Great quote from a senior CIA operative

[politicaholic]

"There are people in this administration who now have more in common with Philip Agee and the KGB than they do their fellow citizens."

btw- Philip Agee is the ex-CIA operative that moved to Cuba in the seventies after he published his Diary revealing many operative names.

this is actually a really good article:
http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/10/vest-j-10-01.html

[ModerateMiddle]

1. What do you know about Agee? (nt)

[ShaneGR]

2. He was a turncoat CIA guy who purposely leaked Agent names

He said he was doing it to stop the CIA's behind the scenes brutality. That's fair enough. But putting undercover agents at risk is WAY out of line.

[protect freedom impeach bush now]

6. Agee quote on US wealth depends on keeping poor people poor

quote:

A considerable proportion of the developed world's prosperity rests on paying the lowest possible prices for the poor countries' primary products and on exporting high-cost capital and finished goods to those countries. Continuation of this kind of prosperity requires continuation of the relative gap between developed and underdeveloped countries - it means keeping poor people poor.
Increasingly, the impoverished masses are understanding that the prosperity of the developed countries and of the privileged minorities in their own countries is founded on their poverty."

-Philip Agee, CIA Diary

[maggrwaggr]

9. recent economic trends have certainly proven this

So much of the economic "boom" in the 90's was from exporting manufacturing jobs for all our stuff to china, malaysia, etc. etc.

That's why everything high tech got so cheap

[protect freedom impeach bush now]

7. American capitalism, based as it is on exploitation of the poor...

"American capitalism, based as it is on exploitation of the poor, with its fundamental motivation in personal greed, simply cannot survive without force - without a secret police force.
Now, more than ever, each of us is forced to make a conscious choice whether to support the system of minority comfort and privilege with all its security apparatus and repression, or whether to struggle for real equality of opportunity and fair distribution of benefits for all of society, in the domestic as well as the international order. It's harder now not to realize that there are two sides, harder not to understand each, and harder not to recognize that like it or not we contribute day in and day out either to the one side or to the other."

Philip Agee, CIA Diary

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA%20Hits/CIA_GreatestHits.html

[ModerateMiddle]

8. I understand him to have been a hero actually

Along the lines of Daniel Ellsberg and releasing the Pentagon Papers. He was horrified at the death and torture happening because of CIA involvement in South American countries, and THAT is why he wrote his expose.

Barbara Bush accused him of causing the death of a CIA station chief, and Agee sued for slander (or libel, I can't keep those straight) for $4 million. He dropped his case after she said he wasn't the cause.

Yes, the government was pissed and surely so was the CIA. But I approve more of what Agee did than I approve of what the CIA was doing in SoAmerica.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

12. That's what I remember, also. If he had actually caused as much...

...damage to the CIA as they claimed at the time, Agee would have been killed by the old "person or persons unknown" routine.

[protect freedom impeach bush now]

3. here - read his book

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/CIA_Diary_Agee.html

[htuttle]

11. Ironically enough, even Agee thinks that the outing of Palme was wrong!

here's a story from ABC News yesterday:

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/US/CIAleak031001_tapper.html

"If they finally identify the person who exposed Mrs. Wilson — that is, who gave her name to the columnist Novak that she was a CIA operative, and if she really is undercover, then I think they have to prosecute," Agee says. "In fact after that law was passed I didn't do any more naming of names and I now submit my writing to the CIA for pre-publication review — as is required by a court order."

In fact, the man seen by the U.S. government as one of the most notorious traitors of the 20th century sees the behavior of the alleged White House leaker in a negative light, even though he theoretically has no problem with outing intelligence officers.

"Of course there is a big difference between the naming of Ambassador Wilson's wife as a CIA operative under cover from my motivations and the motivations of all the many people I was working with in the 1970s," he says. "Our purpose was political — was to try to put a stop to the dirty work, and this case — it was simply dirty."

He also brings up the immense irony in having this scandal take place in the Bush Jr. White House, given that the 'anti-Agee' law was passed by his father.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

14. Here's the text of a speech that Agee was to give about the first...

....Gulf War, otherwise known as Desert Storm. Poppy Bush working through his contacts managed to stop Agee from speaking.

PRODUCING THE PROPER CRISIS
a speech by Philip Agee, formerly of the CIA.
From Z magazine, Oct. 1990
<http://world.std.com/obi/Philip.Agee/Z>

The beginning of the speech...

"Sooner or later it had to happen: the fundamental transformation of
U.S. military forces was really only a matter of time. Transformation,
in this sense, from a national defense force to an international
mercenary army for hire. With a U.S national debt of $3 trillion, some
$800 billion owned by foreigners, The United States sooner or later
would have to find, or produce, the proper crisis - one that would
enable the president to hire out the armed forces, like a national
export, in order to avoid conversion of the economy from military to
civilian purposes. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, encouraged, it seems, by
the Bush administration, is the necessary crisis."

Click the link above if you want to know more.

[sleipnir]

4. The good guys are commin' out

The CIA has finally had it with * and his thugs. They're takin' him down. A friend of mine in the gov. once told me, "Never fuck with a CIA guy, it'll bite you in the ass, one way or the other."

He was referring to starting bar fights, lawsuits, angry heckling, noise complaints of CIA employees and the like, but * seems to have taken this to a whole new level.

[HootieMcBoob]

5. Agee was on DemocracyNow this morning

Larry Johnson was on right before him saying pretty much the same sort of stuff that he said on the Newshour the other night. Really laying into the Bush people. Very powerful stuff given his work with CIA and that he's a repug.

Amy Goodman said they were going to be speaking to Agee and asked Johnson if he'd like to hang on and join in the conversation. Johnson refused. He said he considers Agee a traitor and said he was responsible for the deaths of a number of Americans.

[TacticalPeek]

10. Philip Agee was the inspiration for Poppy's support for the Agent ID act.

I supported Agee's opposition to CIA wrong-doing, but he went way too far and endangered agents' lives, although some case can be made that Richard Welch's murder could be traced to other outings (Greek newspaper, etc.).

snip
"This is entirely different than what I was doing in the 1970s," said Agee, who in 1975 wrote "Inside the Company: CIA Diary," a tell-all book about his experiences with the agency from 1957 to 1968.

"This is purely dirty politics in my opinion," said Agee, who four years ago launched a Havana-based online travel agency, Cubalinda.com. The disclosure that the ambassador's wife was a CIA operative was "a cheap shot made because (Wilson) picked a hole in that pack of lies justifying the war," Agee said.
snip

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/breaking_news/6908294.htm

[Media_Lies_Daily]

13. We were TOLD that Agee "endangered agents' lives", but we were...

...told a lot of things back then that just weren't true, weren't we? We're being told even more things today that aren't true.

IMHO, Agee knew something then other than agents' names that they didn't want him to discuss publicly.