Reply #12: DEMOCRACRY NOW today will interview former CIA agent [View All]

Philip Agee. Here are clips from an article about him at their website:

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... But it’s not just intimidation; it’s a felony. Until now, a crime the Bush family has taken very seriously. According to Ray McGovern, a retired CIA analyst who worked under Bush Sr. at both the CIA and the White House, “The Intelligence Identities Protection Act was made draconian, it was made very, very specific, automatic penalties that would accrue to both officials and non-officials—anyone who knowingly disclosed the identity of a CIA agent or officer.” The penalty: fines of up to $50,000 and imprisonment of up to 10 years.

Many believe the law was passed in direct response to former CIA agent Philip Agee’s blowing the whistle on CIA dirty tricks in his book Inside the Company. George H.W. Bush, who was vice-president when the law was passed, said some of the criticism of the Agency ruined secret U.S. clandestine operations in foreign countries.

So seriously did the Bushes take the crime of exposing CIA operatives that Barbara Bush, in her memoirs, accused Agee of blowing the cover of the CIA Station Chief in Greece, Richard Welch, who was assassinated outside his Athens residence in 1975. Agee sued the former first lady and Mrs. Bush withdrew the statement from additional printings of her book. Still, at a celebration marking the fiftieth anniversary of the CIA, the elder Bush again singled out Agee in his remarks, calling him “a traitor to our country.”

David MacMichael worked as a CIA analyst at the time the law was passed. He told Democracy Now!: “If former President Bush could define Philip Agee as a traitor for exposing the identities of serving intelligence officers, if his son’s political advisor has done the same…it is a very serious felony under the current Act.”

http://www.democracynow.org/static/wilson1.shtml

Listen or read transcript at this link:
http://www.democracynow.org/index.pl