"Evil" is somewhat loaded word. A lot of what a lot of people did in that part of the world in that period of time was harmful to other people. I vocally - and in some cases to my own detriment - opposed a lot of it. In many ways, and in many places, I think we (i.e. the US ) were on the wrong side. And when we shaped U.S. policy for the benefit of the UFC or mining interests, I could easily cheer for the other side. But I also have no illusions about the KGB and Cuban agents who were happy play with the lives of the locals. They made most of our people look like schoolboys. ( there were exceptions, of course. We had our own Cubans - they were referred to as UCLAs - 'unilaterally controlled latino assets' - who were every bit as comfortable with local 'cultural values' as Castro's people. They scared the Russians.
But what Agee did was betrayal on a very personal level of a lot of people who did not deserve to be betrayed. Had he blown every Soviet and Cuban agent in the same sphere, perhaps an arguement could be made that he was just trying to clean up the game. But what he did came a lot closer to treason than whistle blowing. It didn't undo any evil - it just added to it.
In any case, i know a number of people who would probably violate their own embargo on travel to Cuba if it meant they'd have a chance to piss on his grave.
>>Phillip Agee is dead. In a Havana hospital, fittingly enough. For those who were appalled by the "outing" of "agent" Valerie Pflame ... in 1975 Agee - either as an agent of the Cubans or the Soviets or as one of those people Eliot talked about who will cause harm just to think well of themselves - outed a whole lot of covert people and got some of them killed. 1975 wasn't a good year for the intelligence community - some of which was undoubtedly the product of things that were genuinely wrong with it - and some of it the product of people who just didn't get it.
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>>And some the product of people like Agee.
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>>There are those who will not mourn him.
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>From what I read in the Wikipedia article, he did participate in some of the evil stuff the CIA did. But it does seem that he repented, and tried to undo the evil in which he himself has participated.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
