Bridging the Gap : Philip Agee, 1935-2008
Agee, Chris John
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2009 update Bridging the Gap: Philip Agee, 1935– 2008 Philip agee pulls out the last page of CIA Diary: Inside the Company from his typewriter, 1974. by Chris john...
...administrations have chosen, as in Vietnam, to back mi on which rest the interests of our own wealthy and privileged minority...
...foreign policy...
...There is no doubt that our family suffered emotionally and financially and that the stability he could have provided, had he stayed in the CIA or kept his mouth shut, was a luxury he chose to forgo...
...The U.S...
...Indeed, this was Agee’s trademark: Name names in order to undermine covert operations and all the killing, maiming, and torture that characterize much of the CIA’s dirty work...
...When they rose up against those oppressive conditions, they were frequently beaten, imprisoned, tortured, killed, or simply “disappeared”—all under the umbrella of Cold War rhetoric and NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS update hysteria...
...He was sought after by activist groups throughout the world and, when he could, he would travel to speak to them using whichever travel documents he was able to acquire at the time...
...She worked with UNESCO bringing children’s art to the Olympics and had just happened to come across Che’s Motorcycle Diaries...
...When traveling, he was often the subject of harassment and interrogation...
...He set out to write a daily record of the major political events that had occurred in Latin America during his time as a will continue to assist those who are interested in identifying and exposing the CIA people in their countries...
...tions and other institutions tubes so as to frame Cuban embassy officials, writing bogus news stories and publishing them under the bylines of paid journalists, gathering lists of subversives, and exchanging information with the local police and military so they could round up socalled Communist sympathizers and interrogate them, even torture them, to obtain more information on other activists and activities...
...foreign and domestic policy with particular emphasis on the hidden role of covert operations in propping up U.S...
...interests that benefit from cheap labor markets and raw materials: The difficult admission is that I became the servant of the capitalism I rejected...
...His search for adequate resources took him finally to the British Museum in London, where he found the extensive newspaper library he needed...
...interests in the Persian Gulf have all helped to bring to light what Agee had been trying to tell us since the 1970s...
...Many regard my dad as a remarkable person who simply tried to make the world a better place by bridging the gap between how the world is and how it could be...
...My dad sketched a more dynamic model for me, one that included basic history about the third world and various independence movements...
...But most importantly, he was able to educate the U.S...
...Students in my American Government classes are often surprised by my insights and ask me early in the semester how I came to understand U.S...
...foreign policy...
...I participated in the World Youth Festival in Havana when I was 14...
...While coming of age in Tampa, Florida, he was expected to take over his father’s successful laundry business...
...corporate interests would be considered a threat to U.S...
...In 1982, Congress passed, and Ronald Reagan signed into law, the Intelligence Identities Protections Act, making it a federal crime to reveal the identities of CIA agents...
...government “spreading democracy and freedom,” it seemed, might even be a noble calling...
...Sitting in the Montevideo police headquarters one day with the chief of police, he overheard the moaning and screaming of someone clearly being tortured...
...He was deported from one European country after another, six in all, and his life was constantly under threat—real or imagined...
...This, not the CIA, is the critical issue...
...chestrated one of the greatest exposés of the CIA...
...When a country successfully nority, oppressive and doomed regimes...
...citizens...
...government was doing...
...His subsequent books with Louis Wolf, Ellen Ray, and Bill Schaap, Dirty Work I (1978) and Dirty Work II (1980), about the CIA in Western Europe and Africa, respectively, identify the names and activities of hundreds of CIA Chris John Agee teaches political science and sociology at the City University of New York...
...I became one of its secret policemen...
...It was in that pursuit that he came to understand the various struggles for human rights, workers’ rights, and women’s rights, and the need to create an equitable economic and political system for everyone...
...overthrew its dictatorship or oppres-The Congressional investigating commitsive regime, as in places like Guate-tees can, if they want, illuminate a whole mala, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Grenada, upon reflection, dark world of foreign Watergates covering the past thirty and Nicaragua, every step was taken to isolate it, force a break in diplomatic re my father realized these years, and these can be related to the dynamics within our society from which they lations, and engage in all activities did emerged...
