41 Facts About Philip Agee

Philip Burnett Franklin Agee was a Central Intelligence Agency case officer and writer of the 1975 book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, detailing his experiences in the CIA.

Philip Agee was born in Takoma Park, Maryland and was raised in Tampa, Florida.

Philip Agee had, Agee wrote in On the Run, "a privileged upbringing in a big white house bordering an exclusive golf club".

Philip Agee later attended the University of Florida College of Law.

Philip Agee served in the United States Air Force from 1957 to 1960.

Philip Agee then worked as a case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1960 to 1968, including postings to Quito, Montevideo, and Mexico City.

Philip Agee stated that his Roman Catholic social conscience had made him increasingly uncomfortable with his work by the late 1960s leading to his disillusionment with the CIA and its support for authoritarian governments across Latin America.

John Barron wrote in his book The KGB Today that Philip Agee's resignation was forced "for a variety of reasons, including his irresponsible drinking, continuous and vulgar propositioning of embassy wives, and inability to manage his finances".

Philip Agee said these claims were ad hominem attacks meant to discredit him.

Philip Agee then went to the Cubans, who welcomed him with open arms.

Philip Agee wrote in his later work On the Run that he had no intention of working for the KGB or Cuban intelligence.

Philip Agee was merely following his conscience in revealing the CIA's subversion and sabotage of democratically elected governments and genuine movements for social justice.

Philip Agee was accused of receiving up to US$1 million in payments from the Cuban intelligence service.

Philip Agee denied the accusations, which were first made by a high-ranking Cuban intelligence officer and 'defector' in a 1992 Los Angeles Times report.

In 1978 Philip Agee began the publication of the Covert Action Information Bulletin.

Mitrokhin's files claim that the bulletin was founded on the KGB's initiative and the group running it was "put together" by First Chief Directorate counterintelligence and that Philip Agee was the only member of the group who was aware of KGB or DGI involvement.

Philip Agee highlighted in his commentary Director of Central Intelligence William Colby's complaint that the Covert Action Information Bulletin was among the most serious problems facing the CIA.

The files claim that Philip Agee decided not to identify himself as an author out of fear he would lose his residence permit in Germany.

The list of officers and agents, all personally known to Philip Agee, appears in an appendix to the book.

Philip Agee describes his first overseas assignment in 1960 to Ecuador, where his primary mission had the aim of forcing a diplomatic break between Ecuador and Cuba.

Philip Agee writes that the technique he used included bribery, intimidation, bugging, and forgery.

Philip Agee helped bug the United Arab Republic code-room in Montevideo, Uruguay, with two contact microphones placed on the ceiling of the room below.

On December 12,1965, Philip Agee visited senior Uruguayan military and police officers at a Montevideo police headquarters.

Philip Agee realized that the screaming he heard from a nearby cell was the torturing of a Uruguayan, whose name he had given to the police as someone to watch.

Philip Agee ran CIA operations within the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games and he witnessed the events of the Tlatelolco massacre.

Philip Agee identified President Jose Figueres Ferrer of Costa Rica, President Luis Echeverria Alvarez of Mexico and President Alfonso Lopez Michelsen of Colombia as CIA collaborators or agents.

Philip Agee gained attention from the United Kingdom media after the publication of Inside the Company.

Philip Agee revealed the identities of dozens of CIA agents in the CIA London station.

Philip Agee fought this and was supported by MPs and journalists.

The activity in support of Philip Agee did not prevent his eventual deportation from the UK on June 3,1977, when he traveled to the Netherlands.

Philip Agee was eventually expelled from the Netherlands, France, West Germany and Italy.

On January 12,1975, Philip Agee testified before the second Bertrand Russell Tribunal in Brussels that in 1960 he had conducted personal name-checks of Venezuelan employees for a Venezuelan subsidiary of what is ExxonMobil.

Philip Agee stated that the CIA customarily performed this service for subsidiaries of large US corporations throughout Latin America.

In 1978 and 1979, Philip Agee published the two volumes of Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe and Dirty Work: The CIA in Africa which contained information on 2,000 CIA personnel.

The State Department offered him an administrative hearing to challenge the passport revocation, but Philip Agee instead sued in federal court.

The collapse of the Grenada Revolution removed that safe haven, and Philip Agee then received a passport from the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

Philip Agee was later readmitted to both the US and United Kingdom.

Philip Agee lived with his wife principally in Hamburg, Germany and Havana, Cuba, founding the Cubalinda.

When this accusation was included in Barbara Bush's 1994 memoir, Philip Agee sued her for libel.

On December 16,2007, Philip Agee was admitted to a hospital in Havana, and surgery was performed on him for perforated ulcers.

Philip Agee's wife said on January 9,2008, that he had died in Cuba on January 7 and had been cremated.