[R-G] Obituary: Philip Agee, international socialist, revolutionary, political activist and former CIA officer

[Anthony Fenton]

ORGANIZED RAGE
The view from the tower block.
http://organizedrage.blogspot.com/2008/01/obituary-philip-agee- 
international.html
Friday, 11 January 2008
Obituary: Philip Agee, international socialist, revolutionary,  
political activist and former CIA officer.

The death of Philip Agee, international socialist, revolutionary,  
political activist and former CIA officer in the field saddened me  
greatly, as Agee has for many years been a great hero of mine not  
least because he epitomized two of my basic beliefs, that given the  
opportunity people can change no matter what their education and  
upbringing and those sons of the middle class who side with the  
dispossessed are often amongst the finest people who walk the earth.

Agee came from a well off middle class Florida family, whilst at the  
USA’s most prominent Roman Catholic University Notre Dame, he was  
head hunted by someone in the faculty who acted as a spotter for the  
US Central Intelligence agency. [CIA] Thus his future career path was  
well marked out, approximately two decades in the field and then back  
to Langley Virginia as a well paid, powerful spook bureaucrat. He  
turned his back on this world when in his own words he, “fell in love  
with a woman who thought Che Guevara was the most wonderful man in  
the world." It was this mixture of commitment and romance, which  
often characterizes the best of revolutionaries, which led Agee to  
break from his class background and set him on the road that led to a  
lifetime of struggle against exploitation and oppression. Which just  
goes to show how the direction people take in their lives often  
depends on chance meetings.

After Philip left the CIA, by writing his book ‘Inside the Company’  
he set the benchmark for all spooks who claim to have left the  
security services and crossed over to the side of the ‘wretched of  
the earth’. For in his book Agee names in chronological order every  
CIA agent, imformer and assets of influence he had ever come across  
in South and Central America, at CIA headquarters in Langley and  
across the wider world. He was adamant that the best weapon the left  
had against organizations like the CIA was to have trust in the  
masses and act openly at all times. He lived up to this by refusing  
to pass the information he held to intelligence services who were  
sympathetic to his plight and instead insisted on placing this  
information within the public domain for all to read.

Ever since Agree broke with the CIA and acted in this manner there  
have been a number of Western intelligence service employees who have  
claimed to have done likewise. However the overwhelming majority have  
refused to act in the same principled manner as Agee and make public  
the names of their former colleagues and the assets they ran. Which  
cannot but throw doubt about there legitimacy, for Philip had set the  
gold standard when it comes to spooks going over the wall.


For this act he paid a considerable price, not since Leon Trotsky was  
forced by Stalin into exile has an individual been hounded across the  
planet in the same manner as Philip Agee was. He could have found  
sanctuary within the Soviet Block but he was determined not to, as he  
understood clearly that this was the CIAs greatest wish, as it would  
have allowed it to portray him as a traitor in the pay of the Russians.

Agee eventually came to England in the hope that with a Labour  
government in power he might find a safe haven. He was mistaken as  
the Callaghan Labour Government hounded and in the end deported him,  
although not before his case became a cause-celeb which enabled Agee  
and his supporters to place the CIA firmly in the dock of public  
opinion, both in the UK and the USA.

I remember to this day where I was when I first read the news that  
Philip Agee had been deported, I was on a London tube train traveling  
back home from a morning on the Grunwick picket line. I found it a  
bitter pill to swallow, although without knowing it, it was to be the  
first of many as right wing Labourism was replaced by Thatcherism.  
Agee after being deported from the UK made a number of attempts to  
find sanctuary in Western Europe, he eventually married Giselle  
Roberge which gave him the right to remain in Germany. He spent the  
last years of his life between Hamburg and Cuba from where he  
continue to rage against the Great Satan’s foreign policy and never  
once doubted he had made the correct decision when he broke from the  
CIA and exposed its evil doings. Philip Agee, a real working class hero.

A full biography of Philip Agee can be found here,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2238063,00.html

Posted by Mick Hall at 09:49

Labels: CIA, international-socialist, Obituary, Organized-Rage,  
political-activist, politics, revolutionary, security-services, US- 
foreign-policy, USA, war-on-terror