Customer Reviews

Inside the Company: CIA Diary

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Philip Agee's INSIDE THE COMPANY: A CIA DIARY, is a classic example of a work written by an idealistic, well-intentioned man which tragically undercut the very thing he wanted to achieve: the success of mid-nineteen-seventies Congressional hearings into the crimes of the CIA. Agee was an intelligence officer from 1957 to 1969, working in Latin America. His book gives us vital "insider" knowledge of the CIA, for instance the meaning of CIA cryptograms-- and presents a picture of a man who was genuinely concerned for the welfare of the people of the region he was assigned to. His disillusionment came when he realized that the clandestine operations of the CIA, all aimed at repressing Leftist opposition to right-wing governments in Latin America, were doing nothing to better the basic living conditions of the people. He sees clearly that such methods could well be brought home, as they were to some extent in his time and even more so today, in order to undermine American democracy (pp. 578, 650). But he fails in the end to grasp the terrible structural change that the CIA has brought in the system of government designed by the Founding Fathers, eliminating checks and balances and replacing government by elected officials by a government of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats. By failing to see that the CIA's worst offense was not against social justice but DEMOCRACY, he lost his moral edge and undermined the Congressional fight against it. It would be understandable if someone reading Agee's book came away thinking that eliminating the CIA would mean more governments like that of Fidel Casto, which gives people social justice but no freedom. In order to eliminate the CIA and its legacy, we must strip of its mask as defender of freedom and expose it for what it has always been: the foremost defender of totalitarianism in the world.

Philip Agee was recruited by the CIA so he could fight for the American Dream. Unfortunately for them, he became disgusted by following State policy and supporting foreign regimes whose main aim was to fill their own pockets and pay lip service to democracy.

Agee's book is massive and detailed with tidbits about CIA operations during his period with them. The problem I have is that he uses a diary format to tell his story and that you can easily get lost amongst the various Codenames for CIA agents/operations. The lack of a index doesn't make life easier. Apart from that, a very good expose of the working life of anyone who works for the spooks.

The operations that the CIA was conducting in South America exposed by a Officer of the CIA. Names and code names of the operations.

Phil adopted the diary format because the editor wanted it that way. He wrote the book by going through newspaper microfiches, reading what the regular press had said about some events, recalling what really happened based on his own recollection, and putting it back together. I think most of the "how I wrote Inside the Company" is detailed in his follow-up book "On the Run," which is also a fascinating read. One thing to note about Phil is that his experiences have affected him and biased his judgement in some ways. He was there, and everything he writes is true, but he is an extremist, and often sees things in a bitterly stilted fashion, and sometimes does things that leads to the murder of US officials. One may argue that these officials engaged in oppresive operations and large scale murder are deserving of death themselves, as Agee does, but his "deserving of death" label has perhaps become a little too incompassionate.

Philip Agee does a wonderful job of unmasking the villains and personel of the CIA. It is written in a diary format, with each occasion listed to the exact date. Philip Agee was a former CIA agent positioned in Ecuador. His story depicts how the Company goes about their business and describes what their business is.

Philip Agee breaks the CIA code of silence and pens a revealing book about American intelligence gathering in Latin America. Agee leaves the agency, disgusted with sleezy cold war tactics. No other book patiently explains how the CIA recruits and operates.

I despise what Philip Agee did with this book, endangering the lives of real people and violating his oath as a commissioned officer in the clandestine service. I was also very surprised by the level of detail in the book, and concluded that he intended to betray the CIA well prior to leaving. I've served three overseas tours and three Washington assignments, and from all that time I can barely remember one cryptonym series and not a single true identity. I think Agee took notes and planned ahead to burn the CIA. This is a good diary, and I include it in this bibliography to represent the pedestrian side of the DO-the day to day monotony of going through the motions and doing agent recruitments and agent handling operations in third world countries where the bulk of what one does really does not contribute to U.S. national security or understanding.

Edit of 11 Jan 08 to add comment and links.

Comment: I am committed to reducing the secret budget from $60 billion a year to $12 billion, and the heavy metal military budget from $950 billion to $250 billion, with the savings directed toward waging peace and offering free education in all languages via free cell phones, the only way we will be able to create a prosperous world at peace.

Other links:

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion

Web of Deceit: The History of Western complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush

None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam

See No Evil

Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude

9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition

Edit of 12 Apr 09 to add three more links

Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars

The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption

Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

This isn't a thriller and it can be very dry and tiresome at times. However, from the academic standpoint , this is an interesting work on the CIA.
Good or bad, this book was a product of its times, and I understand that. It wasn't fashionable in the 1970s to spy, and there were some controls needed on CIA.
However, I think Agee goes too far in releasing secrets.
Agee takes the reader through recruitment, training and CIA life. If he had stopped there and left out designations, cover and agent names it would be a sort of dry but informative work.
He didn't.
Aldrich Ames sold names and operations for money to the Soviet Union. Phil Agee sold them to a book publisher. I see little difference.