Infamous ex-CIA agent Philip Agee resurfaces in Cuba

June 23, 2000 
Web posted at: 1:38 AM EDT (0538 GMT) 

HAVANA (AP) -- Former CIA agent Philip Agee, a longtime friend of communist Cuba who exposed purported CIA operatives in his infamous book, has resurfaced in Havana, where he has launched what he says is the first independent American business in 40 years. 

With European investors and the state-run travel agent as his partner, Agee has opened a travel Web site designed specifically to bring American tourists to the island -- even if it means violating the U.S. trade embargo. 

The site, cubalinda.com, offers package tours within Cuba and other help with Cuban tourism that is largely off limits to Americans because of U.S. law. 

"I would like to see people ignore the law," Agee said at a press conference Thursday. "The idea is to disdain this law to the point that our grandfathers disdained Prohibition." 

Agee has long enraged supporters of U.S. sanctions on Cuba by his support of Fidel Castro's revolution and campaign to end the nearly four-decade-old embargo, which limits American tourists from spending money on the island -- effectively barring them from visiting. 

He has also been accused of receiving up to $1 million in payments from the Cuban intelligence service. He has denied the accusations, which were first made by a high-ranking Cuban intelligence officer and defector in a 1992 Los Angeles Times report. 

Agee, 65, quit the CIA in 1969 after 12 years with the agency, working mostly in Latin America during the years that leftist movements were gaining prominence and sympathizers. 

His 1975 book "Inside the Company: CIA Diary" cited alleged CIA misdeeds against leftists in Latin America that included a 22-page list of purported agency operatives. 

Barbara Bush, the wife of former president George Bush -- himself a onetime CIA chief -- in her autobiography accused the book of exposing a CIA station chief, Richard S. Welch, who was later killed by leftist terrorists in Athens in 1975. Agee, who denied any involvement in the death, sued her for
defamation and she revised the book to settle the case. 

Agee's U.S. passport was revoked in 1979. U.S. officials said he had threatened national security. 

After years of living in Hamburg, Germany -- occasionally underground, fearing CIA retribution -- Agee has decided to make Havana his home and the seat of his new business. 

American companies have been barred from doing business with Cuba since the embargo was imposed in the 1960s to put pressure on Castro. 

"I don't have a license. I don't have permission. I haven't asked and I'm not going to because it's a question of principle," Agee said. 

A spokesman at the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington said officials were unaware of Agee's plans and had no comment Thursday. 

Agee said he received funding for the tourism project from European investors, but declined to say how much or even who they are. 

"They are not especially interested in advertising the fact that they're involved with me here," Agee said, acknowledging his own infamy. 

The Web site, which has been partially running since February, on Friday is to launch its first major promotion targeted at Americans -- a weeklong tour during carnival festivities in July and August. 

Prices start at around $600 inclusive -- although not including airfare, which must be arranged separately and through a third country unless the visitor receives a Treasury Department license, he said. 

The tours must be pre-paid over the Internet to a European bank account run by the company -- a rare concession to U.S. law in that the money isn't directly deposited in a Cuban account. 

Agee said he has received no word from the U.S. government about his dealings. But he has received threatening e-mails from people he believes are anti-Castro Cuban-American exiles in Miami, who are opposed to any dealings with Cuba. 

"It's always nice to know that your enemy, or that your unfriendly side, knows that you're in business," he said. 

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