Philip Agee

[Pat Speer]

John, perhaps you can explain how disclosing that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA was a "smear"?

Is it because you have such a negative view of the CIA?

The point is that Plame manuevered to get Wilson the assignment to Niger, and Wilson lied about that.

In what twisted world, Tim, is this the "point?" It does not matter one iota how many lies Wilson told, even if he did tell lies. What matters here is that the Administration trusted with protecting the so-called free world screwed up, and sought reprisals against one of the few who could prove it. Fitzgerald already said that Libby was asking Cheney about Wilson's wife BEFORE Wilson had made ANY public comments about the President's supposedly innocent use of the yellowcake deception in preparing us for war. Why do you think he was doing that, Tim? How could he have known what Wilson was thinking?

You have this kneejerk response to anyone who casts a bad light on saintly republican types. I'm not sure about Agee. But Wilson IS a hero. He stood up for American prinicples at a time when they are in short supply. I suggest you rally round McCain before Dubya's liars and bumblers drag the whole party down.

[John Simkin]

I have asked Philip Agee a couple of times to join the forum. However, he points out that he is concerned about the time involved. Maybe I will be able to change his mind when his new book on the CIA is published.

This article about Agee appeared in yesterday's Guardian. It includes this passage:

Under the US Freedom of Information Act, Agee has been able to see the scope of the operation mounted against him by an unforgiving CIA. "They admitted to having 18,000 pages on me. I figured out there were 120 pages a day for seven or eight years. That can only be things like telephone transcripts and letter intercepts. Some person from the Pentagon was talking about me and saying they had two or three people working on me full time. I thought it was so foolish, such a waste of money, because I don't do anything that's not public. I don't pay much attention to them any more, but now and then something will come up."

What comes up most often is the name 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, Agee has often been blamed for his death. "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. 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."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1986660,00.html

[John Simkin]

In December 2005, Kleanthis Grivas published an article in 'To Proto Thema', a major Greek investigative Sunday newspaper, in which he accused "Sheepskin", the Greek branch of Gladio, NATO's stay-behind paramilitary organization during the Cold War, of the assassination of Richard Welch, as well as of the assassination of British military attaché Stephen Saunders in 2000.

[Paul Rigby]

Phil runs a travel agency in Havana, and pray tell I wouldn't want to cause any difficulties, BUT:

His "Company Diary" fails to include ANY entries for November, 1963. Has he corrected that mistake in later published materials.

I for one am still anxious to hear his immediate reactions to the "Crime-of-the-Century", and moreover, where was he when he got the sad news.

Interesting point. As it happens I was reading this book last night. The purpose was to look at his reaction to the JFK assassination. As you say, that part of the diary is missing. Very strange.

The omission is more shocking than I can adequately feign. Yet let there be no doubt, Mr. Agee is indeed a genuine dissident, as the following makes clear:

"[T]he CIA is not a mysterious body with its own brand of politics: it is a tool in the hands of the President of the United States…"

PHILIP AGEE, as quoted by Claude Bourdet, in "The CIA Against Portugal," as found in JEAN PIERRE FAYE (Ed.). Portugal: The Revolution In The Labyrinth (Nottingham: Spokesman Books, 1976), p. 194.

A point of view which is not to be confused with official pap such as…

"The Central Intelligence Agency has never assumed the 'right to meddle in other nations' internal affairs.' The charter legislation for the CIA makes it the instrument for such special activities, but only when they are proposed by the policy agencies, directed by the President and financed by Congress after proper notification."

GARY E. FOSTER, "C.I.A. Isn't Lone Wolf of Foreign Policy," New York Times, (Wednesday), 17 February 1993, p.A18 (Letter to the Editor from the Director of Public and Agency Information, CIA).

Much less truly outrageous subversive nonsense like….

