Counterintelligence/Espionage Case

Name		Listen to a podcast of CI Centre professors David Major and Oleg Kalugin discuss the Philip Agee case Philip Agee aka Philip Burnett Franklin Agee
Employer	CIA
Dates of Employment	1956-1968. Resigned in January 1969
Employee Type	Staff
Job Title/Duties	Operations Officer. Worked under cover for eight years in Ecuador, Uruguay and Mexico
Military Rank
Clearance Level	TS/SCI
Spying For	Cuba DGI, Soviet KGB "The KGB's most valuable asset in its active measures to discredit the Agency (CIA) was an embittered former CIA Operations Officer in Latin American, Philip Agee (codenamed PONT)."--The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin
Codename	PONT (by the KGB)
Spying Dates	1973 - ? From the book "The First Chief Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West" by KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin, Chief of FCD's Counterintelligence Directorate: "In the Communist sphere outside of Europe, we (KGB) worked closest with the Cubans.......The Cubans' ardor also spurred them to take chances that we, a conservative superpower (USSR), were reluctant to take. A perfect example occurred shortly after I became head of Foreign Counterintelligence in 1973. CIA officer Philip Agee approached our KGB station in Mexico City, offering us reams of information about CIA operations. But our station chief in Mexico City thought Agee was a CIA plant spreading disinformation, and rejected him. Agee then went to the Cubans, who welcomed him with open arms. As it turned out, Agee was absolutely genuine, divulging the names of hundreds of CIA agents and informants, and providing the Cubans with mounds of information about US Intelligence. Agee proved to be one of the most damaging CIA turncoats in history. The Cubans shared Agee's information with us. But as I sat in my officer in Moscow reading reports about the growing list of revelations coming from Agee, I cursed our officers for turning away such a prize. I sent out orders for our stations to work carefully with such volunteers and reject them only after we were certain they were not genuine. In any event, the Cubans never let us forget that they were the ones who had discovered Agee. In the 1970s and 1980s they continued going after current and retired CIA officers and enjoyed some success, though none of the future recruits would ever be as spectacular as Agee." Agee continued to be used as an active measures agent against the West for many years. According to a 1997 article in the Los Angeles Times, in 1989 he participated on behalf of Cuban intelligence in an intelligence recruitment operation against a CIA employee stationed in Mexico City (see below).
Co-conspirators
Methodology	In 1975, Agee published "Inside the Company: CIA Diary" which identified 250 Agency officers and agents. According to the first Mitrkohin book (The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB), the KGB's Service A (Active Measures) and the Cuban intelligence helped prepare the book. Agee was covertly used by the Cubans and KGB in active measures/influence campaigns and operations against the CIA and the West. In 1978, Agee and others began publishing the "Covert Action Information Bulletin" which the first Mitrokhin book says was an initiative of the KGB. This group was codenamed RUPOR by the KGB. The purpose of the bulletin was "a worldwide campaign to destablize the CIA through exposure of its operations and personnel." Agee also produced another book, "Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe" with co-author and journalist Louis Wolf (KGB codename ARSENIO). This was followed by "Dirty Work II: The CIA in Africa, bringing the total number of CIA personnel exposed to 2,000. As a result, the Intelligence Identities Protection Bill became law in the US in June 1982. In 1997, the LA Times reported (see below) on Agee's continuing work for the Cuban intelligence service targeting CIA employees in 1989: "Agee went undercover as a spy for Cuba in late 1989 to try to pry secrets out of a female staff member in the agency's Mexico City station. Agee, posing as a member of the CIA's inspector general's staff, tried to convince the staff member that he needed information about the Mexico City station as part of a secret investigation, the officials charged. CIA sources said that Cuban intelligence traditionally has targeted women staffers in their espionage operations. The plot failed, U.S. officials said, when the CIA employee reported the contact and brought two CIA case officers with her to her second meeting with Agee. But one of the two case officers told Agee that he recognized him, the officials said, and Agee ended his efforts before enough evidence could be collected against him to bring formal charges.
Possible Motivations, Problems	According to the John Barron's book, "The KGB Today" (1983), Agee was forced to resign from the CIA after complaints of his heavy drinking, poor financial management and continuous attempts to proposition wives of American diplomats. Agee wrote in his book that his change of heart towards the CIA was influenced by Angela Camargo Seixas, a Brazilian leftist who had been arrested and tortured by Brazilian security forces; she later became Mr. Agee’s lover.
Finances	Received up to $1 million from Cuban intelligence service according to a defector from the Cuban intelligence service (see below) "The money was provided to Cuba by the KGB, the former Soviet spy agency now reorganized under Russia's control, specifically to support Agee, said Florintino Aspillaga Lombard, who served as a major in Cuba's Direccion General de Inteligencia, or DGI, before his defection. Altogether, payments funneled to Agee could total "a million dollars or more," Aspillaga said in a recent interview."
Identified/ Investigation	KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin defected to the UK with information from the KGB files. See The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin (1999) The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin (2005)
Arrest Date/Location	None
Charges	Volunteered to the Cuban intelligence service reams of classified information about CIA operations, the identity of CIA officers, agents and informants and other information about US intelligence. With the help/guidance of the Cubans and Soviets, he published books and publications with 2,000 names of undercover CIA officers. CIA’s chief of station in Athens, Richard Welch, who had been named in Agee's publication called Counterspy, was gunned down in front of his home. Accused in the US Congress of having identified the Polish Olympic fencer Jerzy Pawlowski to the Soviet Union as a Western agent. In 1976 Pawlowlski was sentenced to 25 years in jail on charges of spying for the CIA. Exposure of two British MI6 agents in Poland which let to their death.
Court	None
Lawyers
Status	Deceased 7 January 2008
Date/Place of Birth	19 July 1935 in Tacoma Park, FL Died 7 January 2008 in Havana, Cuba
Citizenship	US Passport revoked in 1979; since 1990, German passport. Had a Grenadian passport and under the communist Sandinista government, a Nicaraguan passport.
Residences	Lived in Hamburg, Germany, but kept an apartment in Havana's Vedado district and frequently traveled to Cuba as part of Agee's business. In 1975, after requests from the American government as well as an MI6 report that blamed Agee's work for the execution of two of its agents in Poland, an order was issued to deport Agee from Britain, where he had been living. According to the Mitrokhin KGB files: "KGB employed firm and purposeful measures to force the Home Office to cancel their decision . . . The London residency was used to direct action by a number of members of the Labor Party Executive, union leaders, leading parliamentarians, leaders of the National Union of Journalists to take a stand against the Home Office decision."......"Campaigns of support for PONT were initiated in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Holland, Finland, Norway, Mexico and Venezuela." The KGB was jubilant at the "deeply embarrassing nature of [the] fuss" his deportation had caused.
Education	Notre Dame, 1956 Master's degree in Latin American History (after resigning from the CIA) from a leftist Universidad de Autonoma in Mexico City
Family	--Married to Giselle Roberge, ballet dancer from Germany --Lover Angela Camargo Seixas, a Brazilian leftist --Divorced from wife Janet, two sons Philip and Christopher
Other Employment	Ran a Cuban tourist company encouraging US tourists to vacation in Cuba. It is against US law to travel to Cuba.
Additional Bio
Documents	Intelligence Identities Protection Act
Quotes	“You can package it any way you want — the simple reality is he defected to the enemy during the cold war. He did everything he could to endanger his colleagues and fellow American citizens.”--Frank R. Anderson, 65, who worked as a clandestine officer for the C.I.A. abroad from 1968 to 1995 “Phil Agee was really the first person to do whistle-blowing on the C.I.A. on the grand scale. He blew the whistle on hundreds and hundreds of undercover operations.”--William H. Schaap, a New York lawyer and old friend who worked with him on anti-C.I.A. projects
Case Links	Cryptome's excerpt about Agee from the Mitrokhin KGB Archives book Book review of Inside the Company: CIA Diary by Philip Agee, by CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence A Sophisticated Disinformation Operation, Soviet Active Measures in the Post-Cold War Era CI Centre courses: 159 Cuban Intelligence: An Introduction to Cuban Intelligence and Counterintelligence Operations & Methodologies 210 KGB/SVR 101: The Evolution of Russian Espionage Tradecraft Training 205 National Security Policy and Counterintelligence Implications of Denial and Deception Practices

