[Marxism] How many Philip Agees are there today?

[Walter Lippmann <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

How many Philip Agee's dream today of abandoning the ranks of a
murderous CIA?
Originally published in Spanish in larepublica.es on Tues 15 of
January 2008.
http://www.larepublica.es/spip.php?article8927

Translation by Dana Lubow for CubaNews 

PHILIP Agee, the former CIA agent who in 1968 had the courage to
resign from an agency that was known for its criminal support of
bloody dictators, claims that he made up his mind, one year before,
the moment a woman he was sitting with in a restaurant in Mexico burst
into tears upon hearing the news of Che Guevara's death.

This one anecdote exemplifies all the honor and integrity of the man
who passed away at 73, this January 7, in the city of Havana, on Cuban
soil where he continued to denounce the terrorist and subversive
activities perpetrate by the U.S. intelligence service against the
progressive governments and leaders of the continent.

Phillip B. Agee, a U.S. citizen, was a CIA officer working in Latin
America for 12 years (Ecuador, Uruguay and Mexico) before his
conscience forced him to leave its ranks in 1969. At that time his
cover was working in the U.S. embassy in Mexico as an attachà to the
1968 Olympics. In 1967 he had been assigned to the CIA station in
Mexico as reinforcement for the upcoming Games.

"Millions of people all over the world had been killed or had their
lives destroyed by the CIA and the institutions it supports," Agee
declared in a 1975 interview.

"I couldn't just sit by and do nothing ," he added.

Upon leaving the Company, while enduring threats and constant
persecution that put his life in danger on more than one occasion, he
managed to write the book "Inside the Company: CIA Diary."

This ingenuous synthesis of the criminal activities of the CIA in the
Americas, was published in 1974 accompanied by an annex containing 22
pages of names of undercover agents dispersed across the continent. It
was a bomb that blasted through all sectors of U.S. intelligence.

Determined to eliminate him, the CIA entrusted former Miami station
chief Ted Shackley, known as the Blonde Ghost, with the mission to
capture him. Agee was forced to leave France and took refuge in
Cambridge, England; but Agee was then expelled by the British at the
request of Washington.

Successively prevented from settling in Italy and in the Netherlands,
where authorities were constantly pressured to deny him any kind of
migratory status, and stripped of his U.S. passport for being a
"threat to national security," Agee took refugein 1980 on the
Caribbean island of Granada while it was under the revolutionary
government of Maurice Bishop.

With the U.S. invasion of that small country in 1983, he fled to
Nicaragua. And after the Washington-backed counterrevolution prevailed
there, he accepted the offer of Cuba's hospitality.

Despite all the danger and difficulties, Agee published Dirty Work:
The CIA in Western Europe , with Louis Wolf, as well as several essays
and articles. He also granted interviews and assisted journalists in
search of information.

On five occasions, the U.S. government attempted legal action against
him for revealing secrets; but without success. His former bosses
worried about the damage he could cause with the enormous amount of
information he still retained.

Rabid, George Bush Sr., former CIA chief recycled into president who
sponsored the formation of the terrorist organization CORU and
operation Condor, labeled him a traitor and defamed him on numerous
occasions. His wife Barbara, was forced to retract slanderous charges
included in her autobiography.

A faithful friend of Cuba, Agee revealed how the island was victim of
a new CIA global program to finance and promote so-called dissident
organizations under the auspices of the Agency for International
Development (AID) and a foundation expressly established in 1983 with
this objective, The National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

While the New York Times, upon announcing his death, rebuked him for
the significant "damage" he caused to the U.S. intelligence agency,
the progressive media worldwide, to the contrary, recognized his
service to humanity as a true patriot, for having unmasked an
organization that took the use of violence to an extreme unprecedented
by a contemporary power.

A power that while it protects a terrorist like Luis Posada Carriles,
it continues to incarcerate, in sub-humane conditions, five
anti-terrorist Cuban agents who attempted to thwart plots against
their homeland.

With the entire world shocked by the torture inflicted on prisoners at
Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and the expansive network of interrogation
centers run by the CIA around the globe, and with the discovery that
the agency, in collusion with members of the Bush government have
destroyed hundreds of hours of videotapes of interrogations employing
"severe" techniquesÂwhat would a CIA agent think who joined the
organization with the illusion of defending his country?

How many honorable members among the more than 20,000 that make up the
immense machine have asked themselves, like Philip Agee did, if the
time has come to give up the advantages of their position, finally
change the course of their life, and join the struggle of billions of
human beings who, armed only with the strength of their conviction,
believe that a better world is possible? 



====================================
Walter Lippmann
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
====================================

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