"One thing I would mention is that when it's a CIA operation, that means it's a White House operation. It's not CIA. They don't do things on their own…If it's a CIA operation it's because they were ordered to do it…"

NOAM CHOMSKY. Class Warfare (London: Pluto Press, 1996), p. 92

Or patent insider flim-flam of this kind…

"The CIA, as the President's loyal tool - tainted to some extent by involvement in Watergate-related activities - also became vulnerable"

MARCHETTI, VICTOR & MARKS, JOHN D. The CIA And The Cult Of Intelligence (New York: Dell, February 1975), p. 328

Never mind manifest insider-drivel…

"[L]et me say again flatly that CIA does not make policy, and does not operate outside or contrary to established policy”

Admiral William F. Raborn, outgoing Director of Central Intelligence, U.S. New & World Report, 18 July 1966, pp.75-76

And certainly not be confused with the authentic note of old-left dissent…

"The White House knows, or is made aware of, every important step of the CIA…”

"The CIA operates both independently and secretly, but the much circulated view that there are two governments is groundless. There is only one government in the United States and it is directed from Washington."

GEORGE MORRIS. CIA and American Labor: The Subversion of the AFL-CIO's Foreign Policy (New York: International Publishers, 1967), p.23 & p.145

Dissidence, US-style. Fearless stuff, no?

Paul

[Tony Frank]

I have first-hand knowledge of the fact that CIA Director Richard Helms recruited Agee to infiltrate the KGB in 1969. Agee's book, Inside The Company, was supposed to be part of the ploy. But Agee was a pill-popping boozer and he was nuts. He actually defected by pretending to infiltrate. Agee was actually supposed to kill me in 1980 and again in 1981 when I was trying to expose KGB infiltration of the CIA.

My forthcoimg book, An Agency Gone Bad, doesn't go into a lot of detail on Agee, but it does explain how I know all of this.

Edited January 2, 2008 by Tony Frank

[John Simkin]

I have first-hand knowledge of the fact that CIA Director Richard Helms recruited Agee to infiltrate the KGB in 1969. Agee's book, Inside The Company, was supposed to be part of the ploy. But Agee was a pill-popping boozer and he was nuts. He actually defected by pretending to infiltrate. Agee was actually supposed to kill me in 1980 and again in 1981 when I was trying to expose KGB infiltration of the CIA.

My forthcoimg book, An Agency Gone Bad, doesn't go into a lot of detail on Agee, but it does explain how I know all of this.

I would be interested to see the evidence you have for this claim.

[Charles Drago]

Agee was actually supposed to kill me in 1980 and again in 1981 when I was trying to expose KGB infiltration of the CIA.

My forthcoimg book, An Agency Gone Bad, doesn't go into a lot of detail on Agee, but it does explain how I know all of this.

Literature's loss is Langley's gain.

Edited January 10, 2008 by Charles Drago

[Maggie Hansen]

Phillip Agee dies in Cuba

Obit from Sydney Morning Herald this morning:

Death claims the spy who never came in from the cold

January 11, 2008

Page 1 of 2 | Single page

The renegade CIA agent Philip Agee remained a thorn in Washington's side, writes Joe Holley.

Advertisement

PHILIP AGEE, a former undercover officer with the Central Intelligence Agency whose disillusionment with American policy in support of dictatorial regimes prompted him to name 250 agents and reveal CIA secrets, has died in Cuba aged 72.

In his controversial 1975 book, Inside The Company: CIA Diary, Agee detailed the inner workings of US spy operations around the world, but chiefly in Latin America, where he was stationed for eight years during the 1960s.

The CIA, he charged, was interested only in propping up decaying dictatorships and thwarting radical reform efforts. Published in 20 languages, the book also included a 22-page list of purported agency operatives, or about 250 agents.

"That was right in the middle of a political crisis in the United States connected to the war in Vietnam, and the history of the CIA was very much on people's minds," said Thomas Powers, author of Intelligence Wars: American Secret History From Hitler To Al-Qaeda .

"The elementary-school version of American history had always been that the US is always on the side of the good guys, and here comes Philip Agee to tell us it ain't so, and especially in Latin America."

Agee insisted that publishing the names of fellow case officers was a political act in the "long and honourable tradition of dissidence in the United States" and not an act of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union or any other foreign power. "It was not enough simply to describe what the CIA does," he recalled. "It was important to neutralise the effectiveness of everybody doing it."

Former colleagues and the US Government termed his act treason. The book "caused serious damage to the national security", the State Department said after its publication, and in 1979 the then secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, stripped Agee of his passport.

Prompted in large part by Agee's book, Congress in 1982 passed the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, making it illegal to knowingly divulge the identity of covert CIA officers.

