The Painful Truths Told by Phil Agee

[marmar]

from Consortium News:


The Painful Truths Told by Phil Agee
June 27, 2013

Truly objective journalism would value facts and accuracy above all else, but the mainstream U.S. press – while pretending to be “objective” – treasures faux patriotism much more, as is evident with recent whistleblowers as it was with the hostility toward the late Phil Agee who exposed CIA crimes, as William Blum recalls.

By William Blum


Before there was Edward Snowden, William Binney and Thomas Drake … before there was Bradley Manning, Sibel Edmonds and Jesselyn Radack … there was Philip Agee. What Agee revealed is still the most startling and important information about U.S. foreign policy that any American government whistleblower has ever revealed.

Philip Agee spent 12 years (1957-69) as a CIA case officer, most of it in Latin America. His first book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, published in 1974 – a pioneering work on the Agency’s methods and their devastating consequences – appeared in about 30 languages around the world and was a best seller in many countries; it included a 23-page appendix with the names of hundreds of undercover Agency operatives and organizations.

Under CIA manipulation, direction and, usually, their payroll, were past and present presidents of Mexico, Colombia, Uruguay and Costa Rica, “our minister of labor”, “our vice-president”, “my police”, journalists, labor leaders, student leaders, diplomats, and many others. If the Agency wished to disseminate anti-communist propaganda, cause dissension in leftist ranks, or have Communist embassy personnel expelled, it need only prepare some phony documents, present them to the appropriate government ministers and journalists, and – presto! – instant scandal.

Agee’s goal in naming all these individuals, quite simply, was to make it as difficult as he could for the CIA to continue doing its dirty work. .......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2013/06/27/the-painful-truths-told-by-phil-agee/

[MrScorpio]

1. I have a well worn copy of "CIA Diary"

One of my favorite books ever.

[xchrom]

2. du rec.

[Fuddnik]

3. I read it waaay back when......

His turning point came when he could hear people being tortured, no matter how high the police chief turned up the volume on his radio.

We need a thousand more Agee's. And Snowdens.

[WillyT]

4. K & R !!!

[Solly Mack]

5. K&R

[Octafish]

6. Where Myths Lead to Murder

Philip Agee, from Covert Action Information Bulletin number 1, July 1978:

EXCERPT...

Today, notwithstanding recent "reforms", the CIA remains primarily an action agency ‑ doing and not just snooping. Theirs is the grey area of interventionist action between striped‑pants diplomacy and invasion by the Marines, and their targets in most countries remain largely the same: governments, political parties, the military, police, secret services, trade unions, youth and student organizations, cultural and professional societies, and the public information media. In each of these, the CIA continues to prop up its friends and beat down its enemies, while its goal remains the furthering of U.S. hegemony so that American multinational companies can intensify their exploitation of the natural resources and labor of foreign lands.

SNIP...

There is, however, a more basic reason for the secrecy - and for the CIA. Successive administrations ‑ together with American‑based multinational corporations ‑ have continually demanded the freest possible access to foreign markets, labor, agricultural products, and raw materials. To give muscle to this demand for the "open door", recent presidents have taken increasingly to using the CIA to strengthen those foreign groups who cooperate ‑ and to destroy those who do not. This has been especially clear in countries such as Chile under Allende, or Iran 20 years earlier under Mossadegh, where strong nationalist movements insisted on some form of socialism to ensure national control of economic resources.

SNIP...

The problem for America, however, is not "Soviet expansionism," despite all the anticommunism with which we are indoctrinated practically from the cradle. The problem, rather, is that the American government, preeminently the CIA, continues to intervene on the side of "friends" whose property and privilege rest on the remnants of archaic social systems long since discredited. The political repression required to preserve the old order depends on American and other Western support which quite naturally is turning more and more people against the United States ‑ more effectively, for sure, than anything the KGB could ever concoct.

SNIP...

Nothing in the anti‑CIA effort has stirred up more anger than the publishing of the names and addresses of CIA officials in foreign countries, especially since the killing of the CIA Station Chief in Athens, Richard Welch. CIA spokesmen ‑ and journals such as the Washington Post ‑ were quick to accuse me and CounterSpy magazine of having "fingered" Welch for the "hit," charging that in publishing his name, we were issuing "an open invitation to kill him." The Agency also managed to exploit Welch's death to discredit and weaken those liberals in Congress who wanted only to curtail some of the Agency's More obvious abuses. Subsequent research, noted in Dirty Work, makes abundantly clear that CounterSpy had nothing to do with the Welch killing.

CONTINUED...

http://web.archive.org/web/20090419224242/http://covertaction.org/content/view/182/75

[Egalitarian Thug]

7. K&R Americans have preferred fantasy to reality for a long time.

& R

[Fuddnik]

8. Kick and Rec!

Note how they always pull out the same bullshit. "They compromised sources and methods". "They exposed agents to danger".

Any adversary of the US Gov't who doesn't assume they're being spied on relentlessly, is a fool. The secrecy is meant to keep the American public in the dark. Everybody else knows what's going on.