News:

Philip Agee

Philip Agee, who died in Havana on Monday aged 72, turned from being a CIA agent into the most notorious of its "ideological defectors"; after leaving the agency in 1969, he made a career out of exposing the names of CIA personnel and attacking its methods.

     Agee established his reputation as a critic of the CIA with Inside the Company: A CIA Diary, published in Britain in 1975 prior to its release in America. The book identified approximately 250 Agency officers and agents and claimed that "millions of people all over the world had been killed or had their lives destroyed by the CIA and the institutions it supports".

     According to the British and American security services, the book led directly to the deaths of several agents. "It was not enough simply to describe what the CIA does," Agee recalled. "It was important to neutralise the effectiveness of everybody doing it."

      In 1975, after requests from the American government as well as an MI6 report that blamed Agee's work for the execution of two of its agents in Poland, an order was issued to deport Agee from Britain, where he had been living.

     His efforts to fight the order made him into a cause célèbre as Left-wing MPs, journalists and intellectuals flocked to his support. Public meetings were held; a defence committee organised petitions and rallies, and the Labour MP Stan Newens promoted a bill, signed by more than 50 of his colleagues, calling for the CIA station in London to be expelled. Encouraged by Agee's success in Britain, there was a rush by the media in other parts of Europe to expose the CIA stations in their own capitals. Though the deportation order was carried out in June 1976, it was all highly damaging.

     Former colleagues at the CIA claimed that Agee had been forced to resign from the agency in 1969 after complaints about his heavy drinking, poor financial management and attempts to proposition wives of American diplomats. They further alleged that Agee had become a KGB spy after being seduced by a Russian agent, and that he had effectively defected because he did not know how to extricate himself from his personal problems.

      Agee's version was that it was his Roman Catholic conscience that had persuaded him to leave the CIA, and he certainly succeeded in presenting himself as a principled critic of US intelligence. In 1978 he and a small group of his supporters began publishing the Covert Action Information Bulletin, a platform for his campaign to "expose" the workings of the CIA. In 1978-79 Agee published two volumes of Dirty Work, which exposed more than 2,000 covert CIA agents in western Europe and Africa as well as details about their activities.

