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REMEMBERING PHIL AGEE
LOUIS WOLF - On the occasion of the CIA's fiftieth year, Phil Agee wrote
in Covert Action Quarterly: "During this last fifty years, the CIA and
other agencies have served as instruments for imposing U.S. national
security policies on the rest of the world. The human cost, especially
in the Third World, is unspeakable. Yet, resistance goes on as surely as
the oppression and repression that create it. This 50th anniversary of
the CIA and the national security state should be a time of national
shame, given the moral bankruptcy of the policies that 'won' the Cold
War."
He was the master of seeing through the flowery but foul rhetoric
emanating from the White House and Langley about democracy that masks
what really goes on behind and beneath it. As he wrote in the 1978
article "Where Myths Lead to Murder":
"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."
Writing about CIA operations in Africa, Phil wrote: "As in the rest of
the world, U.S. policy viewed Africa as a continent where radical and
communist influence should be eradicated--a goal that required military
support to colonial powers or efforts that would deny real independence
to African countries by imposing and sustaining client regimes. . . .
Rare is the African country that in recent years could elude
intervention by neo-colonialist interests and the retardation of
national development that such intervention so often brings. Yet these
secret agencies are not phantom forces. Their methods can be understood
and their people can be identified. Measures to counter their operations
can succeed, as their numerous blunders and failures demonstrate."
In the fall of 1979 as the Sandinistas had just won their popular
revolution against the brutal Washington-supported regime of Anastasio
Somoza in Nicaragua, Phil wrote prophetically in what was then Covert
Action Information Bulletin about "The CIA's Blueprint for Nicaragua."
"The CIA's programs for covert collection of information on Nicaragua
continue, of course, from the period before the Sandinista victory.
Besides the CIA Station in the U.S. Embassy in Managua, officers in many
other Stations such as those in the Andean Pact countries, San Jose,
Panama, City, Mexico City, New York, Washington and Miami have special
assignments for intelligence collection on Nicaragua . . . The CIA could
have installed bugs in key government offices in Managua during the
final days of Somoza as well as in Nicaraguan Embassies in key
countries--no problem, given the CIA's intimate relations with the
Somocistas. . . "
The infamous and bloody CIA "covert" paramilitary operations against the
Sandinistas under the direction of Lt. Col. Oliver North and his CIA
colleagues inside Ronald Reagan's National Security Council and which
blossomed into the famous Iran-Contra debacle, were a direct offspring
of the activities Phil foresaw.
Under the Freedom of Information Act, Phil told British investigative
journalist Duncan Campbell one year ago this month, he was able to see
through at least a small window into the immensity of what the CIA per
se and the government in general has deployed against him through the
years. "They admitted to having 18,000 pages on me. I figured out there
were 120 pages a day for seven or eight years. That can only be things
like telephone transcripts and letter intercepts. Some person from the
Pentagon was talking about me and saying they had two or three people
working on me full time."
[Louis Wolf is co-founder with Philip Agee and four others and director
of research of the magazine Covert Action Information which was renamed
Covert Action Quarterly, which published until 2005. Philip Agee
co-authored two books with Wolf and others]
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REMEMBERING PHIL AGEE
LOUIS WOLF - On the occasion of the CIA's fiftieth year, Phil Agee wrote
in Covert Action Quarterly: "During this last fifty years, the CIA and
other agencies have served as instruments for imposing U.S. national
security policies on the rest of the world. The human cost, especially
in the Third World, is unspeakable. Yet, resistance goes on as surely as
the oppression and repression that create it. This 50th anniversary of
the CIA and the national security state should be a time of national
shame, given the moral bankruptcy of the policies that 'won' the Cold
War."
He was the master of seeing through the flowery but foul rhetoric
emanating from the White House and Langley about democracy that masks
what really goes on behind and beneath it. As he wrote in the 1978
article "Where Myths Lead to Murder":
"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."
Writing about CIA operations in Africa, Phil wrote: "As in the rest of
the world, U.S. policy viewed Africa as a continent where radical and
communist influence should be eradicated--a goal that required military
support to colonial powers or efforts that would deny real independence
to African countries by imposing and sustaining client regimes. . . .
Rare is the African country that in recent years could elude
intervention by neo-colonialist interests and the retardation of
national development that such intervention so often brings. Yet these
secret agencies are not phantom forces. Their methods can be understood
and their people can be identified. Measures to counter their operations
can succeed, as their numerous blunders and failures demonstrate."
In the fall of 1979 as the Sandinistas had just won their popular
revolution against the brutal Washington-supported regime of Anastasio
Somoza in Nicaragua, Phil wrote prophetically in what was then Covert
Action Information Bulletin about "The CIA's Blueprint for Nicaragua."
"The CIA's programs for covert collection of information on Nicaragua
continue, of course, from the period before the Sandinista victory.
Besides the CIA Station in the U.S. Embassy in Managua, officers in many
other Stations such as those in the Andean Pact countries, San Jose,
Panama, City, Mexico City, New York, Washington and Miami have special
assignments for intelligence collection on Nicaragua . . . The CIA could
have installed bugs in key government offices in Managua during the
final days of Somoza as well as in Nicaraguan Embassies in key
countries--no problem, given the CIA's intimate relations with the
Somocistas. . . "
The infamous and bloody CIA "covert" paramilitary operations against the
Sandinistas under the direction of Lt. Col. Oliver North and his CIA
colleagues inside Ronald Reagan's National Security Council and which
blossomed into the famous Iran-Contra debacle, were a direct offspring
of the activities Phil foresaw.
Under the Freedom of Information Act, Phil told British investigative
journalist Duncan Campbell one year ago this month, he was able to see
through at least a small window into the immensity of what the CIA per
se and the government in general has deployed against him through the
years. "They admitted to having 18,000 pages on me. I figured out there
were 120 pages a day for seven or eight years. That can only be things
like telephone transcripts and letter intercepts. Some person from the
Pentagon was talking about me and saying they had two or three people
working on me full time."
[Louis Wolf is co-founder with Philip Agee and four others and director
of research of the magazine Covert Action Information which was renamed
Covert Action Quarterly, which published until 2005. Philip Agee
co-authored two books with Wolf and others]
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