...In the end, he died in Havana filled with the honor of having or JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2009 update “The difficult admission is that I became the servant of the capitalism I rejected...
...agents and operations in those parts of the world...
...picked coffee in Nicaragua when I was 18...
...Yet it was during his activities as a CIA case officer that Agee began to develop an awareness of how his actions were entangled in nefarious methods and purposes...
...One day he told me, “Son, this is where the world is,” putting his hand near his stomach, “this is where the world should be,” putting his other hand above his head, and then saying, in a conclusive tone, “and some people are trying to bridge that gap...
...In an episode he would often recount to gatherings in the United States and abroad, this ugly realization began to dawn on him while he was stationed in Uruguay...
...As he stated in CIA Diary: Probably at no time since World War II have the American people had such an opportunity as now to examine how and why succeeding U.S...
...He was ordered to submit all his speeches and writings to the CIA for censorship prior to speaking engagements and/or publications...
...national interests...
...A gee was born into a wealthy family in Takoma Park, Mary land...
...Yet at the same time, he opposed the excesses of bureaucratic statism that had clearly developed in the Soviet Union...
...Rather, my dad was simply a democrat who believed in the socialist principles that everyone should be guaranteed access to the basic necessities of life: food, shelter, clothing, health care, and education...
...Upon reflection, my father realized these activities did not add up to spreading democracy and freedom for Latin Americans...
...CIA officer there and to expose the role of the CIA in those events...
...JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2009 update Bridging the Gap: Philip Agee, 1935– 2008 Philip agee pulls out the last page of CIA Diary: Inside the Company from his typewriter, 1974...
...The CIA, after all, is nothing more than the SAnDrO PereyrA / lATinPHOTO.Org JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2009 update secret police of American capitalism, plugging up leaks in the political dam night and day so that shareholders of U.S...
...The CIA is one of the great forces promoting political repression in countries with minority regimes that serve a privileged and powerful elite...
...As people organized to rise up against dictatorships and oppressive conditions, the United States would intervene and oftentimes bring in the CIA...
...As he writes in his opening line to On the Run, he quit the CIA, in part, because he “fell in love with a woman who thought Che Guevara was the most wonderful man in the world...
...He spent much of his later years trying to draw attention to the cruel and inhumane blockade against Cuba and the Cuban Five, who are being unjustly held in U.S...
...Agee’s first book, CIA Diary: Inside the Company (1975), is a historic account of a CIA operative’s daily life in Latin America...
...In other words, anyone’s passport can be revoked by the signature of the secretary of state...
...Everywhere I go, admirers of my father have said to me, “When I read your dad’s book, my whole way of seeing the world changed...
...He recounts in CIA Diary how he began, albeit painfully, to understand his role in the CIA and the U.S...
...and studied at the University of Madrid in my early twenties...
...When the book came out in 1975, it rocked Washington and the world...
...economic and geopolitical interests in Latin America...
...to spreading sons they were established— On the ground, Agee’s job included activities like buggingembassies,planting democracy and freedom for which inexorably will lead to economic questions: preservation of property rela fake messages in toothpaste latin americans...
...corporate interests...
...He contemplated teaching and decided to enroll in the Latin American studies program at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where he began to read more about U.S...
...COurTeSy Of CHriS jOHn Agee NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS update a May Day march in remembrance of uruguay’s disappeared, 2003...
...While many perceived it as a betrayal, others were impressed by his bravery and enlightened by his insights...
...not telling the whole story would be half-hearted and disingenuous...
...He also traveled at times on a Grenadan passport, a Nicaraguan passport, and a World Passport...
...the chief said it was...
...Supreme Court also overturned lower-court rulings that affirmed Agee’s contention that he had been unlawfully denied his right to due process, his right to travel, and his First Amendment rights of free speech when his passport was arbitrarily revoked in 1979 by then secretary of state Alexander Haig...
