FORMER CIA AGENT PHILIP AGEE, WHO HAS DONE MORE THAN ANY OTHER U.S. CRITIC TO EXPOSE CIA AGENTS AND DISCREDIT THE AGENCY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00845R000100160027-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 14, 2010
• Sequence Number: 27
• Publication Date: August 23, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/14: CIA-RDP90-00845R000100160027-1
NORWICH SUNDAY BULLETIN
23 August 1981
intelligence
By WILLIAM F. PARHAM
Bulletin Staff Writer
WASHINGTON Former CIA
agent Philip Agee, who has done
more than any other U.S. critic to
expose CIA agents and discredit
the agency, was forced "to leave the
agency and later got key support in
his anti-CLA efforts from Cuban
intelligence officials, The Bulletin
has learned.
Agee, who touted his 1975 anti-
CIA autobiography Inside the Com-
pany: CI-1 Diary by claiming to
have quit the CIA to combat the,
suffering it was causing, in fact
quit at the request of the U.S.
ambassador to Mexico and the CIA
Mexico City station chief.
Agee was asked to resign be-
cause he had kidnapped his chil-
dren from the U.S. and was
becoming an embarrassment to the
U.S. Embassy in Mexico..
Later, after he ran out of money
from his CLA pension, he drifted
from Mexico to Paris and accepted
help from a French publisher who
was working with the Cuban intel-
ligence agency, Direction General
de Intelligercia (DGI), according
to a retired CIA official.
-This contact provided Agee with,
financial support and entree tol
Cuba where he was allowed to l
consult what he called Cuban gov-
ernment "documentation centers"1
- really DGI intelligence data
banks - in.. writing his anti-CLA
book.
Agee's autobiography was de-
scribed in 1975 by Washington Postj
-reviewer Patrick Breslin as "the
most complete description yet of:
what the CIA does abroad. In
entry,after numbing entry, U.S.
foreign policy in Latin America is
pictured as a web of_deceit, hypoc-
risy and corruption. Now that we l
can no longer- plead ignorance of
the webs our spiders spin, will we!
continue to tolerate CIA activities
abroad?"
Agee acknowledged in his book
only that government libraries in
Havana. "provided special assist- '
ante for research and helped find
data. (on the CIA) available only
from. (Cuban). government docu-
mentation..,,:
"Representatives of the Commu-
nist Party of Cuba also gave me
important encouragement at a time
when I doubted that I would be able '
..to find the additional information I
needed," Agee wrote.
Agee mentioned the French pub-
lisher in the acknowledgements
section of his 1975 expose but did
not identify him as having ties to
the Cuban DGI.
"Also during. this early period,
Francois Maspero helped me real-
ize that. I -would have to leave
Mexico to find adequate research
materials," Agee wrote.
"His advice was also of special
value for the general focus and for
the decision to concentrate on spe-
cific (CIA) operations rather than
types." .
Agee reconstructed most of his
autobiographical expose, Inside the
Company: CIA Diary, published in
1975,. while- he was in Cuba. He I
made six trips to Cuba during his,
research, including one that lasted
for six months..
Permission from Cuba's DGI for'
an ex-CIA officer to come into Cuba
to use government "documentation
centers" - DGI data banks - for
writing a book on the CIA had to
have the approval of the Soviet
KGB officer in charge of the Cuban
intelligence system, Gen: Victor
Simenov. Simenov and Agee had
met in 1964 in Montevideo, Uru-
guay, when Agee was a CIA field
agent there and Simenov was a
Soviet KGB colonel.
After the 1968-69 Soviet takeover'
of the DGI, Simenov became one of
three KGB officers supervising'
plans, operations, and sensitive
projects at DGI headquarters.
While in Havana he was promoted!
to KGB general and had an office
next door to the DGI intelligence
chief.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/14: CIA-RDP90-00845R000100160027-1
to expose, discredi