Philip Agee served in the CIA from 1957 - 1968. He left the CIA because its murderous and authoritarian activities in Latin America, and elsewhere conflicted with his moral upbringing. In 1975 he wrote a book about his work as a case officer in the CIA called "Inside the Company: CIA Diary." Click here to read some excerpts from the book.
Agee understood that the CIA was waging class warfare in the Third World on behalf of the tiny oligarchs in the United States, and that the American people would have to face this inner anti-democratic menace because they too are in the grips of the oligarchs. In his book, he said that counter-insurgency methods that were developed by the CIA and U.S. special forces in the Third World would be used against the American people: "... The killings at Kent State and Jackson State show clearly enough that sooner or later our counter-insurgency methods would be applied at home."
Unsurprisingly, American citizens with different political stripes are all being classified as "domestic terrorists" and "anti-government extremists" by Homeland Security, which means that violence by the United States government against the American people is not far behind. If it gets to that point, however, more people in America will come to recognize that the CIA, and the United States government does not represent them, or cares about their interests. And it is highly possible that after a period of crisis popular reforms will be implemented in the United States that will help recover America's constitutional republic and the freedoms of the American people, and help disband the National Security apparatus which exists solely to extend, and defend the power of the tiny percent of state terrorists and criminal oligarchs that control the U.S. government.
II.
In his SpyTalk column today, Jeff Stein reports that the library of New York University has attained the private writings of Agee, and will publish them in the spring of next year. Stein says that Agee's 1975 book "was arguably more damaging than anything WikiLeaks has produced," and he is right. WikiLeaks could publish one million documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the effect on public perception would still be minuscule compared to the Pentagon papers. What will reverse the direction of the wars, and ultimately put an end to the criminal war on terror, is if decision-making documents and highly-secret memos are made available through WikiLeaks by honest officials within the government. These officials don't even have to be courageous like Ellsberg was when he released the Pentagon papers because the nature of WikiLeaks allows current whistleblowers the security of anonymity.
III.
Agee in a clip from John Pilger's documentary "War on Democracy."