     But in 1992 a high-ranking Cuban defector accused Agee of receiving up to $1 million in payments from the Cuban intelligence service; and in 1999 Vasili Mitrokhin, a former KGB librarian who had secretly copied thousands of files and then donated them to British intelligence, gave further details of his relationship with Communist agents in The Sword and the Shield, co-written with Christopher Andrew.

     According to Mitrokhin, Agee had directly approached the KGB with information about the CIA's work. Soviet and Cuban intelligence not only provided material for Inside the Company, Mitrokhin alleged, but had persuaded the author (codenamed Pont) to excise "all references to CIA penetration of Latin American Communist parties". The KGB file on the book claimed that it had been "prepared by Service A, together with the Cubans".

     Agee maintained that these charges were smears, pointing out that he could not have been a useful double agent because once he had left the agency he lost access to its secrets. But his value to the Soviets lay in his credibility with a large swathe of western opinion. Mitrokhin claimed that the Covert Action Information Bulletin was founded on the initiative of the KGB, which assembled a task force to keep the Bulletin supplied with material designed to compromise the CIA...........(Daily Telegraph, 10 Jan 08)

PUFF PIECE:

Philip Agee, 72; Agent Who Turned Against CIA

Philip Agee, 72, a former undercover officer with the Central Intelligence Agency whose disillusionment with U.S. policy in support of dictatorial regimes prompted him to name names and reveal CIA secrets, died Jan. 7 in Havana.

......In his controversial 1975 book, "Inside the Company: CIA Diary," Mr. Agee detailed the inner workings of U.S. intelligence operations around the world, but primarily in Latin America, where he had been stationed for eight years during the 1960s. The CIA, he said, was interested only in propping up decaying dictatorships and thwarting radical reform efforts. Published in 20 languages, the book also included a 22-page list of purported agency operatives.

.....Mr. Agee insisted that publishing the names of fellow case officers was a political act in the "long and honorable tradition of dissidence in the United States" and not an act of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union or any other foreign power. Former colleagues and government officials considered it treason.......(Washington Post, 10 Jan 08)

Philip Agee, 72, Is Dead; Exposed Other C.I.A. Officers

Philip Agee, the former Central Intelligence Agency officer who turned against the agency and spent years exposing undercover American spies overseas, died Monday in Havana. The cause was peritonitis, said Louis Wolf, a friend. Agee, whose disillusionment with his work at the agency led him to embrace leftist views, had spent nearly four decades as an avowed enemy of American foreign policy and particularly of the covert intelligence work that supported it. Deprived of his American passport and expelled from several countries at the request of the United States, he had lived for the most part in Germany and Cuba, where he operated a travel Web site, cubalinda.com.

.....Oleg D. Kalugin, a former K.G.B. general who now lives outside Washington, said Mr. Agee approached Soviet intelligence in Mexico in the early 1970s but was rejected by an officer who thought he was a plant. He then approached Cuban intelligence, supplying details of C.I.A. operations in Latin America that were passed on to the K.G.B.........(New York Times, 10 Jan 08)

A Passing Worthy of Celebration

Virtually all spooks--active and retired--reserve a special contempt for those who betray their country, their profession and their colleagues. We can only hope that there's a special place in the celestial inferno for such traitors, with added suffering and damnation for those who exposed other operatives and ensured their deaths......(In From the Cold, 10 Jan 08)

The Man Who Turned Against the C.I.A.

What kind of C.I.A. agent was Philip Agee? With the news today of his death, there have been variations on a theme....(NYT/Notes on the News, 9 Jan 08)

Renegade CIA agent Agee dies

.....Agee quit the CIA in 1969 after 12 years in which he mainly worked in Latin America. He was later denounced as a traitor by George Bush Sr and was threatened with death by his former colleagues......(Guardian, 9 Jan 08)

CIA whistle-blower Philip Agee dies in Cuba

Philip Agee, a former CIA agent who exposed its undercover operations in Latin America in a 1975 book, died in Havana, the Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma said on Wednesday. Agee, 72, died on Monday night, the newspaper said, calling him a "loyal friend of Cuba and staunch defender of the peoples' struggle for a better world.".....(Reuters, 9 Jan 08)

Ex-CIA Agent Philip Agee Dead in Cuba

....Former CIA colleagues and some U.S. officials called Agee a traitor and alleged he was linked to Cuban and Soviet intelligence agencies.

.....Soviet and Cuban defectors alleged Agee had received money or aid from communist intelligence services, and critics noted he spent several months in Cuba after retiring from the CIA.

