Service A lesson one: Hell hath no fury like a scorned employee, who publishes a tell-all book about his former employer. Most people may have never heard of Philip Agee, and those who have probably couldn't care less. But he epitomizes the biggest fear an intelligence agency has when they hire new officers: a person who's ego and bitterness will give him/her all the rationalization he or she needs to betray their country. According to various accounts, including Mr. Mitrokhin and Oleg Kalugin, the former head of the KGB's counterintelligence directorate, Agee, a CIA field officer in Latin America, was summarily fired from the agency in 1968 for heavy drinking, hitting on embassy wives, and financial mismanagement. Agee was originally turned down by the KGB in Mexico City, as his information he wanted to unload seemed too good to be true. The Cubans, however, lapped him right up like a fly to a frog's tongue. The communist Cuban government, no friends of the US mind you, passed many if not all of Agee's revelations over to the KGB. With an unknown amount of assistance from service A and the Cubans, Agee went on to publish five damaging US and CIA books, first of which was titled Inside The Company: CIA Diary. Agee's blatant disregard for his oath led to unspeakable damage to operations including the likely cause of deaths of two agents. The book was first published in Great Britain and received much fanfare. After a lengthy appeal, Agee was deported from Britain to The Netherlands and other various countries. One not so surprising character witness during this debacle was former US-Attorney General Ramsey Clark (this man alone deserves an entire book written about his anti-American antics).
Service A later used Agee and other US citizens for active measures; namely publishing an anti-CIA information bulletin. Those people and the bulletin shall remain nameless as well as Agee's other books, because frankly they don't deserve mention. For a matter of record however, the KGB codenames for the latter were: RUPOR, RUBY, and ARSENIO.
In January 2008 while in Cuba, Philip Agee died at a local hospital during routine surgery. While one should rarely find such feelings within concerning a person's death, it is hard not to feel an ironic poetic justice involved. Bottom line is this: be careful employing those who have a long, malignant history of blaming others. Furthermore, a selfish and disgruntled mindset will always trump ideology (did he really care about the Communist Utopia?). Philip Agee, who never served time for his crime, shall go down in history as not a man destined to do right by a utopian ideology, but as a grumpy drunk who was successfully exploited by the KGB to act as their puppet. Sound familiar Scott Ritter?
Service A later used Agee and other US citizens for active measures; namely publishing an anti-CIA information bulletin. Those people and the bulletin shall remain nameless as well as Agee's other books, because frankly they don't deserve mention. For a matter of record however, the KGB codenames for the latter were: RUPOR, RUBY, and ARSENIO.
In January 2008 while in Cuba, Philip Agee died at a local hospital during routine surgery. While one should rarely find such feelings within concerning a person's death, it is hard not to feel an ironic poetic justice involved. Bottom line is this: be careful employing those who have a long, malignant history of blaming others. Furthermore, a selfish and disgruntled mindset will always trump ideology (did he really care about the Communist Utopia?). Philip Agee, who never served time for his crime, shall go down in history as not a man destined to do right by a utopian ideology, but as a grumpy drunk who was successfully exploited by the KGB to act as their puppet. Sound familiar Scott Ritter?
