On the Run

Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart Inc, 1987. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Good/Good. 400 pages. Index. DJ has some wear, soiling, edge tears and is in a plastic sleeve. Slightly cocked. Philip Burnett Franklin Agee (July 19, 1935 - January 7, 2008) was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) case officer and writer, best known as author of the 1975 book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, detailing his experiences in the CIA. Agee joined the CIA in 1957, and over the following decade had postings in Washington, D.C., Ecuador, Uruguay and Mexico. After resigning from the Agency in 1968, he became a leading opponent of CIA practices. A co-founder of CovertAction Quarterly, he died in Cuba in January 2008. Agee became something of a minor celebrity in the United Kingdom after the publication of Inside the Company. He revealed the identities of dozens of CIA agents in the CIA London station. After numerous requests from the American government as well as an MI6 report that blamed Agee's work for the execution of two MI6 agents in Poland, a request was put in to deport Agee from the UK.[citation needed] Although Agee fought this and was supported by MPs, journalists, and private citizens, he eventually departed from the UK on June 3, 1977, and traveled to the Netherlands.[21] Agee was also eventually expelled from the Netherlands, France, West Germany and Italy. Agee was accused by U.S. President George H. W. Bush of being responsible for the death of Richard Welch, a Harvard-educated classicist who was murdered by the Revolutionary Organization 17 November while heading the CIA Station in Athens. Derived for a Publisher's Weekly review found on-line: Agee, a CIA operations officer from 1957 to 1968, resigned over the agency's connection with political repression in South America and wrote Inside the Company: CIA Diary, an expose that caused an international uproar, the echoes of which still reverberate. Here he recounts how he came to join the CIA, his growing disenchantment, the influence of the Cuban revolution on his decision to write Inside the Company and his life of harassment and exile ever since. Charges that the agency has attempted to discredit him, accusing him of being a traitor, a drunk, a womanizer, a mental case are backed up with details. It is an ugly story filled with emotion and suspense, and Agee makes no bones about his continued obsession with exposing questionable CIA activities and personnel. Agee notes that someone had asked him why the CIA hadn't ""done something'' to him. His answer (``Ah, but they have'') is elaborated in painful detail in this autobiography.