.....In denying Agee a new passport in 1987, Secretary of State George Shultz cited CIA reports that said he was a paid adviser to Cuban intelligence, had trained Nicaraguan security officials and had instructed security officials in Grenada before a U.S. invasion toppled a communist government there......(AP, 9 Jan 08)

The spy who stayed out in the cold
Thirty years ago, Philip Agee, then a 41-year-old former CIA officer living in Cambridge, was told that he was to be deported from Britain as a threat to the security of the state. After a high-profile but unsuccessful attempt to fight the order, he and his young family left Britain for ever…It was his book, Inside the Company, published in 1975, that first revealed in detail many of the dirty tricks that his colleagues had been involved in across the world. Agee, a former philosophy and law student from a comfortable Florida family, had been in the CIA for more than a decade, working mainly in Latin America, before making his momentous decision to quit and tell….(Guardian, 10 Jan 07)

A Roving Ethical Problem
Ironically, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act—passed in 1982 after Philip Agee, a disaffected former CIA agent, divulged the names and positions of CIA agents worldwide…..(New York Times, 19 Jul 05)

CIA secret war uncovered
IN his paper on the second day of the 4th World Conference of War Correspondents, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent Phillip Agee revealed the agency’s secret operations to destabilize governments, promote coups, and plan the assassination of heads of state, namely that of Cuban President Fidel Castro………..(Granma International, 21 Oct 04)

Ex-CIA Agent Pitches Cuba As Cure
Philip Agee, CIA agent-turned travel promoter, is capitalizing on post-Sept. 11 jitters to lure American tourists to Cuba....(AP, 18 Nov 01)

The Spy Who Helps Tourists Come in From the Cold
When Philip Agee joined the CIA in 1957, he saw himself as a patriot enlisting in the war against the bad guys.....(NewsMax, 23 Oct 2000)

Former CIA agent attempts to draw U.S. tourists to Cuba over Internet
Philip Agee, a former CIA agent who in the 1970s wrote a book about the agency and its operations, is now telling Americans to break the law and take a vacation in Cuba."Well, I would like to see people ignore the law, that is to the degree the law doesn't have any meaning anymore," said Agee, 65....(CNN, 6/25/00) --CNN's John Zarella reports on former CIA agent Philip Agee's efforts to get Americans to violate the trade embargo on Cuba and vacation on the island.

Ex-CIA Agent Resurfaces in Cuba
Former CIA agent Philip Agee, a longtime friend of communist Cuba who exposed purported CIA operatives in his infamous book, has resurfaced in Havana, where he has launched what he says is the first independent American business in 40 years.....(AP, 23 June 2000)

THE WORD ON . . .
In 1968, after serving as a CIA agent for 12 years, Philip Agee wrote a tell-all book, "Inside the Company: CIA Diary," which didn't win him many friends at Langley. Agee, 65, was declared a threat to U.S. national security and had his passport revoked in 1979. His latest venture, Cubalinda.com, is a Web-based company selling package tours to Cuba to American travelers. David Wallis spoke with Agee by telephone from his part-time home in Hamburg, Germany....(Washington Post, 16 Jul 2000)

Covert Action Information Bulletin Cuban & Soviet intelligence active measures/disinformation tool Number 1 (1978) Philip Agee on CIA; Cuban exile trial; “Consumer research” in Jamaica Number 2 (1978) ClA recruits diplomats; Researching CIA officers; Cuban double agent in CIA; CIA North Carolina demolit. training base. Number 3 (1979) CIA attacks CAIB; Top Secret Army spy manual; CAIB CIA poster; CIA in Mexico; Australia US spy satellite base; John Paisley mystery death. Number 4 (1979) Spying on allies: Secret Italy cable; CIA in Spain; CIA Africa recruiting; Angola; Subversive academics in Southern Africa; CIA and human rights; CIA firearms authority; Intelligence budgets; In Search of Enemies. Number 5 (1979) U.S. intelligence in SE Asia; Chinese diverted Soviet weapons from Vietnam; CIA in Denmark & Sweden; Grenada; AIFLD; CIA officer and JFK assassination evidence theft. Number 6 (1979) Caribbean; Cuban exile terrorists; CIA Nicaragua plans; ClA’s secret “Perspectives for Intelligence”; U.S. helps South Africa surveillance; CIA uses cockroaches. Number 7 (1979-80) CIA and media: Destabilization in Jamaica; Robert Moss; CIA propaganda budget; UNITA – Savimbi in U.S., his secret letters; Iran; CIA uses pigeons. Number 8 (1980) CIA vs. Philip Agee; Naming Names legislation - CAIB statement before Congress; Zimbabwe; Northern Ireland; CIA Florida recruiting; CIA assassinations. Covert Action Quarterly continued under Spring 2005 according to their website. Goals of Soviet Active Measures/Disinformation: To influence America, European and world public opinion to believe that US military and political policies are the major cause of international conflict and crisis. To demonstrate that the United States is an aggressive, militaristic, and imperialistic power. To isolate the United States from its friends and allies, and to discredit those states which cooperate with the United States. To discredit US military and intelligence establishments. To demonstrate that the policies and objectives of the United States are incompatible with those of the under-developed nations. To confuse world public opinion concerning Soviet global ambitions, creating a favorable environment for Soviet foreign policy.

Disinformation documentation

By Arnaud de Borchgrave, Washington Times, 4 October 1999

Almost 20 years ago, this writer and Robert Moss co-authored a novel about Soviet disinformation operations in the Western media that was immediately dismissed by the mainstream media as loony lucubrations from the far right. Hollywood directors who were interested in turning "he Spike" into a movie were threatened with blacklisting. A $250,000 option remained on the shelf -- to this day. It was a classic case of reverse McCarthyism, or anti-anti-communism.

