41 Facts About Philip Agee

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

Philip Agee was born in Tacoma, Florida and raised in Tampa.

Philip Agee later attended the University of Florida College of Law, and 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 by the late 1960s, his Roman Catholic social conscience had made him increasingly uncomfortable with his work, resulting in his disillusionment with the CIA and its support for authoritarian governments across Latin America.

Philip Agee came to believe that the Agency was repressing legitimate national ideals to serve the interests of US multinational corporations.

Philip Agee was disturbed that US forces were used to quell the revolution in the Dominican Republic in 1965, "not because it was Communist but because it was nationalist".

Philip Agee's disillusionment came to a head in the months leading up to and during the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games.

Philip Agee is one of the many leftists in the Cultural Program and she believes, with great bitterness, as do many other people, that the Agency was responsible for Che Guevara's execution.

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

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 July 1978, Philip Agee began publishing CovertAction Information Bulletin.

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

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

Philip Agee said he was motivated by conscience and not by pursuit of personal gain.

Philip Agee became an internationally known whistle-blower and a hero of the left.

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 for the CIA in 1960 to Ecuador, where his primary mission was to force a diplomatic break between Ecuador and Cuba.

Philip Agee writes that the techniques 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 garnered 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, Philip Agee co-edited with Louis Wolf a book entitled Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe.

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 eliminated that safe haven, and Philip Agee then received a passport from the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

Philip Agee next obtained a German passport, in accordance with the working status of his wife, the American ballet dancer Giselle Roberge who was working and living in Germany at the time.

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

Philip Agee recounted this period of his life in On the Run.

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.