Philip Agee photo (Reuters/Rafael Perez)
Philip Agee, a former CIA spy who exposed its undercover operations in Latin America his 1975 book Inside the Company: CIA Diary, has died on January 7 in Havana, Cuba. His widow, German ballet dancer Giselle Roberge, said he had been in hospital since December 15 and did not survive surgery for perforated ulcers. He was 72 years old.
While Philip Agee was long praised as "a loyal friend of Cuba" by the communist-run island state, his native U.S. government called him a traitor. He went to live in London but was deported by Britain in 1976 at the request of then secretary of state Henry Kissinger. His passport was revoked by the US government in 1979.
Barbara Bush, the wife of former U.S. president George Bush, who was CIA director in 1976, blamed Agee in her memoirs for the murder of the Athens station chief, Richard Welsh, in 1975. Agee denied any connection and sued her for $4 million, forcing her to revise the book to settle the libel case.
In 2000, Agee set up an online travel agency catering to Americans willing to defy a U.S. travel ban and visit the Communist-run island. The business folded due to tighter enforcement of sanctions by President George W. Bush.
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