Top editors, both print and media, scoffed at the book's central premise by arguing that editorial gatekeepers were far too savvy to let something as crude as Soviet disinformation slip through their adroit and ever-vigilant blue pencils (before the computer "kill" button).

Whenever a defector from the KGB or its proxy services in Eastern Europe and Cuba confirmed that the Soviet intelligence agency's Service A (for "Active Measures") was in charge of "dezinformatsiya" (disinformation) in the Western media, mainstream media adopted the ungainly posture of the proverbial ostrich. Now we have a new book, "The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive," the most complete picture of the KGB and its operations in the United States and Europe, courtesy of Vasili Mitrokhin, who toiled for three decades in the KGB's archives, and co-author Christopher Andrew, chair of the History Department at Cambridge University and a former visiting professor of national security at Harvard.

After the Soviet collapse, Mr. Mitrokhin took to Britain a massive secret collection of Cold War material about the KGB's activities in Western countries.

The scope of the KGB's disinformation operations in the West during the Cold War was breathtaking. Philip Agee, the CIA's first ideological defector who specialized in burning CIA operatives, rapidly became a liberal left icon in the U.S. and Western Europe. Now we have confirmation that Agee's book "Inside the Company: CIA Diary," published in 1975, that identified 250 Agency officers and agents, and claimed that "millions of people all over the world had been killed or had their lives destroyed by the CIA and the institutions it supports," was the work of the KGB and the DGI, the Cuban proxy of the KGB.

Agee (KGB code name: Pont) became the darling of the liberal left in the U.S. and Europe. But his activities on behalf of the intelligence services of Cold War enemies became too much for Britain's Labor government. And in November 1976, a deportation order was served. The far left sprang into action, aided and abetted by the KGB's Service A. Among traitor Agee's character witnesses: Morton Halperin, a former Kissinger aide and now head of policy planning at the State Department; former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who has flacked for anti-American causes the world over; Melvin Wolf, a hard-left lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union.

In 1993, President Clinton nominated Mr. Halperin to the new position of assistant secretary of defense for democracy and peacekeeping. But Mr. Halperin withdrew at the last moment. His backers were fearful he would be grilled about his relationship with Agee.

Agee lost his appeals against deportation from Britain and moved to the Netherlands where he was expelled again. He finally landed in Germany, married a German dancer, and could no longer be kicked out. In 1978, Agee, again with the covert assistance of the KGB and the DGI, began publishing the Covert Action Information Bulletin that was designed to promote "a worldwide campaign to destabilize the CIA through exposure of its operations and personnel."

KGB files note that Agee's Bulletin was "the initiative of the KGB." The Soviet Agency thus gave Agee the names of 2,000 CIA agents to expose publicly.

Agee's mill was kept supplied by a KGB Task Force headed by V.N. Kosterin, deputy head of the service in charge of Actives Measures in the Western media. Thus the KGB planted numerous stories that were picked up as news by the mainstream media -- e.g., extreme right-wingers and CIA rogues were behind the assassination of President Kennedy. It forged a letter from Lee Harvey Oswald, dated two weeks before Kennedy was killed, to CIA officer E. Howard Hunt asking for information "before any steps are taken by me or anyone else." The letter was created 12 years after the assassination and passed on anonymously to conspiracy buffs.

In 1971, according to the Mitrokhin archives, KGB chief Yuri Andropov personally approved the fabrication of pamphlets full of racist insults purporting to come from the extremist Jewish Defense League (JDL) and calling for a campaign against "black mongrels" who, it was claimed, were looting Jewish shops. At the same time forged letters were sent to 60 black organizations giving fictitious details of atrocities committed by JDL against blacks. They called for revenge against JDL leader Meir Kahane. He was assassinated some years later, not by a black extremist, but by an Arab.

Throughout the Cold War, KGB disinformation was under orders to stir up racial tensions in the United States. Before the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, KGB operatives in the Washington residency mailed forgeries from the Ku Klux Klan to the Olympic Committees of African and Asian nations.

These are among hundreds of examples of KGB operations that wound up in various media as fact. When Washington denounced them as forgeries, Moscow indignantly responded "anti-Soviet slanders." Both sides were dutifully reported.

The KGB's Service A also helped Agee craft his next book, "Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe." Mr. Agee then met with Service A operatives in Cuba who went to work on yet another tome, "Dirty Work II: The CIA in Africa." But Agee, fearful of being expelled from Germany, decided to drop his name from the title. The director of the Cuban DGI and the KGB then decided to release the book for the opening of the summit of 92 non-aligned nations in Havana, presided over by Fidel Castro, in September 1979.

"The Sword and the Shield" also tells about the recruitment of 10 French journalists whose job was to put across a positive image of communist countries and a negative image of their enemies. This writer knew one of them. He was the Renard character in "The Spike." He had been blackmailed by the KGB into doing the Soviet Union's dirty work in the French media --and now works as a legitimate journalist.

The disinformation themes these journalists were fed by the KGB always contained a kernel of truth that became the lead to a story followed by a tissue of falsehoods. Apologists for the Soviet Union in the U.S. would then quote them when interviewed for their reactions to major events abroad. The falsehoods quickly became conventional wisdom. So far, 10 years after the implosion of the Soviet empire, no one has come forward to say they were victims of KGB disinformation operations.

Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large for The Washington Times.

