Philip Agee; exposed CIA

HAVANA - Renegade former CIA agent Philip Agee, 72, whose naming of agency operatives helped prompt a U.S. law against exposing government spies, died Monday in Cuba.

His wife, Giselle Roberge Agee, said he underwent surgery for perforated ulcers Dec. 16 and died of a related infection.

Mr. Agee quit the CIA in 1969 after 12 years working mostly in Latin America at a time when leftist movements were gaining prominence and sympathizers. His 1975 book

Inside the Company: CIA Diary,

cited alleged misdeeds against leftists in the region and included a 22-page list of purported agency operatives.

The list created an uproar around the world and prompted Congress to pass a law against naming clandestine U.S. agents abroad. It also led the State Department to strip Mr. Agee of his U.S. passport.

Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, said Mr. Agee's book "was considered a very serious blow to CIA's clandestine operations."

Former CIA colleagues and some U.S. officials called Mr. Agee a traitor and alleged he was linked to Cuban and Soviet intelligence agencies. He denied the allegations and said he thought of himself as part of the American tradition of dissent and as "a critic of hypocrisy, a critic of crime in high places."

He said he disclosed the identities of his former 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.

Granma, Cuba's Communist Party newspaper, published a small story yesterday, describing him as "a loyal friend of Cuba and fervent defender of the peoples' fight for a better world."

He is survived by his wife and two grown sons from a previous marriage.