Working for the Company

In the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate vacuum through which the American conscience presently drifts, it is increasingly difficult to be outraged by anything anymore. The moral corpse of the American myth, that Cold War belief that the U.S. was the guardian of liberty" the world over, has had so many autopsies that the stench of its decay no longer offends our senses--we are deadened to it.

Phillip Agee is one of the countless victims of the demise of the American political raison d'etre. He is also one of its assassins, Between 1960 and 1969 Agee served as a CIA officer in Latin America. He is a guilty man, and his book, CIA Diary, is a confession of his sins. Through five hundred and ninety-seven tedious pages, Agee chronicles his participation in bribery, extortion, bombing, spying, lying and torture, all in the service of the United States government. To make his expiation of guilt complete, Agee lists the names and occupations of over 200 CIA agents and, organizations, as well as giving detailed accounts of the CIA's organizational structure and training programs. And somehow, after finishing his testimonial of officially sanctioned barbarity, you are left outraged--it's almost a relief to find that it's still possible.

Agee was the a chetype of the 1950s college graduate. In 1956 he was chairman of the Washington's Birthday Exercises at Notre Dame, which gave General Curtis LeMay a "Patriotism Award." LeMay told Agee and his fellow classmates that"... If we maintain our faith in God, our love of freedom, and superior global air power, I think we can look to the future with confidence." Evidently Agee did. At the end of his senior year he was interviewed by a CIA recruiter on campus. He decided to join only after realizing that he did not want to be a lawyer or a businessman. Such was the genesis of the Cold War warrior that Agee was to become.

Agee realizes that he was a 1950s stereotype, so button-down-collared that it hurts to read about it. It is central to his intent in writing CIA Diary that Agee tells us that he was one of the countless college graduates that were "Made in America" all stamped out of the same white, suburban liberal mold. This background is important to Agee not only because he wants to tell us what he did as a CIA agent in Latin America; he also wants us to understand why he did it and to agree with him that trees grown on American soil must produce rotten fruit.

The CIA is a world unto itself. On entering it Agee became part of its particular ethos. CIA officers call the CIA the "Company," and according to Agee it is run like a clubby corporation. Much is kept secret, but everyone is part of keeping it secret, and it is all rather exciting at the outset, After serving a tour in the Air Force while a CIA employee, Agee completed his training as a CIA officer--knowledgeable in everything from karate to secrete handwriting. In December of 1960 he was sent to his first "station": Quito, Ecuador.

Agee spent three years in Ecuador, between 1960 and 1963, learning the ropes of "clandestine activity." These were the years of the Cuban Revolution, when the United States did everything in its power, short of an outright declaration of war, to stop Castro and the socialist state he desired.

In the domino theory of Latin America, U.S. policy-makers in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations perceived Cuba to be the first wedge of Soviet-sponsored communist aggression and dictatorship. To stop this Red cancer the CIA was authorized to infiltrate and suppress any government, institution, political party or embassy that supported or was supported by "communists." This task was to occupy Agee until he left the CIA in 1969.

The principle American desire was to convince Latin American nations that Cuba was a sufficient menace to warrant ending all diplomatic relations. The United States wanted to isolate Cuba politically and economically, hopefully to destroy it, and at the very least to contain its revolutionary influence.

In Ecuador the CIA's first goal was to force the Ecuadorean government to end its recognition of Cuba and to deport all Cuban nationals. The CIA also wanted the Ecuadorean government to end relations with all other communist countries and to declare all their citizens and representatives to be persona non grata. Finally the CIA was determined to undermine the indigenous Ecuadorean Left, concentrated in the labor unions and universities.

Within three years the CIA, with Agee's help, was able to achieve all of its goals. To do this it spent well over a million dollars, had two presidents deposed from office and eventually paved the way for a military coup d'etat in July of 1963. According to Agee, the CIA infiltrated every political party in Ecuador. The vice president and at least two Cabinet ministers were CIA agents. The CIA trained police and military officers in intelligence and interrogation techniques and encouraged right wing terrorist bombings of left-wing politicians' homes, party headquarters, and the embassies of communist countries. CIA agents also bombed Catholic churches and Conservative political part headquarters, and than blamed the bombings on "communist terrorists."' Using secret printing presses, forgeries and paid agents in the Ecuadorian press, the CIA spread constant anti-communist and anti-Cuban propaganda to the Ecuadorean public.

When Agee arrived in Ecuador, it had an elected parliamentary government and was one of the few countries in Latin America with an active labor movement and friendly relations with Cuba. By the time Agee left, Ecuador was a military dictatorship: pro-American and anti-Communist, its citizens lacking both civil rights and economic well-being.