Agee also wrote Dirty Work: The CIA In Western Europe, published in 1978, and On The Run, in 1987, in which he detailed what he said was a CIA campaign to silence him while he was working on his first book.

Agee was born in Tacoma, Florida, attended Jesuit schools and graduated cum laude from the University of Notre Dame in 1956. He told The New York Times in 1974 that the CIA tried to recruit him while he was at Notre Dame. He said no but reconsidered while studying law at the University of Florida.

He began his CIA career in 1960. At the time, he considered himself a "patriot dedicated to the preservation of my country and our way of life", he wrote in Inside The Company.

His first overseas assignment was in Quito, Ecuador. He also worked as an attache during the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City and as a case officer in Montevideo, Uruguay. "My eyes began to open little by little down there," he wrote, "as I began to realise more and more that all of the things that I and my colleagues were doing in the CIA had one goal, that was that we were supporting the traditional power structures in Latin America."

Agee resigned in 1969 and began working on his book while living in Paris. A wealthy young American woman befriended him, he recalled in 1974 without naming her, and gave him a typewriter that began to make peculiar sounds. Taking it apart, he found a complicated assemblage of tiny electronic devices.

After receiving death threats following the book's publication, he moved to London but was expelled after nearly five years. He was also expelled after brief stays in France, the Netherlands, West Germany and Italy. He blamed US pressure.

"I never could determine what the Government wanted from him," Powers said, "but whatever it was they considered him sufficiently important that they chased him around the world for the rest of his life."

Writing in the Los Angeles Times in 2003, Agee described as "dirty politics" the outing of the CIA officer Valerie Plame, whose husband had called into question the Bush Administration's rationale for the Iraq war. His own exposure of CIA officers was different, he claimed, as "the agency was being used to impose a criminal US policy".

His German wife, Giselle Roberge Agee, said he was taken to hospital in Havana in December and underwent surgery for perforated ulcers. He died on January 7. He had lived primarily in Hamburg, but kept a flat in Havana, she said.

The Washington Post; Telegraph, London

[John Geraghty]

Tony Frank was and possibly still is a frequent poster on the jfklancer forum. As I recall he also claims to have personally bore witness to Edward Kennedy taking cocaine. I do believe that Kennedy used cocaine, but I'd like to see some evidence from Tony that he actually saw these things happening.

From my recollection of his jfklancer posts he usually stated his experiences in 3-5 lines and left it at that without documentation.

Tony, would you care to elaborate?

John

Edited January 12, 2008 by John Geraghty

[Tony Frank]

Tony Frank was and possibly still is a frequent posted on the jfklancer forum. As I recall he also claims to have personally bore witness to Edward Kennedy taking cocaine. I do believe that Kennedy used cocaine, but I'd like to see some evidence from Tony that he actually saw these things happening.

From my recollection of his jfklancer posts he usually stated his experiences in 3-5 lines and left it at that without documentation.

Tony, would you care to elaborate?

John

John,

There is no readily available evidence of what I personally witnessed in 1984. I don't blame anyone for having their doubts. If I had any evidence of what I saw, you can bet that the CIA would have gotten rid of it long ago. But certain elements of the CIA didn't want to get rid of me. The best they could do is make sure that they could control my ability to publicize what I know. But time has passed and some things have changed.

As I state in the "About The Author" section of my book proposal: "After having been marginalized and isolated for his efforts to expose corruption, Anthony Frank has risen from the ashes to bring forth a triumphal work so monumental that it will rock the foundations of government; a work that will be instrumental in exposing far-reaching corruption and in restoring a legitimate and Constitutional government."

You'll have to wait for the book to get the full story. My book is loaded with documentation, but there is no documentation of what I personally witnessed. When my book comes out, the government will have to admit the truth about KGB infiltration and about Members of Congress being in the CIA in violation of the Constitution.

[Michael Hogan]

Tony Frank was and possibly still is a frequent posted on the jfklancer forum. As I recall he also claims to have personally bore witness to Edward Kennedy taking cocaine. I do believe that Kennedy used cocaine, but I'd like to see some evidence from Tony that he actually saw these things happening....

John, It's difficult to remember just how prevalent cocaine use was in America in 1984. Prior to the popularity of crack cocaine, the drug was viewed by many Americans as relatively benign as compared to say, marijuana. It was not uncommon to witness cocaine use at parties and social gatherings.