...by Chris john agee A s a sophomore attending an interna tional high school in Germany in 1979, I used to come home after school and ask my dad—a former CIA case officer named Philip Agee—what was really happening in places like Nicaragua, Grenada, Cuba, Angola, and the Middle East...
...It was in this context that Agee became increasingly aware of his role as a spook in Latin America...
...Any country challenging those interests form the public of what the U.S...
...Simply put, my father wanted the people of the United States to be informed citizens...
...Ultimately, my father never defected to the Eastern bloc or the Soviet Union, nor was the world bipolar, divided between the Communist East and the capitalist West...
...Agee lived out his golden years shuttling around on German travel documents that could not be denied since he was a legal resident of Hamburg...
...People are beginning to understand not only the brutal realities of “black ops,” but also the insidious geopolitical interests driven by what has become, in Dwight Eisenhower’s famous words, a military-industrial complex...
...He never renounced his U.S...
...During his 12 years in the CIA, from 1957 to 1969, Agee was stationed in Ecuador, Uruguay, and Mexico...
...to recruit agents who could provide “intelligence” immediately or at some point in the future...
...As was widely reported in the media, Philip Agee—who resigned from the CIA and wrote a book about it—died last year, on January 7, 2008...
...Our high school history teacher had told us we lived in a bipolar world, and I wanted to know “what side” my dad was on...
...It was in this effort that he developed an unwavering support for third world movements struggling for more equitable distribution of wealth and access to social services and housing...
...And this he did, tirelessly, to the last days of his life...
...What was Agee able to accomplish by writing his books...
...Agee realized that naming all the names and operations in his book would be considered unpatriotic or even illegal, given the secrecy oath he took upon joining the CIA...
...public, and the world, about not only the activities of the CIA, but, significantly, the interests it represents...
...For more information, see www.philipagee.com...
...At the height of the Cold War, Agee’s mission had three main objectives: to influence the host country to break relations with Communist countries in general, and with Cuba in particular...
...After Agee resigned, he went into business with friends—a decision that did not satisfy him...
...government: the embarrassing events at Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, “enhanced interrogation techniques,” waterboarding, the threats to habeas corpus through the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act, the rise of Blackwater, and the transparent U.S...
...My father liked to joke—although it was partly true—that his fiancée at the time, a lovely, well-educated debutante from Millbrook, New York, politicized him...
...As an in-depth exposé, CIA Diary continues to inform generations of people about not only the way the CIA works, but also what drives U.S...
...government never stopped disrupting his life...
...Our mail was often opened and we were often under surveillance...
...Given the recent resurgence of the left in Latin America, as well as the revelations over the past eight years of CIA “dirty work,” it behooves us to review some of his story...
...On that journey, he came to understand the various efforts of third world liberation movements and the meaning of their struggle under oppressive regimes and neoliberal economic policies...
...rather, Agee felt compelled to document the actual activities of the CIA so that people could see for themselves what the U.S...
...I became one of its secret policemen...
...By identifying CIA agents in countries where the United States engaged in covert operations, Agee was able to disrupt operations and force the agency to change its cryptonyms, procedures, and personnel—especially in Ecuador, Uruguay, and Mexico, where he was stationed...
...citizenship because his work was all about building a more active sense of citizenship among his fellow U.S...
...foreign policy...
...In Cuba he was considered a great friend...
...This was the price he paid for a cause he felt compelled to champion...
...foreign and domestic policy the way I do...
...He was encouraged by recruiters from the CIA to consider a career with the agency...
...It is my father’s story, however, that inspires my students to take a more realistic look at U.S...
...Initially he tried to ignore these realities...
...interests for which he was an accomplice...
...Given the revelations of atrocities committed by CIA covert operations, as Agee writes in CIA Diary, the best thing to do was in Thirty-four years later, agee’s book remains not only a moving personal testament, but, perhaps more importantly, a crushing indictment of u.S...