CIA operations in Ecuador were typical of its activities in the rest of Latin America, according to Agee. There is seemingly not a single institution or organization that is immune to CIA infiltration. In the course of his work, Agee either met with or knew of CIA agents in the U.S. Embassy, the U.S. military, the Peace Corps, the Agency for International Development (AID), the Catholic Church, various American corporations, the international AFL-CIO, all major Latin American political parties, labor unions and governments, respected newspapers, and even the Olympic Committee for the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. With a budget for Latin American operations of over $37 million in 1967, Agee implies that the CIA was essentially able to buy whomever and whatever it wanted. There appears to be little reason to dispute his analysis.

After leaving Ecuador in 1963. Agee was reassigned to Uruguay, a nation that--was though to be "soft on communism" and a potential trouble sport for U.S. policy. In the aftermath of the disastrous CIA-supported Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, the effort to isolate Cuba was at its height. Using the same basic tactics as in Ecuador, Agee worked to infiltrate the Uruguayan Left and the government in order to force a diplomatic break with Cuba. Once again the CIA was successful, as Uruguay imposed economic and political sanctions on Cuba in September of 1964.

Agee's personal life, however, was not as successful as his professional endeavors. His marriage was breaking up and he found himself increasingly disillusioned with his work in the CIA. Agee writes that he felt disgusted with the American Marine invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965. He says he was also deeply affected by hearing the screams and moans of an Uruguayan man being tortured by the police after Agee had reported him to be a member of a communist organization. In August of 1966 Agee returned to the U.S., where he was reassigned to Mexico under the cover of the Olympic Attache to the U.S. Embassy. But he had decided to leave the CIA. After spending some time in Mexico City Agee resigned, citing "personal reasons" related to his deteriorating marriage.

By 1970 Agee had decided to write about the CIA. Increasing disillusionment with the U.S. government in the wake of the Cambodian invasion and the Kent State killings evidently moved Agee to begin to assemble his own list of official crimes committed for God and country. In spite of extensive CIA harassment. Agee finally completed the book last year. An English publisher accepted it after a number of U.S. firms had rejected the manuscript on the grounds that it was too boring.

The American publishers were partially correct. CIA Diary is a boring and poorly-written book, but it is also a saddening and ultimately enraging book. In its matter-of-fact listing of CIA activities it reveals the raw first of American power, the bulldozer that has slashed, torn and crushed not only nations, but entire continents, to make them "safe for democracy." You have to wade through some 600 pages of this book to grasp what it is saying: that the United States maintains its "allies" through massive bribery, extortion and assassination; that shorn of its exotic mythology, spying is a disgusting business, that the CIA is responsible for murdering hundreds of thousands of flesh and blood human beings whose only crime was to seek independence from the United States.

Sudan Guatemala, Greece, Bolivia, Chana, Indonesia, Iran, Syria, Ecuador, Uruguay, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Chile... all these countries are now ruled by dictatorships imposed through CIA-supported coups. It makes one wonder who to blame.

Philip Agee thinks we all are. He insists that the CIA follows Presidential orders when it overthrows a government. Agee himself has come full circle since his student days at Notre Dame--by 1975 he is a self-avowed socialist revolutionary.

Agee believes that the CIA exists as "the secret police force of American capitalism." In a recent interview in Playboy magazine he defends publishing the names of the 200 agents saying. "I am revealing the names of people engaged in criminal activities. These people live by breaking the law." Perhaps more important than the illegality of these CIA agents' activities is the fact that many Latin Americans have no idea who their officials really work for. It is time we all found out.

Agee's analysis of the CIA as a secret police force for capitalism is simplistic, but the net effect of CIA activities in the last decade supports it. Every military coup has been followed by a rise in American investment and economic aid. Nowhere has there been a corresponding rise in the incomes of even the near-majority of the people in these countries blessed with CIA-imposed governments.

In the past it has been common for deposed Latin American leaders to blame the CIA for their fall from power. It has been equally common for the U.S. government to deny the charges and hint that the Latin Americans are always seeking a scapegoat to cover their own political ineptness. With the publication of CIA Diary it will be all but impossible to believe future American denials of CIA involvement in Latin American affairs. Agee has shown that involvement to be too pervasive and long-standing to ever be denied again.

It is fair to ask if all that Agee has published is true. It is also fair to question his motives in publishing it. But regardless of his motivation, if only half of what Agee has written is true, it could stand alone as a devastating indictment of the dictatorial use of American power in the ostensible pursuit of an elusive "freedom" that has only brought increased oppression.

The CIA has attempted to discredit Agee, charging that he is a possible Soviet agent, but all in all the CIA has proved nothing and disproved even less. Agee says he wrote CIA Diary to permit the American people to see for themselves what their government does abroad in their name. The American people might also consider what happens when CIA agents who regularly subvert democratic processes in other countries return to the United States to serve in the government or in private corporations. Maybe we have more in common with Latin America than we think; maybe the CIA is subverting us.