Philip Agee Dead and Gone…but here to celebrate the Cuban Revolution, just the same.

As is their tradition, “The New York Times Sunday Magazine” just days before the turn of the year, offers comments on a variety of people who have shaped our personal and public history, and who have passed away in this previous year. Some names we know, others not all will recognize, but they are people who may deserve a final “word.” Let’s get a personal take on one of those individuals.

The name “Philip Agee” came to their journalistic mind and rightly so. Today is January 1, 2009, and the 50^th Anniversary of Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution. Mr. Agee passed away a year ago on Jan. 7, 2008 of peritonitis, in Havana, Cuba - where he owned a travel agency. He was well treated in a Havana hospital, I presume; Cuba is noted for its good medical care.

Philip Agee went to work for the CIA in 1957; his last career posting with them was in Mexico City in 1969, where he collected names of CIA employees and published them in Europe, after he resigned. He told the press he became disillusioned with his work as an Embassy Cultural Affairs Attaché. Forget the scientific exhibits/tradeshows and performing artists exchanges, he was referring to what he called, the C.I.A. “Promoting fascism around the world,” (NYTimes, Dec. 28, 2008)… “I did not write this book (“Inside the Company: C.I.A. Diary”) for the K.G.B. I wrote it as a contribution to socialist revolution.”

A former K.G.B. officer, defector to the U.S. and now an American, the frequent government advisor Oleg Kalugin commented that Agee first contacted Soviet intelligence, but was turned away when they thought he was a plant. “He then approached Cuban intelligence, supplying details of C.I.A operations in Latin America that were then passed on to the K.G.B.” “NYTimes,” Jan. 10, 2008. General Kalugin considered Agee, “a valuable source.”

As a man who was there during those times, as an agent, officer and operator, Frederic DeLis had his own opinions of Philip Agee. In my book, “Blue Group,” Frederic told me, “Did I tell you I was on one of his lists…I was about to give a concert in London when a British MI6 agent showed me the list - but the show went on.”…and then “Not likely he acted alone in this game; a person can’t just walk out the door (of C.I.A or the Embassy) with secret documents, and in Agee's own words, (from his book, “One the Run”), he mentions, it would take a long time to write his memoirs because he ‘just didn’t remember much instantly.’…it was “not convincing he would have saved it on paper (before computer disks); doing so would show premeditation.” Perhaps he had help from within.

C.I.A Rome Station Chief Richard Welch was on Agee’s list and was assassinated, “On the list, not just people from the Mexico office,” said Frederic… “He (Welch) was not an easy person (to get along with) but he was in charge, not a reason to kill a person.” In Agee’s book, he raves at the C.I.A for following him in Europe - “the nerve.” But that is what they do, I replied. Frederic laughed, “Maybe he was replaced…after the list came out, later on…maybe he was actually C.I.A. again in truth, find a look-alike, make a few adjustments…ha.” It happens.

For Agee, spy-outing might have been lucrative. "According to the London Telegraph," "A high-ranking Cuban defector accused Agee of receiving up to $1 million in payments from Cuban intelligence."

According to Thomas Powers, author of “Intelligence Wars, American Secret History from Hitler to al-Qaeda,” 2002, “I never could determine what the government wanted from Agee…but they considered him sufficiently important that they chased him around the world for the rest of his life,” “Washington Post”, Jan. 10, 2008.

Again from my book, “On November 18, 2001...it seems that Philip Agee is advertising for travel to Cuba. The most amusing part is that CNN believes everyone knows Philip Agee; no mention was made explaining who Agee is, just his name and his promotion script. You see how famous “our” man Phil is.”

To the end of Agee's life, Cuba loved him as their own. Again from the "Telegraph," in an obituary from "Granma", the Cuban Communist Party newspaper, Agee was described as a "loyal friend of Cuba and staunch defender of the people's struggle for a better world."

Frederic told me, "you think about it differently - not so friendly - when it's your name, down there in writing on the list."

To be sure, Philip Agee was a very mysterious guy.