doubts
about what he was asked to do soon set in.
He recounts his gradual disillusionment in "On the Run," published in
1987. His former employers never forgave him and his movements and
contacts were logged in incredible detail, as he later found out when
he was able to return to the US and examine the archives on his case
under the Freedom of Information Act. He was told that the CIA had had
two or three people working on him full-time. "Such a waste of money,"
he said at the time, "because I don't do anything that's not public."
The CIA always tried to pin on Agee the death of Richard Welch, the CIA
station chief in Athens, who was assassinated in 1975, although Welch
was named not by Agee but in other publications. "George Bush's father
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," he recalled.
Having lost his US pass****t, Agee sailed under an intriguing number of
flags of convenience. He held a Grenadian pass****t briefly, after
helping that country's then-radical government in 1980, and later in
the eighties a Nicaraguan one, which the Sandinista government gave
him. When the government changed there in 1990, he finally acquired a
German pass****t.
He went back to the US where his two sons, Phil and Chris, live, both
in New York. He often spoke of them with pride and some regret. "There
was a price to pay," he said of his de****tation. "It disrupted the
education of my children and I don't think it was a happy period for
them."
The Major government lifted the British ban on him and he also returned
to the UK and elsewhere in Europe, still campaigning, most recently on
the case of the Cuban Five, the five Cubans jailed in Miami on
espionage charges.
[NOTE: not exactly. They were charged with failure to register as
foreign agents (the only charge that was actually accurate) and the
rest of were trumped-up charges of conspiracy to commit espionage --
the prosecution could not prove they committed espionage, since
they were not spying on the US but on anti-Cuban terrorists in the US,
and conspiracy to commit murder, of all things, based on the
1996 shoot-down of the Brothers-to-the-Rescue planes which invaded Cuban
airspace. NYTr].
In the 90s, he set up a travel business, cubalinda.com, in Havana,
where he was a familiar figure; he was described by the Cuban daily
Granma today as "a loyal friend of Cuba". Initially, his clients came
from the US, but Americans are now forbidden by law from visiting Cuba
and can be fined heavily if caught, so his more recent customers have
come from Europe and Canada. [Not exactly ... it's always been illegal
for Americans to spend money in Revolutionary Cuba. They still travel
there, anyway... and have been right along.-NYTr]
It was in Cuba that he died after an operation for a perforated ulcer,
having been admitted to hospital just before Christmas. He had recently
had surgery for a tumour on his face, but remained sociable and happy
to talk over a meal and a bottle of wine about his confrontations with
authority.
"I never stopped what I started in London," he told me when we met up
again in Hamburg last year, "and I don't expect to stop till I'm dead."
In that, as in his determination to expose the CIA's role in the
scandals of Latin America, he remained true to his word. He is survived
by Giselle and his sons.
***
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
Wa****ngton's Cuba policy, has died aged 72, Cuban state media re****ted
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 dictator****ps 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 Wa****ngton 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 de****ted 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 pass****t 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 im****tant."
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 sup****ter 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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