KGB's hand shown in book Agee wrote to discredit CIA: It also tried to prevent his deportation

Washington Times, 15 September 1999, By Bill Gertz

The Soviet KGB spy service helped write Philip Agee's 1975 anti-CIA book and orchestrated a worldwide campaign to prevent his deportation from Britain, according to a new book based on KGB files.

The authors are Cambridge historian Christopher Andrew and KGB defector Vasily Mitrokhin, who obtained the information about Mr. Agee, a CIA turncoat, and decades of other KGB activities from classified intelligence files in Moscow.

The book also touches the upper reaches of the Clinton administration. The authors say that KGB files showed a covert influence program was launched to prevent Mr. Agee from being deported from Britain and that numerous former British and U.S. officials took part, including the State Department's policy planning director, Morton Halperin, who testified on behalf of Mr. Agee during one hearing in Britain.

"At his appeals against deportation in January and February 1977, Agee's character witnesses included . . . former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, [Henry] Kissinger's former aide Morton Halperin and Sean MacBride, Nobel Peace Prize winner," the book says.

Reached in London, Mr. Andrew said the KGB files seen by Mr. Mitrokhin showed the London station took credit for directing the propaganda campaign in support of Mr. Agee, although there was no information in them that Mr. Halperin was aware of the KGB role in the effort. "What the KGB did seem to pride itself on was the number of well-known people who have given support to his causes," he said.

The new book, "The Sword and The Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive," is based on Mr. Mitrokhin's access to KGB files before he defected to Britain in 1992. U.S. national security officials familiar with classified reports said Mr. Mitrokhin was one of the most important defectors from the former Soviet Union.

Monday, the British government ordered an inquiry into why Britain failed to prosecute spies revealed by Mr. Mitrokhin, including former secretary Melita Norwood, who passed nuclear secrets to Moscow.

On the Agee affair, the authors quote from a KGB file that said "Inside the Company" was crafted jointly by the KGB and Cuba's DGI intelligence service.

"The self-congratulatory KGB file on the [Agee] book claims, doubtless with some exaggeration, that it was `prepared by Service A, together with the Cubans,' " the book says.

Service A was the KGB's "disinformation" and covert action section that launched numerous anti-U.S. campaigns during the Cold War, many of which are detailed in the new book.

Mr. Andrew and Mr. Mitrokhin say that while Mr. Agee was writing "Inside the Company," the KGB maintained contact with him through a Moscow agent they identified as Edgar A. Cheporov, who worked for Novosti news agency in London. Mr. Agee also had the KGB code name of "PONT," the authors say.

Mr. Agee acknowledged in his book that the Cuban Communist Party had helped him in writing the book.

The connections between the KGB and Mr. Agee are disclosed in detail for the first time in Mr. Andrew's and Mr. Mitrokhin's book.

"At Service A's insistence, Agee removed all reference to CIA penetration of Latin American Communist parties from his typescript before publication," the book says.

In 1976, the KGB carried out a worldwide public relations campaign in an unsuccessful bid to avert Mr. Agee's deportation from Britain, the book says, noting that "the KGB employed firm and purposeful measures to force the Home Office to cancel their decision."

The KGB's London office "was used to direct action by a number of members of the Labor Party Executive, union leaders, leading parliamentarians, leaders of the National Union of Journalists to take a stand against the Home office decision," according to Mr. Mitrokhin's handwritten notes of one KGB file on the Agee affair.

Mr. Halperin, through a spokesman, declined to comment on the book's revelations.

Mr. Halperin withdrew his nomination to a new post of assistant defense secretary for peacekeeping in 1994 after questions were raised about his views on intelligence, including contacts during the 1970s with Mr. Agee.

Mr. Agee said during a 1994 interview that Mr. Halperin helped him obtain CIA correspondence between the U.S. Embassy in Athens and CIA headquarters through Freedom of Information Act requests.

Clinton administration officials said during Mr. Halperin's nomination process that Mr. Halperin met Mr. Agee in London in 1977, but that he had no part in Mr. Agee's activities in revealing publicly the identities of some 2,000 CIA undercover agents

Once Again, Ex-Agent Philip Agee Eludes CIA's Grasp

Los Angeles Times
NATION & WORLD
Tuesday, October 14, 1997

By JAMES RISEN, Times Staff Writer

Espionage: An effort to get secrets for Cuba was foiled, but he got away before case against him could be made, officials say. He denies charges.

WASHINGTON -- It was an aggressive, even reckless bit of espionage, allegedly committed by a man too well known for his own good.

CIA officials and other U.S. government sources charged that Philip Agee, a former CIA officer, author and CIA critic, went undercover as a spy for Cuba in late 1989 to try to pry secrets out of a female staff member in the agency's Mexico City station.

U.S. officials alleged that Agee was acting on behalf of Cuba's intelligence service, which has long staked out Mexico as a central espionage battleground with the CIA. Agee has denied the charges.

Agee, posing as a member of the CIA's inspector general's staff, tried to convince the staff member that he needed information about the Mexico
City station as part of a secret investigation, the officials charged. CIA sources said that Cuban intelligence traditionally has targeted women staffers in their espionage operations.

