Former CIA case officer Philip Agee resigned in 1968 and published Inside the Company: CIA Diary in 1975. The memoir described alleged CIA operations in Ecuador, Uruguay and Mexico, including political penetration, surveillance, bribery, forgery and the use of contacts in local security services. It identified approximately 250 purported CIA officers and agents, while Agee’s later CovertAction Information Bulletin, launched in 1978, published additional names and operational material. His accounts were based partly on memory and subsequent research; some accusations, including CIA collaboration with authoritarian governments and corporations, were disputed by the parties involved.
The disclosures produced lasting institutional consequences. The United States revoked Agee’s passport in 1979, and the Supreme Court upheld that action in 1981. Congress passed the Intelligence Identities Protection Act in 1982, making it a crime to intentionally reveal the identity of a covert intelligence officer under specified conditions; the law was later considered in connection with the 2003 Valerie Plame investigation. British authorities also deported Agee on June 3, 1977, after U.S. requests and an MI6 report alleged that his disclosures contributed to the exposure of intelligence personnel. Claims that Agee directly caused particular killings, including the 1975 death of CIA station chief Richard Welch, remained contested, and a libel dispute with Barbara Bush ended in a settlement removing the allegation from her book’s paperback edition.