...Meanwhile, as the situation grew worse in Vietnam and the Nixon administration lost prestige, it occurred to my father that perhaps he should write about his experiences...
...And so he began to meet with potential publishers...
...corporate interests, which, he wrote, depend upon easy penetration and use of cheap labor markets and access to inexpensive raw materials...
...His naive vision of the spy world became overshadowed with an increasingly skeptical view of U.S...
...However, the dilemma he faced was the following: Not saying anything would be unpatriotic...
...The tumultuous period of the 1960s stoked those doubts...
...foreign and domestic affairs...
...jails for trying to discover information about destabilization campaigns against their country...
...When people protested poverty and squalor in their country, they were usually facing the repression of brutal dictatorships...
...One way to neutralize the CIA’s support to repression is to expose its officers so that their presence in foreign countries becomes untenable...
...Now I just tell them at the outset my father’s story and my experiences as a result: I went to more schools than there are grades in more than a halfdozen countries around the world...
...foreign policy while running from the CIA’s never-ending efforts to disrupt his life...
...Over the past eight years, much has come to light regarding the activities of the CIA and the U.S...
...On the darker side of CIA operations—in so-called black ops— such activities could, and sometimes did, lead to the torture and disappearance of hundreds, sometimes tens of thousands, of people...
...imperialism...
...It was in a Montevideo police station that Philip agee began to make his ugly realization about the reality of the CIa’s activities...
...Thirty-four years later, Agee’s book remains not only a moving personal testament, but, perhaps more importantly, a crushing indictment of U.S...
...On the Run (1987), his last book, is a page-turner: a reallife drama of a spy who, out in the cold, went public and spent the rest of his life educating people about U.S...
...A job with the U.S...
...It became apparent to Agee that any opposition to U.S...
...The point was not just to tell a gripping story...
...companies operating in poor countries can continue enjoying the rip-off...
...government was actually doing—warts and all: We already know enough of what the CIA does to resolve to oppose it...
...The key question kinds of dirty work to destabilize the unfolding rev not add up is to pass beyond the facts of CIA’s operations to the rea olutionary process...
...His experiences as a CIA case officer in Latin America, however, led him to develop quite a different feeling about the nature of the work...
...Already significant revelations have begun and I not only represented an impediment to transnational capital, but also served as a highly dangerous example to other countries...
...As a result of Agee’s relentless efforts, the U.S...
...went to secondary schools in England, Holland, the United States, and Germany...
...In 1981, the Supreme Court ruled in Haig v. Agee that the Passport Act of 1926 granted the executive branch the authority “to withhold passports on the basis of substantial reasons of national security and foreign policy...
...He realized that what the CIA actually does—in addition to gathering information—is to engage in covert operations that ultimately create conditions favorable for U.S...
...It was clear to him that the majority of Latin Americans suffered in this regard...
...And while he initially resisted, after only a few months of law school in Florida, he decided that 10 a career in the CIA might allow him to travel to exotic places and meet interesting people...
...His life served as an example of unparalleled dedication to bridging the gap between what people know and don’t know about the hidden policies of U.S...
...Furthermore, by naming names he could also have a devastating impact on actual CIA operations...
...Beginning with the controversial escalation of the war in Vietnam, the protests against the war, and the growing disillusionment with the Nixon administration, Agee began to question his involvement with the CIA...
...These are the insights, dispersed throughout Agee’s writings, speeches, and interviews, that have resonated so deeply with people...
...A gee realized that to write a good book about his work in the CIA, he would need good archival sources...
...Instead, he decided to study philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, graduating first in his class...
...COurTeSy Of CHriS jOHn Agee...
...He simply and courageously informed people in the United States of what their government was actually doing...
...U nder quite challenging circumstances, my dad spent the rest of his life writing and speaking about U.S...
...and to collect and share information with local security services and deal with “subversive elements” in the host country...
...He wondered if it was someone he had identified on his list...
Vol. 42 • January 2009 • No. 1
