A GOOD MAN PASSES

Philip Agee died yesterday in Havana at the age of 72. He is best known for having quit the CIA in 1968 and publishing a book called Inside the Company: CIA Diary. This act, breaking the code of silence within the CIA by revealing the names of agents in a 22-page list, made Agee a marked man for the rest of his life.

In 1978 Agee and his partner settled into Cambridge, England but was deported soon thereafter when Henry Kissinger urged then British prime minister Jim Callaghan to throw him out of the country. This act began an odyssey by Agee as he was forced to move from one country after the other as the U.S. used its vindictive powers to make an example of him. In his remarkable book in 1987, called On The Run, Agee offers us a rare insight into the life of a stateless man. He was ultimately expelled from five NATO countries.

Agee grew up in Tampa, Florida and came from a patriotic and devout Catholic family. He studied at the University of Notre Dame, became a CIA operations officer in 1957 and was posted in South America and Mexico.

I first met Agee in the early 1990's after receiving a call from his sister in Orlando, Florida while working for the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice. Philip had suggested she give us a call and inquire about volunteering. She became one of our regular mailing party letter stuffers and once organized a wonderful benefit concert for us at her home where she played the piano and had a violinist accompany her.

In 1995 I did a speaking tour of Germany and Phil's sister arranged for me to visit him and his wife, Giselle Roberge, in Hamburg. I stayed at their home for two nights and Phil gave me a walking tour of the city. I helped them move some furniture from a rental property they were cleaning out and they took me to dinner at a wonderful Italian restaurant where the sauce was as good as any I've ever had.

Phil was a very humble and regular guy. There was no pretense about him and when I left Hamburg he gave me a signed copy of his gripping book On The Run.

In the 1990's Phil was allowed to visit the U.S. and returned to Florida to see his father who was near death. Once again his sister swung into action and arranged for Phil to speak at an event I organized for him at a church in Orlando. People came from all over the state to hear him speak and his talk was much about the broad direction of U.S. foreign and military policy.

When I think back it is clear that he had tremendous influence on how I do my talks today, emphasizing the general outlines of U.S. strategic policy so we are not just jumping from one crisis to another. It is best if the progressive movement has a wider view of where things are going so we can articulate these directions more effectively and organize around them more directly.

In Phil's later years he moved to Cuba and set up a progressive travel agency to help facilitate folks visiting Cuba. Writing in the UK Guardian last year about Cuba, he said: "All of Cuba's achievements have been in defiance of U.S. efforts to isolate Cuba. Every dirty method has been used, including infiltration, sabotage, terrorism, assassination, economic and biological warfare and incessant lies in the media of many countries."

Philip Agee was a courageous man. He was a patriot who wanted to return America to what it was supposed to be - a real democracy run by the people, not the greedy corporate militarists that have taken over the nation. He was willing to give up literally everything just in order to tell the truth. He had to be able to live with himself.

The powers that be in the U.S., led by George H. W. Bush, set out to destroy Phil. They had to make an example of him for fear that others might follow his lead and live by their conscience. Phil just tried to honor the moral truths he had been taught in church and in college. It was a shame that he suffered, often alone, for doing so.

Philip Agee is a man to be remembered. He was a real American hero.

Click on this link for a 2003 interview with Philip Agee by Amy Goodman at Democracy Now: http://www.democracynow.org/2003/10/2/former_cia_agent_phillip_agee_on