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TechnoratiCIA Whistle-Blower Philip Agee Dies in Cuba
HAVANA - Philip Agee, a former CIA spy who exposed its undercover operations in Latin America in a 1975 book, died in Havana, the Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma said on Wednesday.
Agee, 72, died on Monday night, the newspaper said, calling him a "loyal friend of Cuba and staunch defender of the people's struggle for a better world."
His widow, German ballet dancer Giselle Roberge, told friends he had been in hospital since December 15 and did not survive surgery for perforated ulcers.
Agee worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for 12 years in Washington, Ecuador, Uruguay and Mexico. He resigned in 1968 in disagreement with U.S. support for military dictatorships in Latin America and became one of the first to blow the whistle on the CIA's activities around the world.
His book "Inside the Company: CIA Diary" revealed the names of agents in Latin America and was published in 27 languages.
Agee said working as a case officer in South America opened his eyes to the CIA's Cold War goal in the region: to prop up traditional elites against perceived leftist threats through political repression and torture.
"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 U.S. government," he wrote.
"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," he said.
The U.S. government called him a traitor and said some of the agents he exposed were later murdered, an allegation Agee rejected.
Agee went to live in London but was deported by Britain in 1976 at the request of then secretary of state Henry Kissinger. The U.S. government revoked his passport three years later.
Barbara Bush, the wife of former U.S. president George Bush, who was CIA director in 1976, blamed Agee in her memoirs for the murder of the Athens station chief, Richard Welsh, in 1975. Agee denied any connection and sued her for $4 million, forcing her to revise the book to settle the libel case.
Agee, a German citizen through marriage, settled in Cuba in the 1980s after several European countries denied him residence.
In 2000, Agee set up an online travel agency catering to Americans willing to defy a U.S. travel ban and visit the Communist-run island. The business folded due to tighter enforcement of sanctions by President George W. Bush.
© Reuters 2008
16 Comments so far
Show AllA true patriot, and a decent man.
He did the right thing--and he got hell for it.
History will absolve the man, indeed.
Likewise, the people that apologized for repression and deathsquads will be seen for their failures.
--------------------------
Cuban Cigars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M58htE5IDHA&feature=related
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4315024059102108031
Here is some more whistle blowing in honer of Philip Agee.
As stated above we're gonna need a lot more people making correct choices.
May Philip Agee rest in peace. He did the honorable thing by exposing agents who indirectly but knowingly ruined the lives of many people. I never read his book, but remember the controversy when it was published.
The European nations may have been pressured by the US which led Agee to Cuba where he was welcomed.
My respect and sympathy go out to his wife and family members.
if the gov't could just get with the program, we'd all be properly medicated with SOMA now, things would be SO MA BETTER.
Rich M: That was sobering.....I think I'll have another glass of wine...or three.....
PJD (5:09) asked a question in his post, above. My 8:45 is an answer from a web page I googled my way to (but the CD software seems to reject my attempts to post the link)
Answer to question 2:.... (after World War II): Korea: 3 million; Vietnam: 3 million; Panama: 4,000; Iraq (Gulf War: 400,000, sanctions: 1.5 million, Operation Iraqi Freedom and ongoing occupation: over 128,000): 2 million; Yugoslavia: 24,000; Afghanistan: 20,000. If we add all those who the US indirectly killed by arranged military coups in Indonesia, Congo, Chile, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Latin America, and elsewhere, as well as all those Palestinian murders abetted through the largesse of US arms and "aid" to the Zionist program of ethnic cleansing and genocide, the number of people murdered worldwide as a result of militaristic US foreign policy implemented by its obliging soldiers is beyond count.
Anyone with eyes sees that the USA is dead.
The two top candidates, Clinton and McCain, are both rabidly for continued war in Iraq and Afganistan.
hazmat, you exprssed a very noble thought. may many more of us make the world our nation...
One often hears on the right, their various estimates of the "world death toll from communism 1917 to 1992". And indeed, the dictators of the Soviet Union, China, the former DDR, and Romania, did indeed commit considerable atrocities - although misnaming these regimes "communism" or "socialism" was certainly one of the great dialectical catastrophes of all time.
But, has anyone ever tried to estimate the world death toll from just all of the US's covert and overt activities in defense of capitalism, directly of by it's dictator/military junta proxy, over the same time period? when you throw in the direct killings and death by poverty, It's Surely in the 10's of millions.
"nspire", what we need is a free press, capable of investigative journalism. The very basics of patriotism and Democracy are besmirched.
Bless the defenders of the internet.
Like "Rebel Farmer" I am furious that Sibel Edmonds has not been given a mainstream media forum to allow her allegations to be corroborated or challenged for the good of Democracy. Gagging these people is no reassurance, and does not excuse allowing the accused to continue their glittering careers without question and without discrete justice. National Security shouldn't mean absolute unaccountability.
There are far too many overlapping confirmed elements in Sibel Edmunds allegations:
Former 'Gagged' FBI Whistleblower Alleges Pentagon, State Department Officials Overheard Receiving Payoffs in Exchange for Classified Info; Crimes Covered Up at Highest Levels of Government
U.S. Media Scooped Again, Failed to Air Claims After Offer of Disclosure by Edmonds in Recent BRAD BLOG Exclusives... [UPDATED SEVERAL TIMES]
A belated book will not do!
We need more than just whistle-blowers,
we need the entire orchestra's wind section,
with an assist from all of the hot air bellowed from every parliamentary, paramilitary, and horse's a$$'s a$$.
Philip Agee is dead - long live the next Agee-style whistle-blower!
And the beat goes on.....
Interesting news on another whistle blower who is being shut down by the world's elite - Sibel Edmonds. The link below is a real eye opener aboout the CIA's involvement in EVERYTHING since the '70's.
January 6, 2008-For sale: West's deadly nuclear secrets
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3137695.ece
Enjoy!
may a thousand more whistle blowers spring up in the warmth and glory of his light
the world became his nation, and he one of its true patriots. requiescat in pace.
Reuters repeats the claims that CIA agents named in Agee's book were killed, but then has to include the details that under legal scrutiny Bush Sr. wife's slander of same was shown to be a fabrication.
Of course, Reuters uses the word "murdered" for this allegation. As Agee showed in black and white, there were many operatives in the CIA and other hidden agencies that had a direct and indirect part in murders in Latin America and elsewhere. When a murderer in a civil case is killed by a government, Reuters calls it "execution." A telling word choice in an article perhaps written by someone in the agency "embedded" in Reuters, and a small window onto what motivated Mr Agee to reclaim his honesty and integrity.