From Cocaine Use in America: Epidemiologic and Clinical Perspectives, page 12. Edited by Kozel and Adams, National Institute on Drug Abuse:

There seems to be general agreement that an "epidemic" of cocaine use has occurred or is occurring in the United States, and perhaps in other countries as well (Adams and Durell 1984). Because it is emergent, we do not yet know the scope of the problem, whether it has peaked or is still on the upswing, or when it might level out and begin to decline. It will be important for epidemiologists to compare the cocaine epidemic from the 1980s with the cocaine epidemic that occurred in the 1880s. Will this new epidemic die out rather quickly as did the epidemic of the last century, or will it follow a different course and produce a sizable population of chronic cocaine users? (Mandell 1984)

http://books.google.com/books?id=se04G3BzJ...xzpQO14#PPP7,M1

[John Geraghty]

Michael,

I agree that cocaine use fairly prevalent in 1984 and I'm also fairly sure that Ted Kennedy was a habitual user of the drug. The book 'The Senator' by one of Kennedy's aides goes in depth into Kennedy's drug use.

Tony's statements about Agee are at odds with what his friends have told me about him, that is why I doubt the veracity of what he says here.

I suppose we'll have to wait for Tony's book.

John

[James Richards]

John,

Because of the Wilson/Palme affair, I have been thinking a lot about Phil Agee, who was recruited out of Notre Dame by the CIA, and who, I believe, is responsible for the law that make it a crime to knowingly reveal the identity of a CIA agent.

Agee identified not only the agents he knew and worked with, or knew about - like LICOVY3 of Mexico City, a double agent American student from Philadelphia who is suspected by some of being the student "Steve" or "Ed" Keenan who rode Oswald around Mexico City on the back of his motorbike, but others as well. After the agents he exposed were taken out of the field, and the networks he exposed disassembled, he came out with another book that also exposed many agents, though not Welsh - the one he is accused of exposing who was then murdered.

Upon investigation, it was discovered that when replaced, the new CIA agents in embassies abroad merely took over the same offices and phone numbers as their predecessors, so it was no problem for Agee to out their replacements as well.

Agee is still alive, I believe, and his take on the Wilson/Palme affair would be interesting.

BK

------------------------------

Phil runs a travel agency in Havana, and pray tell I wouldn't want to cause any difficulties, BUT:

His "Company Diary" fails to include ANY entries for November, 1963. Has he corrected that mistake in later published materials.

I for one am still anxious to hear his immediate reactions to the "Crime-of-the-Century", and moreover, where was he when he got the sad news.

Wheaties,

GPH

_____________________

It's a shame that Gerry doesn't post anymore as I would like to know if he is able shed some light on the relationship between Agee and Anibal Antonio Mercader.

Is any forum member aware of any published material by Agee that mentions Antonio Mercader?

James

[Tony Frank]

Tony's statements about Agee are at odds with what his friends have told me about him, that is why I doubt the veracity of what he says here.

I suppose we'll have to wait for Tony's book.

John

John,

Agee actually defected. He wasn't about to tell his friends or anyone else that he had been recruited to infiltrate the KGB.

Bill Casey is the one that told me Agee had infiltrated the KGB, which I attribute to Casey's cocaine addiction. As I state in my book, "Casey's cocaine addiction obviously impaired his judgment. I should have never been told such extremely classified information. I was only the fifth person in the United States to be filled on the information about Agee since 1969. None of the Deputy Directors of the CIA knew about it and the information on Agee was withheld from two CIA Directors, one of whom was George H. W. Bush, a KGB asset."

When I first met Casey in 1980, he stated that he was the "Acting Director" of the CIA in addition to being Ronald Reagan's campaign manager, which is something that I still don't understand. Stansfield Turner was officially the Director of the CIA until President Carter's term expired in January 1981, and Frank Carlucci was Deputy Director.

Edited January 13, 2008 by Tony Frank

[John Simkin]

Bill Casey is the one that told me Agee had infiltrated the KGB.

Well, it must be true then.

Joe Trento claims that JFK was killed by Soviet/Cuban agents. How does he know? James Angleton told him. He also told the same story to several other journalists but no one believed him except Trento. I am sure Casey told plenty of people this daft story. However, very few believed him.

Who is publishing your book? I cannot find any evidence of it at Amazon.