The plot failed, U.S. officials said, when the CIA employee reported the contact and brought two CIA case officers with her to her second meeting with Agee. But one of the two case officers told Agee that he recognized him, the officials said, and Agee ended his efforts before enough evidence could be collected against him to bring formal charges.

The two CIA officers later were disciplined for their failure to notify their superiors of Agee's alleged action early enough for the FBI to launch a criminal investigation of whether the former CIA agent had committed espionage against the United States.

Agee's alleged willingness to act as a field agent for the Cubans astonished U.S. intelligence officials.

They said they believe that Agee -- who quit the CIA during the Vietnam War in 1968 and later was known for his willingness to expose undercover CIA officers and operations through public lectures, magazines and books -- has been working for Cuban intelligence since the early 1970s.

A high-ranking Cuban defector in 1992 told The Times that Agee had repeatedly taken money that the Cuban intelligence service had received
from the Soviet KGB intelligence agency.

But CIA officers said that they had never seen Agee work openly as a field operative for the Cubans until his alleged approach to the female CIA staff member in Mexico City -- an incident that remains classified.

In written responses to a series of questions from The Times, Agee denied that he was involved in the Mexico City case. He suggested that the story of his involvement in Mexico City had been inspired by the CIA to counter a lawsuit in which he is seeking damages for alleged illegal actions committed against him by the CIA in the early 1970s.

He stressed that he is not a Cuban agent.

"The story is one more in a long line of false allegations [inspired by the CIA] going back to the first mention of me in the New York Times of July 4, 1974," Agee said in a faxed response from his home in Hamburg, Germany.

"As for Cuba, the CIA has for many years used the word 'agent' to characterize my relation with the revolution because to them it means 'sold out,' 'controlled,' 'traitorous,' etc. This is not the case, and I am no 'Cuban agent. . . . '

"As is widely known, for more than 25 years I have been one more American working in solidarity activities with Cuba and against U.S. hostility, aggression, blockade, etc. etc. If this makes me a 'Cuban agent,' then there are certainly a lot of us out there."

Agee was in Cuba in July at the invitation of the Cuban Committee for Peace and the People's Sovereignty to attend an international student festival. In an interview with the official Chinese news agency, he alleged that the CIA had ordered the death of Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

Despite their belief that Agee has been a Cuban agent for years, the CIA and FBI have long been frustrated by their failure to gather
enough evidence to prosecute him.

Although the State Department revoked his passport in 1979 after Agee proposed solving the Iranian hostage crisis by exchanging CIA files on Iran for American hostages, he apparently has traveled in and out of the United States without difficulty and has made numerous public
appearances in this country.

In college lectures and extensive interviews, he frequently attacks the CIA as "criminal, immoral and against the interests of all but a very few Americans."

But most galling to CIA officers is their belief that he is regarded as a legitimate critic of U.S. intelligence, not as a foreign spy. "The media treats him like any other former CIA officer with a point of view, but he is a traitor," complained one former senior CIA officer.

In a speech at CIA headquarters on Sept. 17 during ceremonies marking the agency's 50th anniversary, former President Bush, who served as CIA
director in the mid-1970s, singled out Agee for his ire.

"Remember Phil Agee, who I consider a traitor to our country?" Bush asked the crowd. "The guy encouraged the publishing of names of those serving under cover, sacrificing their lives."

Agee established his reputation as a critic of the CIA with the publication of his controversial 1975 book, "Inside the Company: a CIA Diary."

Published in 20 languages, the book exposed CIA actions around the world. At the same time, he sought to identify CIA undercover officers. "It was not enough simply to describe what the CIA does," Agee recalled in a recent television interview. "It was important to neutralize . . . the effectiveness of everybody doing it. And that's why I was involved after my first book came out in the exposure of hundreds and hundreds of
CIA people around the world."

His second book, "On the Run," published in 1987, described what he alleged was a CIA campaign to harass and silence him, especially during the years in which he was working on his first book.

More recently, he has been engaged in a legal battle with former First Lady Barbara Bush. Agee filed a libel suit against Mrs. Bush and her publisher for alleging, inaccurately, in her autobiography that Agee was responsible for revealing the identity of the CIA's Athens station chief in his first book, just before the station chief was killed. The former first lady ultimately agreed to remove the allegation from her book.

But CIA officials said that Agee's alleged actions in Mexico City took him far beyond the role of anti-CIA propagandist.

The female staff member whom Agee was said to have approached was apparently a member of the Mexico City station's support staff and was not trained in espionage work. CIA sources said that they believe Cuban intelligence operatives steered Agee to her in hopes that she would not report his overtures.

Yet, she promptly went to a case officer in the station to report the contact, according to senior U.S. intelligence sources. She agreed to a second meeting with Agee, and two case officers went along.

One of the two recognized Agee and, according to some sources, told him that he knew who he was. Agee then quickly slipped away, the sources said. Later, the female staffer also identified Agee's picture from mug shots shown to her by CIA officials.

For failing to notify their superiors soon enough about the incident, the two CIA case officers were not only reprimanded but also briefly taken off the agency's promotion list. They were not fired because they had previously been considered among the best case officers in the Mexico City station.

"If they had notified their station chief and headquarters, we could have gotten the FBI involved for criminal investigation, but we lost that opportunity," said one former senior CIA official who was involved in handling the matter.

