Philip Agee (accused of exposing CIA agents in 1970s) on leaks...

[JackRiddler]

After Philip Agee exposed CIA covert ops in Latin America in the early 1970s, Papa Bush lobbied and gained the very same law that now has the Bush admin in trouble.

In today's LAT, Philip Agee defends his original action and comments on the current crisis...

Philip Agee

One Bush's law is another Bush's crisis

SPECIAL TO THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

Tuesday, October 7, 2003

The current brouhaha over the outing of an undercover CIA officer brings to mind vivid memories and comic ironies. The 1982 law that now threatens Karl Rove, or whoever it was who leaked the officer's name, is the Intelligence Identities Protection Act -- and it was adopted to silence me.

I was a CIA agent for 11 years in Latin America, but I quit in 1969 and wrote a book that told the true story of my life in the agency.

In the 1970s, some colleagues and I followed up with a campaign of "guerrilla journalism" to expose the CIA's operations and personnel around the world because we thought we could combat the agency's role in support of so many murderous dictatorships at that time, including those in Vietnam, Greece, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. The Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it a felony to expose a covert intelligence agent, was designed to stop us.

Here's the first irony: It was President George H.W. Bush who fought to get that law passed as CIA director in 1976-1977 and later as vice president.

http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/auto/epaper/editions/today/editorial_f3285683d57022040021.html;COXnetJSessionID=1Cidd6vyNjFxC4viA9jkaFfoa0Ev5WOnRsazHzzl1goDkCOYecWm!-259563718?urac=n&urvf=10655423018930.1482091833706669