Company Man

By James Atwater

INSIDE THE COMPANY: CIA DIARY

by PHILIP AGEE 640 pages. Stonehill. $9.95.

The Rockefeller Commission report detailed its transgressions. Two congressional investigations are probing its involvement in assassination plots and domestic spying. The press keeps producing fresh disclosures. With all this going on, the CIA looks less like a clandestine fraternity and more like an open society. New sensations would seem impossible to find, and few, if any, are contained in the latest CIA expose by former Agent Philip Agee. His book, Inside the Company, is a sheaf of accusations and recollections that can no longer astonish a world grown familiar with the vagaries of secret services. Nevertheless, Agee's tales are worth attention, less for their shock value than for the descriptions of a subterranean arena.

If ever the CIA recruited a candidate of uncompromising devotion, Agee seemed to be the man. When he joined "the Company" fresh out of Notre Dame in 1956, the graduate experienced an epiphany atop the Washington Monument. In a soliloquy straight out of a Loyalty Day pageant, Agee claims to have sworn, "I'll be a warrior against Communist subversive erosion of freedom and personal liberties around the world--a patriot dedicated to the preservation of my country and our way of life."

Under the curious cover name of Jeremy S. Hodapp, Agee was assigned to the U.S. embassy in Quito, Ecuador, and then in Montevideo, Uruguay. Hodapp's good works later made him aide to the U.S. ambassador in Mexico. As described by Agee, the CIA's penetration of these South American nations was so thorough that it became a silent partner in the governments. Mexican authorities cooperated with the CIA to such an extent that the Company could tap 40 key telephone lines.

Using agents to tap phones and penetrate the Ecuadorian Communist party, Agee & Co. worked out an elaborate ruse to discredit a leftist named Antonio Flores Benitez. They concocted a report in the name of Flores, depicting him as a violent revolutionary. The paper was secreted in a tube of toothpaste. One of the agents at the airport then concealed the tube up his sleeve and let it fall out while examining Flores' luggage. When the document was "discovered," the ensuing uproar in the press helped discredit the government.

Comely Agent. A military junta took over, much to Agee's satisfaction. Still he kept close tabs on the generals. The mistress of one of his agents was the official stenographer for Cabinet meetings; Agee was privy to transcripts before the new governors. The CIA concentrated heavily on discovering the secrets of Cubans, Soviets and satellites. Agents installed eavesdropping bugs in apartments. Lip readers studied films taken of Soviet officials strolling in their embassy gardens. If the subtle approach failed, the Company happily played the role of pimp for overamorous Soviet officials. One was lured into bed by a comely agent, where his performance --said to be remarkable--was photographed and recorded for possible future use.

In a scene reminiscent of the Watergate bungle, Agee kept watch one night, walkie-talkie in hand, while two technicians and an engineer tried to bug the Czech legation in Ecuador. The agents were caught in the act by four guards. The fast-talking engineer saved the day by taking the guards aside to allay their curiosity while the technicians furiously ripped out installations.

The encounter is one of the few memorable passages in a book stuffed with detail. Indeed, Agee includes so many facts and names that the book has two glossaries, one for the cast of characters, another for organizations--as if the reader were wading through War and Peace. Perhaps, in a sense, he is. The events in Inside the Company are a matter of life and death; below their flat prose there moves a complex universe of national intrigue and human paradox.

The greatest paradox is Agee himself; his conversion is never fully explained. The super patriot simply s decides one day that he has been on the wrong side all along: the good guys were the revolutionaries. "The CIA," he writes with " pious hindsight, "is nothing more than the secret police of American capitalism, plugging up leaks in the political dam night and day so that shareholders of U.S. companies operating in poor countries can continue enjoying their rip-off."

With his new vision as a Marxist socialist, Agee quit the CIA in 1969 and wrote his book abroad while bugged and hounded, he claims, by Company agents.

Agee profited from the experience of Victor Marchetti, another disillusioned CIA agent and co-author of The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. When Marchetti set out to publish his expose in the U.S., the CIA took him to court and scissored out 168 passages. To avoid this fate, Agee first published his book in Britain. Once it was out, and a bestseller, the CIA decided to make no attempt at censorship in the U.S.

Although the CIA also refuses comment on the book's accuracy, independent intelligence experts, unable to vouch for details, think most of it rings true--a fact that should shock only the naive. In a world full of other intelligence agencies and dirty tricks, a good deal of the CIA'S work may be defended as useful and even necessary.

The most volatile aspect of this angry volume remains the author's indiscretion: he has blown the cover of hundreds of CIA men and Latin American agents. Agee took the step to discredit and cripple the CIA, surely knowing he was threatening the lives of these men and women. The ex-agent, who now lives on the Cornish coast in England, blandly claims that "as far as I know, no one has been endangered as a result." The CIA will not reveal what has happened to the people named by its former employee, but it is known that the Company has changed its operations in Latin America. Agee hit home--and hard. With some justification, top officials of the Company now bitterly call him "our first defector."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.