CounterSpy: Philip Agee dies in Cuba:

... Agee's actions in the 1970s inspired a law criminalizing the exposure of covert U.S. operatives.

But in 2003, he drew a distinction between what he did and the exposure of CIA officer Valerie Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a prominent critic of President Bush's Iraq policy.

''This is entirely different than what I was doing in the 1970s,'' Agee said. ''This is purely dirty politics in my opinion.''

Agee said that in his case, he disclosed the identities of his former CIA colleagues to ''weaken the instrument for carrying out the policy of supporting military dictatorships'' in Greece, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil.

Those regimes ''were supported by the CIA and the human cost was immense: torture, executions, death squads,'' he said. ...

More here.

Update: A British journalist colleague who covered some of the uglier episodes of Latin American modern history, writes, citing Agee on himself: "'Why did I denounce the CIA? Because I met and fell in love with a woman who believed Che Guevara was the most wonderful man in the world.' He leaves it to us to make the obvious deduction -- that he tried to imitate him to win her over. It all goes to prove that the Human Factor trumphs all in spying as Graham Greene so brilliantly detailed in his book of the same name. ..."

Posted by Laura at January 9, 2008 10:54 AM