Philip Agee

Philip Burnett Franklin Agee (January 19, 1935 – January 7, 2008) was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) case officer and writer of the 1975 book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, detailing his experiences in the CIA.

After graduating from Tampa's Jesuit High School, he attended the University of Notre Dame, from which he graduated cum laude in 1956.

Agee later attended the University of Florida College of Law.

Agee joined the CIA in 1957, and over the following decade had postings in Washington, D.C., Ecuador, Uruguay and Mexico.

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

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

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.

After resigning from the Agency in 1968, he became a leading opponent of CIA practices.

In his book Inside the Company, Agee condemned the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City and wrote that this was the immediate event precipitating his leaving the agency.

Agee wrote that the CIA was "very pleased with his work" and had offered him "another promotion", and that his manager "was startled" when Agee told him about his plans to resign.

Russian exile Oleg Kalugin, former head of the KGB's Counterintelligence Directorate, claimed that in 1973 Agee approached the KGB's resident in Mexico City and offered a "treasure trove of information."

According to Kalugin, the KGB was too suspicious to accept his offer.

Kalugin writes that Agee then went to the Cubans, who welcomed him with open arms ... The Cubans shared Agee's information with us.

But as I sat in my office in Moscow reading reports about the growing revelations coming from Agee, I cursed our officers for turning away such a prize.

According to Mitrokhin, while Agee was writing Inside the Company the KGB kept in contact with him through a London correspondent of the Novosti News Agency.

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

Because of legal problems in the United States, Inside the Company was first published in 1975 in Britain, while Agee was living in London.

In a Playboy magazine interview after the book's publication, Agee said: "Millions of people all over the world had been killed or at least had their lives destroyed by the CIA ... I couldn't just sit by and do nothing."

Agee said that "Representatives of the Communist Party of Cuba also gave me important encouragement at a time when I doubted that I would be able to find the additional information I needed."

A document titled Director of Central Intelligence: Perspectives for Intelligence, 1976-1981 was supplied to Agee by the KGB.

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.

Also from Mitrokhin's files: In Dirty Work 2: The CIA in Africa, it is said that Agee met with Oleg Maksimovich Nechiporenko and A. N. Istkov of the KGB, and they gave him a list of CIA officers working in Africa.

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

To the end of his life, Philip Agee consistently and categorically denied ever having worked for any intelligence service after leaving the CIA.

He said that his motives were purely altruistic.

In support of this he adduces the relentless persecution he endured from the CIA, as it and the U.S. State Department revoked his passport and succeeded in having him deported from several Western European countries, one after the other, until he finally found refuge in Cuba.

In 1978 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 counter-intelligence and that Agee was the only member of the group who was aware of KGB or DGI involvement.

According to Mitrokhin's files, KGB headquarters assembled a team to keep the Bulletin supplied with material specifically designed to compromise the CIA.

John Barron wrote in his book The KGB Today (1983) that 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".

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

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

A later Los Angeles Times article claimed that Agee posed as a CIA Inspector General staff member in order to target a member of the CIA's Mexico City station on behalf of Cuban intelligence.

According to this story, Agee was identified during a meeting by a CIA case officer.

Vasili Mitrokhin's KGB files claim that Inside the Company: CIA Diary was "prepared by Service A, together with the Cubans".

Mitrokhin's notes however do not indicate what the KGB and DGI contributed to Agee's text.

Mitrokhin claims that Agee removed all references to CIA penetration of Latin American Communist parties from his typescript before publication at the request of Service A.

A co-founder of the CounterSpy and CovertAction series of periodicals, he died in Cuba in January 2008.

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

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