Reuters Headline Labels CIA Traitor ‘Whistle-Blower’

Reuters, in its headline for a story reporting the death of Philip Agee, a former CIA agent turned traitor, labeled Agee a "CIA whistle-blower" ("CIA whistle-blower Philip Agee dies in Cuba"). As the blog Little Green Footballs put it, Agee was "the traitor who exposed fellow CIA agents to violence and murder by revealing their names" in his 1975 book "Inside the Company: A CIA Diary."

Agee, who had worked for the CIA for 12 years both in the United States and in Latin America, resigned from the Agency in 1968 after expressing "disagreement with U.S. support for military dictatorships in Latin America." Reuters then went on to say that Agee "became one of the first to blow the whistle on the CIA's activities around the world." He died on Monday in Havana, Cuba, where he had settled in the 1980s.

[Update, 4:03 pm Eastern: See Ken Shepherd's item on AP's treatment of Agee's death.]

According to a Human Events article from 1993, Agee "had thanked the Cuban Communist Party for the assistance it had given him" in preparing "Inside the Company." The book also "contained the names and identities of over 700 people in all parts of the world who Agee insisted were CIA officers, agents and cooperators."

Another detail that the Human Events article mentions is that Morton Halperin, the senior vice president for the Soros-funded Center for American Progress (which is also known as "Hillary’s think tank"), "championed the activities of Philip Agee." According to a 2004 article on FrontPagemagazine.com written by Lowell Ponte, Halperin "during the mid-1970s befriended Philip Agee... [and] flew to Europe to help Agee find safe haven after Great Britain expelled him [in 1976]."

The last detail about Agee that Reuters notes in its article is how he "set up an online travel agency catering to Americans willing to defy a U.S. travel ban and visit the Communist-run island" in the year 2000. I guess Reuters was at least honest enough to note that Cuba has a Communist government.