"And Agee got away."

Philip Agee's Services

Washington Post Letter to the Editor, 27 September 1994

As a former CIA officer, I found Philip Agee's letter {Sept. 17} ironic and less than forthcoming. From public reporting, it seems that Mr. Agee did not engage in espionage - spying - after being forced to resign from the CIA. However, he cannot be exonerated from the charge that he assisted countries hostile to the United States.

Published reports show former CIA director William Webster gave a deposition when Mr. Agee was seeking a new U.S. passport saying that Mr. Agee had been "a paid consultant to, and otherwise assisted, one or more hostile intelligence services." CIA officer Lee F. Carle deposed that Mr. Agee "has been a paid adviser to the Cuban government." His apparent responsibilities included traveling to various countries friendly to the then-Soviet Union and Cuba to provide the "how to" to detect U.S. intelligence personnel and activities in those countries.

Mr. Agee is disingenuous when he denies disclosing names to Cuban officials, while admitting he did so in his book "Inside the Company." What he didn't say is that most of "Inside the Company" was written in Cuba. He acknowledges in the book that the Cubans gave him "special assistance for research and help {to} find data available only from government documentation." He added: "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."

The great irony is Mr. Agee's claim to a First Amendment right to name people who may have been associated with the CIA - exposing them to possible jailing and torture, even death - in the context of his continuing support of the revolution in Cuba, where those who express disagreement with Mr. Agee's friends, the party apparatchiks, are jailed, tortured or killed.

J. E. (NED) DOLAN

Garrett Park

CIA Critic Funded by Cuba, Officials Say

Ex-Agent Agee Got $1 Million, Defector Claims

by Robert C. Toth, Chicago Sun Times, 10 August 1992

WASHINGTON Philip Agee, a renegade former CIA officer who has conducted a long-running public crusade against the agency, has taken money repeatedly from the Cuban intelligence service, a high-ranking Cuban defector and two senior CIA officials say.

The money was provided to Cuba by the KGB, the former Soviet spy agency now reorganized under Russia's control, specifically to support Agee, said Florintino Aspillaga Lombard, who served as a major in Cuba's Direccion General de Inteligencia, or DGI, before his defection. Altogether, payments funneled to Agee could total "a million dollars or more," Aspillaga said in a recent interview.

Now 57 years old and living in Germany, Agee denies he has taken Cuban money. "My relationship with Cuba has been solidarity with the revolution, not espionage," he said.

One of a dozen or so former CIA officers who have become vocal critics of the organization, Agee is probably best known to the public and the most hated within the agency. He is blamed by many U.S. officials for exposing a CIA station chief, Richard S. Welch, who was later murdered by leftist terrorists in Athens in 1975.

President Bush, a former director of central intelligence, attacked Agee last year as "a reckless ideologue" who blew Welch's cover. "I don't care how long I live," Bush said. "I will never forgive Philip Agee." Agee denies any responsibility for Welch's slaying.

In addition to the information provided by Aspillaga, a second Cuban defector has told the CIA that Agee received funds from Fidel Castro's government in return for his anti-CIA work, according to sources.

On the basis of the defectors' statements, former Director of Central Intelligence William H. Webster and another agency official have given legal depositions accusing Agee of having been paid for his efforts to discredit and disrupt CIA activities.

In the court documents, Webster said Agee has been a "paid consultant to, and otherwise assisted, one or more hostile intelligence services" since at least 1983 and perhaps earlier. Agee's repeated public statements identifying CIA officers and operations have endangered agents and jeopardized their activities, Webster said.

In a separate document, CIA officer Lee E. Carle said "Agee has been a paid adviser to the Cuban government." He said the agency received this information "from two reliable human sources who have provided accurate information in the past." One of those sources, Carle noted, also said Agee had trained Nicaraguan officials "in the detection of U.S. intelligence personnel and activities."

Such payments, if they occurred, would seriously undermine Agee's credibility as a critic of alleged U.S. intelligence abuses. Agee, who travels on a German passport, gives lectures attacking the CIA at least a dozen times a year on American college campuses and before liberal audiences.

THE ENEMY OF THE AGENCY

ON THE RUN By Philip Agee. Illustrated. 400 pp. Secaucus, N.J.: Lyle Stuart. $19.95.

After 16 years spent driving his unhappy former employer, the Central Intelligence Agency, frantic with revelations of its agents and operations around the world, he is alive, free and able to return to the United States to publicize his new book, ''On the Run,'' a highly readable account of his life and hard times during the years when the C.I.A. did everything in its considerable power to make his life miserable. Credit for Mr. Agee's success in giving worse than he got should probably go equally to his native wit, the trade craft he picked up working for the C.I.A., and the protective umbrella of the American Constitution......(NYT Book Review by Thomas Powers, 2 Aug 87)

Dangerous Wrecking Operation

........In the past 15 months, several hundred agents in Stockholm, Athens, Lisbon, Madrid, Mexico City, London and Paris have had their covers blown, mostly by leftist papers......The agency lists began appearing after Philip Agee, 40, an ex-CIA spy who now lives in Cambridge, England, published Inside the Company: CIA Diary last year. The book identified nearly 250 CIA men and women round the world......(Time, 26 Jan 1976)

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