Philip Agee

Philip Agee

1935-2008

Philip Agee worked as a case officer for the United States Central Intelligence Agency from 1957 to 1968. In 1975 he published a book about covert operations in Latin America entitled Inside the Company: CIA Diary in order to inform the public about what the U.S. government was secretly doing on behalf of the American people.

"When I was writing my first book, I concluded in the book that the CIA is nothing more and nothing less than the secret political police of international foreign policy: that is the foreign policy of the United States.”

"It was nothing unusual for a young man like me, patriotic, conformist from a very comfortable family to go into government service so I went into the CIA for adventure. I was only 22 and had romantic views towards things ...I left the CIA with the idea of forgetting it all and starting a new life but you don't forget these things."

See Covert Action Magazine for many of his articles and the magazine he cofounded.

“We were right to do it then, because the U.S. policy at the time, executed by the CIA, was to support murderous dictatorships around the world, as in Vietnam, as in Greece, as in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil. And that’s only to name a few. We opposed that use of the U.S. intelligence service for those dirty operations. And I’m talking about regimes now that tortured and disappeared people by the thousands.”

Interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, October 2nd, 2003

During these past ten years, while Latin American countries failed to establish more equitable distribution of land, wealth and income, considerable success could be claimed in counterinsurgency--including propaganda to attract people away from the Cuban solution as well as repression. As part of the counterinsurgency campaign, the Alliance for Progress in the short run did indeed raise many hopes and capture many imaginations in favor of the peaceful reform solutions that would not fundamentally jeopardize the dominance of the ruling capitalist minorities and their system. Since the 1960s however, as the psychological appeal of peaceful reform diminished in the face of failure, compensatory measures have been increasingly needed: repression and special programs, as in the field of organized labor, to divide the victims and neutralize their leaders. These measures constitute the four most important counter-insurgency programs through which the US government strengthens the ruling minorities in Latin America: CIA operations, military assistance and training missions, AID Public Safety programmes to help police, and trade-union operations through ORIT: the International Trade Secretariats and the AIFLD--all largely controlled by the CIA. Taken together these are the crutches given by the capitalist rulers of the US to their counterparts in Latin America in order to obtain reciprocal support against threats to American capitalism.

Inside the Company: CIA Diary, 1975

  The friends, family, and supporters of Philip Agee and his work offer this web site to commemorate his life and to carry forward his work.  For more information, please send an email to [email protected]