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This is the unedited version of my interview with former CIA agent Phil Agee. click here to go back to the Daily Beacon Page. If you want to get in touch with me via e-mail click here. 


SR: The first question that I have is that people have the impression that the CIA is a Big Omnipresent Government Agency with its hand in everything. How true is this belief? 

PA: I think that's relatively untrue and it depends what period of history you are talking about. During the 1960's President Johnson was obsessed with the idea that there was a foreign hand behind the anti-war movement and he told the FBI to find that hand. The FBI did the investigation and they couldn't find it and they told Johnson that and he hit the roof, he said there is a foreign hand in there. So he told the CIA in 1967 "I want you to find the foreign hand." And, so the CIA begin a whole series of illegal operations inside the United States because they are, by law, barred from an internal security function. But they searched high and low abroad and in the United States and they went back to Johnson and told him "No, we can't find
the foreign hand; and there is no foreign hand as far as we're concerned of any significance." By that time Johnson's presidency was destroyed by the Vietnam War and in came Richard Nixon in 1969. Nixon too was obsessed with finding the foreign hand behind the anti-war movement. He had the CIA continue these illegal operations that they were doing and had the FBI also continue a whole series of operations that were illegal against the anti-war movement and against various groups particularly the Black Panthers. The FBI continued to tell Nixon that there was no foreign hand the CIA did the same. So Nixon came up with what was known as the Houston Plan, after Tom Houston who was an assistant council to the President, and this was a whole series of illegal operations to intensify this search for the foreign hand and at the same time to
neutralize the opposition to Nixon's policies in Vietnam. He was paranoid, as everyone knows, he was so paranoid that he even bugged himself. But, it never turned up, the foreign hand, because there was no foreign hand to turn up. The CIA was collecting files on thousands of people at that time inside this country. But that was an unusual period, even though they had been reviewing mail, going out to the Soviet Union and other communist countries and other places for some 20 years from 1952 to 1972, I don't think that you can say that the CIA hand is everywhere. Or ever was everywhere in the United States. It has a definite role and it carries out this role mainly, almost exclusively, abroad. Whereas the FBI is the Agency charged with internal security, and wherever a group arose, and whenever a group arose that the FBI considered to be a threat to the stability, a potential threat to the stability, of the United States, and this goes on into the 1930's; they would initiate what they call counterintelligence programs or COINTELLPROS for short. These operations went on into the 1970's and they only became known after unknown persons stole several thousand pages from the FBI offices in Pennsylvania and this eventually came out in the press. And then the whole COINTELPRO program became known and Hoover stopped it as such. But, there can be know doubt that this continued on into the 1980's in the operations against the solidarity movement with El Salvador and Nicaragua because there have been exposes on those operations. So, the way to look at this is that the FBI
and the CIA are organized to sustain and promote stability. The CIA outside the United States the FBI inside the United States. And this means secret operations against all those groups that are potentially destabalizing factors. And so its a matter of looking at the groups that exist and assuming that they are going to be targets and that there is where the attention will fall. But not over the general population as such. 

SR: How much of what the American public hears through the mass media about foreign relations is true? Do we practice what we preach? 

PA: We certainly don't practice what we preach. That is we don't practice what we preach within the United States and much less abroad in my long experience in this area. But, the media can be very deceptive. The problem is not that so many lies are printed, there are plenty of those though, but the worst part of it is the censorship, the self censorship, that the media generally, I am speaking about the so called established media, or mainstream media. Starting with the New York Times and the broadcast networks. Where the problem is their selection of what is news and what is not news. And this is a form of censorship. That is why it is very important, if one wants to stay well informed, one has to read the alternative media. And hear I am talking about such publications as The Nation, Covert Action Quarterly, Extra from Fairness and accuracy in reporting. These publications are circulating all over the United States and there is far more on the internet with the news groups and the apc/igc conferences through peacenet and women's net and eco net and labor net and so forth. So there are ways of staying very well informed and I get far more that I can read. But, one can pick and choose, and devote a certain amount of time to keeping informed and not depend on the straight media. I do get Time and Newsweek and I get the International Herald Tribune, which is a combination of New York Times, Washington Post, and sometimes LA Times articles. But that is simply to see the comparison between what they publish and don't publish and what is to me, what is really news. So, to keep informed one has to go beyond the mainstream media. 

SR: What are some extreme examples of CIA intervention into foreign policy? 

