Reply #15: Phil Agee vs Barbara Bush

[Octafish]

For bad reason, few refuse to back down from the Quaker Oats guy.

Phil Agee vs Barbara Bush (1995)

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

(We have a copy of this buried somewhere in our archives but found it
more easily elsewhere on the net. The result of this case was that
Barbara Bush removed her allegations about Agee in the 2nd edition of
her book.)

Found at:
http://beyond-the-illusion.com/files/New-Files/950930/philagee.txt
Origin: helix.uucp =FidoNet/Internet= Seattle (1:343/70)

NY Transfer News Collective
Sat, 9 Sep 1995 14:20:48 -0400 (EDT)

Libel Suit: Philip Agee vs Barbara Bush

(Some context, first, from the mainstream Reuters news agency,
followed by Daniel Brandt's analysis -- NY Transfer)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Philip Agee, a former CIA operative who
turned against the spy agency, announced Wednesday he had filed a
$4 million libel suit against Barbara Bush, saying she had wrongly
linked him to the assassination of a senior CIA officer.

Agee, who led a worldwide campaign in the late 1970s to unmask
Central Intelligence Agency officers, accused the former first lady
of making false and defamatory statements about him in her 1994
autobiography, ``A Memoir.''

Agee claims he has been unfairly tarred by the CIA and U.S.
officials in connection with the December 23, 1975, assassination
of Richard Welch, CIA station chief in Athens.

Mrs. Bush wrote in her book that Agee disclosed Welch's identity in
a ``traitorous, tell-all'' book published shortly before Welsh's
assassination by a Greek extremist group.

Agee asserts in his suit, however, that nowhere in his 1975 book,
``Inside the Company: A CIA Diary'', did he mention Welch. Nor, he
says, did he ever mention Welch in any publication or communication
before Welch's death.

Agee said he was suing Mrs Bush because her claim that he exposed
Welch was ``particularly egregious'' since her husband, former
president George Bush, became CIA director 38 days after the
killing.

``The man's name was not in my book,'' Agee said in a telephone
interview from his home in Hamburg, Germany. ``She's just repeating
what her husband and others have been saying ... This just cannot
stand.''

Agee had his passport revoked in 1979 for allegedly having damaged
U.S. national security.

Lynne Bernabei, Agee's Washington lawyer, told a press conference
that Agee, 60, had suffered serious damage to his reputation ``as a
result of the CIA's concerted efforts -- this time through the
baseless allegations in Mrs. Bush's autobiography -- to malign him
and falsely ascribe blame to him for a death that was caused by its
own ineptitude.''

In addition to compensatory and punitive damages of at least $4
million, the suits seeks a full retraction by Barbara Bush and her
publisher, Charles Scribner's Sons and Simon & Schuster, that Agee
caused or contributed to Welch's killing.

A spokesman for the Bush family in Houston, Jim McGrath, declined
comment on the suit.]

*

Philip Agee v. Barbara Bush: An Analysis of the Case

by Daniel Brandt

Richard Welch was killed in December, 1975 in Athens. A Greek urban
guerrilla group calling itself "November 17" took credit for the
killing.

Richard Welch's name was first published in "Who's Who in CIA"
by Julius Mader (East Berlin, 1968), along with 2500 other names.

It was also published in early 1975 by Counterspy Magazine (Winter
1975 issue, page 26), along with about 100 other names. This issue
of Counterspy listed Welch as residing in Lima, Peru -- which was
his previous posting. In the next issue, Summer 1975, Counterspy
again listed Welch as a CIA officer, under cover as an attache at
the U.S. embassy in Lima.

Welch was listed in the 1969 State Department Biographic Register
and the 1973 State Department Biographic Register, and no doubt
others as well (these are the two I have handy). In both the 1969
and 1973 listings, the biographic details peg him as an obvious CIA
officer for those who know how to read the Register.

Counterspy could have gotten its information from the Biographic
Register. Beginning in 1975, the Biographic Register was given a
"Limited Official Use" classification, but before 1975 it was
available to the public. In the Washington Monthly, November 1974,
an article by former State Department official John Marks, titled
"How to Spot a Spook," described how to read the Biographic Register.

In fact, Counterspy told Agee that a Maryknoll priest who worked as
a missionary in Peru had visited their office a year earlier, and
brought with him a copy of a Peruvian journal with Welch's name in
it as the CIA chief in Lima. ("On the Run," p. 133)

In late November, 1975 the Athens News named ten CIA people in
Greece, and included Welch's name and address. It is said that even
the local tour buses would point out the home of the CIA station
chief as they drove by.

Agee's book came out in 1975, which blew the cover on dozens of
CIA officers. By the Summer 1975 issue of Counterspy, Agee was
listed on the advisory board of Counterspy, along with 15 other
prominent activists.

By the time Agee's book came out, the CIA's Ted Shackley was
running a major operation to control the damage to the CIA and
discredit Agee (see David Corn's "Blond Ghost," 1994). The Welch
assassination was also seen a convenient "hook" for stopping the
Congressional investigations of the CIA, by changing the focus
from "what is the CIA doing around the world," to the issue of
"endangering the lives of officers by naming names." The media,
which the CIA can manipulate by planting stories and calling in
chits from friendly reporters, pretty much fell for this. The CIA
had every reason to play up the Welch assassination, and nothing
to lose.

The "November 17" group, according to Agee's autobiography "On the
Run" (1987), had been stalking Welch's predecessor in Athens, Stacy
Hulse, until Welch replaced him in mid-1975. They knew what Welch
ate, what cars he drove, and the hours he came and left his
residence. ("On the Run," page 134).

CONTINUED...

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.journalism.newspapers/browse_thread/thread/796a86c1822be7b4

Agee felt that the outing of the CIA agent was an inside job. At the time, the Church Committee had been investigating CIA corruption and assassination programs. Once the news hit of the murder, public support for CIA spiked and the committee got zero traction. Head of the CIA at the time was George Herbert Walker Bush.

The result of the tragedy in Greece was the passage of the law making it a crime to out a CIA agent, something for which Babs own boy is guilty.