ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
He was praised by CIA critics, considered a traitor by many agents. Philip Agee has died in Havana at age 72. Agee was a spy who turned against the agency and exposed some of his former undercover colleagues. He took refuge in Cuba after losing his American passport. His 1975 book, "Inside the Company: CIA Diary," revealed details of covert CIA operations against leftist movements in Latin America.
NPR's Tom Gjelten reports.
TOM GJELTEN: Philip Agee went to work for the CIA in Latin America in 1960, a time when the United States was worried that Fidel Castro's revolution could spread. Agee later said the agency worked secretly on behalf of right-wing dictatorships across the region. In 1969, he resigned from the CIA and resolved to do what he could to thwart those covert CIA operations by exposing them. He spoke to NPR in 1987.
(Soundbite of archived interview)
Mr. PHILIP AGEE (Former CIA Agent; Author, "Inside the Company: CIA Diary"): I made the decision after I had left the CIA to write a book about my experiences and those operations that other people undertook, but which I knew about. Because I wanted to put this experience and knowledge at the disposal or at the service of the people who needed it to defend themselves.
GJELTEN: Agee's 600-page memoir was a detailed expose of CIA activities, but most controversial was a 21-page appendix in which he identified undercover CIA operatives by name. That same year, the CIA station chief in Athens, Richard Welch, was assassinated. Welch was not one of the agents identified in the book, but Agee was still blamed for his death.
Anger over Agee's actions was a factor in the passage of a 1982 law that made it a federal crime to reveal the identity of a covert U.S. agent. That was actually the law that led to the 2003 investigation of the exposure of CIA officer Valerie Plame.
In his 1987 interview, Agee expressed no remorse for having identified fellow CIA agents.
(Soundbite of archived interview)
Mr. AGEE: There's no way to separate what the agency does from who does it. If you want to try to disrupt this type of activity, you can describe their operations, but it's impossible to describe these operations in any detail without getting into the personalities involved.
GJELTEN: Some of the operatives uncovered by Agee, however, had little to do with covert CIA activities in Latin America. One was Eugene Poteat who was working undercover in London as a CIA technology officer.
Mr. EUGENE POTEAT (Former CIA Science and Technology Officer): He exposed not only my name, but he listed my family's name and so on, and the positions I held overseas, which caused me considerable problems thereafter.
GJELTEN: Poteat said he was followed in his car, vandalized. Agee's CIA expose, however, made him a hero in European leftist circles. His book was published in 27 languages and he appeared often at public rallies. Poteat went to see him speak from a soapbox at Hyde Park in London.
Mr. POTEAT: I stood at the back of the crowd to see what he would have to say. And he said, well, in this crowd, somewhere there's probably a CIA man keeping an eye on me. And a young British man turned to me and said, you're not a CIA spy, are you? And I said, no, are you?
GJELTEN: After Agee lost his American passport, he settled in Cuba. In recent years, he ran a travel agency there promoting cheap excursions around the island. Agee's death was announced today by the Cuban Communist Party newspaper, Granma. His widow, a German ballet dancer, told friends he died as a result of surgery for a perforated ulcer.
Tom Gjelten, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
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