PA: The CIA is an interventionist organization into foreign policy from the start. Certainly the very beginning of the functioning of the new national security structure in 1947, when the CIA was established as the first peace time civilian national security service in United States history, has been one of intervention. Beginning with the intervention in the Italian elections of 1948, which President Truman set aside 10 million dollars for the CIA to intervene secretly. This operation was followed by many others. For example, some of the more egregious operations have been the activities that the CIA has undertaken with the foreign intelligence and security services of other countries. This is where the CIA has gotten involved with death squads, torture and so forth. It begins very early on also and continues on into the 1990's. I worked on these
operations myself, they're called liaison operations. It is when the CIA trains and finances and directs and gives information to the local services in any particular country and this has been especially horrifying in El Salvador in the 1980's, in Guatemala since the 1950's, and in Iran for over 25 years from the time of the overthrow of the civilian democratically elected government in 1953 in that country until the fall of the Shah in 1979. There are many many examples of these types of activities and they are interventionist to the hilt. And you have not only election operations but you have the whole range of what became known as covert action operations. Which are the ways in which the CIA seeks to penetrate and manipulate the institutions of power over the countries in order to manipulate events. I was involved in all of these types of things in Latin
America and I describe them in great detail in Inside the Company, my book that came out in 1975. But there have been other books since, they all are on the same theme, they are variations on the same theme. They are the ways the CIA seeks to manipulate and penetrate the governments and political parties, the military and security services, the trade unions, the youth and student organizations, the professional and cultural societies, the women's organizations, church organizations and churches, and the public information media. It is a way in which the United States has sought, over the years, to control the situation in other countries. Because there has been a point of view that what is not under our control is dangerous. 

SR: Publicly the CIA states that it does not promote political assassinations. Do you have any information that refutes this contention? 

PA: I would refer you to the reports of the Senate Intelligence Investigation of the 1970's, the so called Church Committee They have a whole volume on CIA assassination plots not just against Fidel Castro but against various other people. 

SR: That was involved with the Mafia in the 60's? 

PA: Yes, the CIA began with the Mafia and they continued through the years with others. They tried to assassinate Lumumba in the Congo on the 1960's, there was an attempt against Cho-Enli the Chinese Premiere. They did carry out the assassination of Tru Heyo, the Dictator of the Dominican Republic. Because he was turning to Moscow, relations with him went sour with the United States. The Agency has been supposedly barred from assassination since an executive order was executed by Ford around 1976. This executive order is still in effect. It prohibits the CIA to seek the assassination of a chief of state or something that could cause the assassination of a chief of state in a foreign country. In actual fact, the great great overwhelming numbers of murders caused by the CIA are not done directly. The CIA officers, like I was, do not go out and pull the trigger on somebody in no way, you get other people to do it. That is where you have the situation in Nicaragua, for example, the CIA's contras, which where organized under the base of the old Samosa national guard, the dictatorship that on went from the 30's until 1979, supported all the way be the United States, reorganized in Honduras, under CIA sponsorship. The CIA brought in training officers from the Argentine military, which had just carries out the dirty war in Argentina with thousands and thousands of people who were made to disappear, dropped out of airplanes over the sea and so forth. During
this Contra war, which developed into a civil war in Nicaragua, some 35000 people were killed. Mostly not main line Sandanistas defending, but defenseless peasants and others who opposed the Contras. If you consider that Nicaragua has a population of 3.5 million and 35000 were killed, that's 1 percent of the population. The comparable figure for the United States is 2.5 million dead. Which is more than those killed in all the wars the United States has ever had or ever participated in. So it was a catastrophe visited upon Nicaragua. for which the United States owes great shame. There is not a family in Nicaragua, practically, that does not have somebody that was either killed or maimed in this US sponsored terrorist war in this country, 

SR: Do you believe in the governments right to withhold information from the public on the grounds of national security? 

PA: That is such a broad justification for withholding information that certainly restrictions are in order. Far more has been declassified since world war II than was necessary, you are talking about hundreds of millions of pages of stuff and I classified so many documents when I was in the CIA. Everything I wrote in the CIA was classified, and I was writing every single day, like every other CIA officer. So, there is a contradiction between a sunshine atmosphere where government is concerned and the natural tendency of a government to deny knowledge to the population. Because knowledge is power and the more people know about what the government is really doing, the more they can object and oppose and even replace that government. So that is one of the reasons for secrecy in the government, because open government tends to foment opposition. And no government wants opposition, they believe they are in the drivers seat and believe what they say is the best. 

SR: But is a society where the people are the government wouldn't government be working against itself? 

PA: Show me that society. I don't think I've found one, certainly not in this country. 

SR: It seems to be theory but not practice. 

PA: In theory, if there were a popular government, a government which responded to the needs of all the people, there would be very little that would have to be maintained secret. There would be adversaries out there, dangers of terrorism or activities undertaken to stop the international drug trade or the spread of nuclear weapons or the spread of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear, biological or chemical. In these cases there is justified secrecy, but there would be far less than there is now. But the fact is that we have a government, that has been from the beginning, run by elites in this country and they have taken power unto themselves to the exclusion of the vast majority of the population and what is defined as National Security
is their Security. 

SR: How autonomous is the CIA? Does the government control the CIA or does the CIA control itself? 

PA: The CIA is by no means autonomous. It is under total control of the President and what the CIA does, there is a paper trail which can be found, and has been found in certain cases, from the President to the National Security council to the CIA. In my time the orders from the National Security Council, which is chaired by the President, were found in the form of what is called National Security Council Intelligence Directives. These were the broad instructions to the CIA on what to do around the world. These then were interpreted by the director of Central Intelligence, who is not only the head of the CIA but is, in theory, the head of the whole intelligence community which is comprised of some 12 different agencies spending
28-29 billion dollars a year. These were interpreted and redefined in what were known as Director of Central Intelligence Directives. These were the director's interpretation of the National Security Council Intelligence Directives which are then sent out to the various intelligence agencies including the CIA. From there came the various operations. 

