A Drop of Treason

A Drop of Treason: Philip Agee and His Exposure of the CIA by Jonathan Stevenson is a detailed and comprehensive account of Agee both before and after his controversial book on the workings of the CIA. A great book as both history and as nonfiction that almost reads like fiction.

I am of the age to remember Agee's book and might have a little more memory of it than many my age because my father was part of the intelligence community at-large (NSA and Naval Security Group, Fort Meade) so the book was discussed my senior year of high school at home.

This book is a perfect example of not being what I initially expected it to be, and my being thankful it wasn't. I expected the usual story of what he did at the CIA and what people thought of him, maybe a little about what he did after publication. But this did all of that and so much more. It is far more even-handed than most books about intelligence people who turn without sidestepping both Agee's positives and negatives.

I think what stood out for me was that even when it was largely a biography like any other, Stevenson made sure to keep everything in context. What Agee did, why (or at least why he said he did) he did it, and the repercussions to Agee and the Agency.

I think most readers will come away with a better and far more nuanced understanding of who Agee was and why he did what he did in the manner he did it. I will always have a difficult time with the naming of names, at least the names of field agents. That is putting people's lives at risk as well as their careers. I also grapple with the idea of whether he tried to do what was "right" because he believed that strongly or because he simply wanted to be visible (call it hubris, call it ego, whatever). But Stevenson has given me the information to make how I feel a bit better informed. 

I hesitate to state explicitly how I feel toward Agee because the book does, I think, an excellent job of offering the reader plenty of pros and cons, sometimes told with a slant but not too often and not too slant. Where I ended up with my opinion may well be a different place from where you end up, so I don't want to make it sound like the book argued for the position I take. I think anyone interested in US intelligence, both in the Cold War era as well as today, will come away with new insight and maybe a new appreciation of what it took, right or wrong, for Agee to do what he did.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

Stevenson, Jonathan. A Drop of Treason: Phillip Agee and His Exposure of the CIA. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press: 2021. 328 Pages. $27.50
 
The U.S. Intelligence Community in the mid-1970s was rife with investigations by Congress, the press, and exposé’s biographies written by former intelligence operatives. Phillip Agee wrote Inside the Company: CIA Diary after he left the CIA. The book chronicled CIA operations in Latin America and soon become one of the top reads for students in intelligence studies programs worldwide. Jonathan Stevenson is an editor at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and was previously professor of strategic studies at the U.S. Naval War in his new book looks at Agee from his early years in a devout Catholic family, attending Notre Dame University, joining the CIA, and the decades after leaving the agency as a “stateless” man.
 
Phillip Agee and fellow CIA officer Victor Marchetti left the CIA within months of each other, both were disillusioned with CIA operations conducted overseas and U.S. foreign policy. Both wrote exposés that exposed operations and named names of CIA officers and foreign agents. However, Stevenson points out “Agee was certainly the only publicly disaffected American intelligence officer to confront the CIA on full-fledged ideological grounds and to oppose American Strategy and foreign policy on a wholesale basis.”  
 
After authoring the book Inside the Company, Agee remained what Steven called Agee “a public pest” after having the U.S. State Department denied him a U.S. passport Agee spent his years in Europe and Latin America writing and supporting governments that were counter to the established U.S. foreign policy. The CIA often considered him to be under the control of either the Soviet Union’s KGB or Cuban Intelligence. His work became the foundation for the U.S. Congress to pass the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 or as it was known in the Intelligence Community as the “anti-Agee Act” which makes the disclosure of intelligence officers’ identities unlawful.
 
Stevenson’s work is professionally researched and documented he leads the reader through many of the tumultuous periods of U.S. foreign policy such as the Iran-Contra Affair as well as Agee personal issues with the U.S. and foreign governments. His writing is well balanced and makes for an enjoyable read for both the historian and the intelligence aficionado. I highly recommend A Drop of Treason to anyone interested in the U.S Intelligence Community.

This is the first biography of Philip Agee, a CIA operative in the 1950's and 60's who worked to support several authoritarian regimes as part of his job.  Name a linchpin hotspot during those years, and he was probably there.  However, Agee reached a point where he could no long square this work with his conscience and he resigned from intelligence work.  He went public about what he had been doing for the U.S. government and, most significantly, revealed the identities of agents and others who had worked undercover for the CIA.  There is still controversy over whether many of these people were later murdered as a result, but there is no doubt that careers were ruined.
This book is on the academic side and for readers who have been following the life cycles of the CIA, this book will definitely fill in some important gaps in what has been written about.  Agee was a colorful character, and this book does his story justice.