CIA Traitor Philip Agee Dead In Cuba

Burn in hell, buddy.

Check out the AP's predictable whitewash:

Former CIA agent Philip Agee, a critic of U.S. foreign policy who infuriated American intelligence officials by naming purported agency operatives in a 1975 book, has died, state media reported Wednesday. He was 72.

Agee quit the CIA in 1969 after 12 years working mostly in Latin America at a time when leftist movements were gaining prominence and sympathizers. His 1975 book "Inside the Company: CIA Diary," cited alleged CIA misdeeds against leftists in the region and included a 22-page list of purported agency operatives.

"Purported."

Let's check the record:

Based on the Mitrokhin Archive, a collection of KGB documents taken from the KGB archives by Vasili Mitrokhin, several Soviet defectors have claimed that Agee was an active and willing participant in Soviet disinformation operations. Oleg Kalugin, former head of the KGB’s Counterintelligence Directorate, states that in 1973 Agee approached the KGB's resident in Mexico City and offered what Kalugin called a "treasure trove of information." But the KGB was too suspicious to accept his offer.[10]

Kalugin states 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.[10] ”

While Agee was writing Inside the Company: CIA Diary, the KGB kept in contact with him through Edgar Anatolvevich Cheporov, a London correspondent of the Novosti News Agency.[11]

"Puported:"

Several American officials have actually been murdered by these terrorists, Richard Welch, CIA bureau chief Athens being the most notorious killing. His identity was passed on to N-17 by Philip Agee, a former CIA agent who went over to the KGB. (Agee now lives in Havana under the protection of Fidel Castro).

Let me say something about that last charge: Phillip Agee claimed it wasn't true, that he had not given Welch's name to the terrorist organization N-17. In fact, he sued Barbara Bush for stating he had (she was repeating an assertion in the elder Bush's memoirs).

His defense, and the defense of the left so keep on protecting their favorite traitor, was that "everyone already knew who the CIA station chief in Athens was." Well, "everybody" would seem to include Phillip Agee, and since he was working with the KGB and publicly revealing anyone's name he knew, I find it hard to believe that in this one case he refrained from telling people what he, by his own admission, knew, as "everyone knew."

This guy was naming names all over the world -- hit the Wikipedia entry to see him naming every asset he knew of, by name, in Latin America -- but wants to claim he wasn't the one who outed Welch. Because Welch was, predictably, murdered by Agee's leftist terrorist pals. Whatever.

Thanks to dri.

Update: Andrew Sullivan and the editors at Reason just emailed me to say Phillip Agee can't be held responsible for the treason in his book and spy-revealing newsletter because, apparently, "he didn't write them and had no idea whatsoever what was being printed under his name."

So, there you go.

I take everything back.

posted by Ace at 03:53 PM

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