The CIA in theory, and in practice also, is not supposed to make policy. It is an executive agency to carry out policy. Never the less there have been times when the CIA has proposed certain operations, certain activities when they saw a situation which they thought they could influence. This was not exactly making policy, but they would propose a type of activity in the belief that it was within the established policy mandates from the President. But, when you get a person like, all these things depend on personalities, William Casey in as director of Central Intelligence and the CIA. There was a man who was given cabinet level status. That is the highest under the president and the Vice President. That has been the case with the
director of Central of Intelligence appointed in 1995. When a director of Central Intelligence sits as a cabinet officer he has a whole lot more input into policy making than he would if he did not. It is a very bad idea to have the intelligence chief involved in making policy because that is what the cabinet does. There is a strong argument to be made that no CIA director should be a cabinet officer. 

SR: The CIA knew that you intended to expose their operations in South America when you left the agency. Is their a reason they didn't kill you prior to publishing your book? 

PA: There is no black and white answer to that question. My belief is that they had a plan to lure me to Spain through 2 young Americans who befriended me in Paris in the early 1970's and who did in fact do everything they could to lure me to Spain. They offered financial inducements and other things. But I knew that the CIA was thick as thieves with the Franco facist security services. This was still the Franco time in Spain. I have documentation, which I received under the Freedom of Information Act, these are not CIA documents they are criminal division documents from the Justice Department which show there was a criminal conspiracy. I currently have a $7 million lawsuit against the government under the federal court claims act for this conspiracy for damages and we will see whether the lawsuit prospers and whether I do get access to the documentation which we know exists. In fact this documentation was judged by the justice department to be described as illegal actions be taken against me in the 1970's. Because of these documents, which I would have had access to had the government prosecuted me at any particular point through criminal discovery procedure, the CIA could not prosecute me. They tried in 1975 when my first book came out and during the 1970's, from 1975 to 1980. All together they tried 5 times to get a criminal indictment against me and each time they had to back down because they could not let me have these
documents which showed the criminal activity which they conspiring to carry out against me. They effectively, by their own actions, precluded prosecution. Not to atypical for them. 

SR: Looking back at all of the harassment you faced when you exposed the covert operations, do you think you would do it all over again? 

PA: I wouldn't think twice about doing it over again. Of course I would. The most important thing is to be honest with yourself. I went into the CIA right out of college as a product of the 1950's. Which means the Mccarthy period and the anti-communist hysteria of that time. It also meant that I had no political education. I simple accepted the traditional assumptions that the soviet union was out to conquer the world and I was going to play a patriotic role in stopping that. By age 25 I was down in South America doing the work. My eyes began to open little by little down there as I began to realize more and more that all of the things that I, and my colleagues were doing in the CIA had one goal that was that we were supporting the traditional power structures in Latin America. These power structures had been in place for centuries. Where in a relative few families where able to control the wealth and income and power of the state and the economy. To the exclusion of the majority of the population in many countries. The only glue that kept this system together was political repression. I was involved in this. Eventually I decided I didn't want anything more to do with that. I left the CIA to start a new life in 1969 I went back to the university. I enrolled in the National University of Mexico in Mexico City, where I remained living after resigning from the CIA. As I carried out the studies, doing the reading and the research and writing papers and such, I began to realize more and more that what I and my colleagues had been doing in the 60's and 50's was nothing more than a continuation of early 500 years of genocide of the worst imaginable political repression that anyone can
come up with. The figures are mind blowing in terms of the numbers of Native Americans who were killed or put to work in South America in what is now Bolivia and Brazil. Where their life expectancy was measured in weeks and months once they went to work in these places. Or in North America as well. So I then began to think at that time about something that was unthinkable: a book about how it all worked. No one had ever written such a book and I had a pretty wide experience in CIA operations in Latin America and I knew many operations that existed around the world as well. So I decided to write a book about it.. I had to make a decision whether to continue these studies or to write this book and I couldn't find the research material for this book in Mexico City. I wanted to reconstruct events to show our hand in the events. So I had to
choose between the 2 and I chose to write the book. Not knowing whether it would ever get written or where it would take me. 

As to whether I would do it over again. I wouldn't change a thing. I might be a little more discreet and careful here and there. Not quite so flamboyant in some places. I would certainly not change anything. I would encourage people also to look at their own lives and determine what role they or going to play. Whether they are going to go with the flow. Whether they are going to adopt the proposition that you have to go along to get along. Or whether they want to stand back and take a look and join this long and honorable tradition of dissidence in the United States. This goes back to the early opposition to the Constitution, the abolitionist movement of the 1840's and 50's. Which goes back to the opposition of wars: the Spanish-American War in 1898, to world war 1 and 2, to the Vietnam war and the Korean war. There is a long and respectable
tradition in the United States of seeking change and social justice. I can assure anyone that reads this interview that they will never be disappointed if they try to help in this respect. If they decide to, besides profession and family, that they will work politically for change. That they will have great self esteem and satisfaction from knowing that they are doing the right thing and that they are not selling out.