Agee, Philip 1935-2008 (Philip Burnett Franklin Agee)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born July 19, 1935, in Tacoma Park, FL; died of peritonitis, January 7, 2008, in Havana, Cuba. Intelligence agent, travel agent, magazine editor, and author. Agee was an American agent of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for more than ten years, mostly based in Latin America during the volatile 1960s. When his growing disillusionment with U.S. intelligence operations abroad led to disgust, he resigned from the agency in 1969. What he did after that eventually cost him his U.S. passport and ensured that he would spend the rest of his life, symbolically at least, as a man without a country. During the sixties, Agee came to see the CIA as a secret army of lawless thugs, with the power of the U.S. government behind then, determined to defend U.S. business interests and political connections abroad at literally any cost. He decided that the only way to neutralize their power would be to expose the agents to public scrutiny. Agee wrote several exposés of the CIA, detailing specific activities and identifying as many operatives as possible, down to their addresses and telephone numbers. His first book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (1975), was originally published outside the United States, where it would not be subject to censorship; it has since been translated into at least twenty languages. When the book appeared, Agee was immediately branded as a traitor and hounded out of almost every Western country where he tried to live. Eventually he settled in Germany and then Cuba, where he died. In 2000 Agee had established the Cubalinda online travel agency, through which he promoted Cuban tourism in defiance of the longstanding U.S. trade embargo against the country. Agee devoted his life to undermining the influence of U.S. activities that he believed were keeping corrupt dictatorships in power, thereby denying democracy and freedom to reformers around the world. Though his activities were reportedly responsible for the creation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act in 1982, which makes it illegal to intentionally expose covert agents, Agee continued his mission as the editor of the magazine Counterspy. He also published additional books, including White Paper/White Wash: Interviews with Philip Agee on the CIA and El Salvador (1981), and On the Run (1987), as well as the edited collection The CIA in Western Europe (1978).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Agee, Philip, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, Allen Lane (London, England), 1975.

Agee, Philip, On the Run, Lyle Stuart (Secaucus, NJ), 1987.

PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, January 10, 2008, sec. 2, p. 11.

Los Angeles Times, January 10, 2008, p. B7.

New York Times, January 10, 2008, p. A25.

Times (London, England), January 10, 2008, p. 59.