WASHINGTON — It was an aggressive, even reckless bit of espionage, allegedly committed by a man too well known for his own good.
CIA officials and other U.S. government sources charged that Philip Agee, a former CIA officer, author and CIA critic, went undercover as a spy for Cuba in late 1989 to try to pry secrets out of a female staff member in the agency's Mexico City station.
U.S. officials alleged that Agee was acting on behalf of Cuba's intelligence service, which has long staked out Mexico as a central espionage battleground with the CIA. Agee has denied the charges.
Agee, posing as a member of the CIA's inspector general's staff, tried to convince the staff member that he needed information about the Mexico City station as part of a secret investigation, the officials charged. CIA sources said that Cuban intelligence traditionally has targeted women staffers in their espionage operations.
The plot failed, U.S. officials said, when the CIA employee reported the contact and brought two CIA case officers with her to her second meeting with Agee. But one of the two case officers told Agee that he recognized him, the officials said, and Agee ended his efforts before enough evidence could be collected against him to bring formal charges.
The two CIA officers later were disciplined for their failure to notify their superiors of Agee's alleged action early enough for the FBI to launch a criminal investigation of whether the former CIA agent had committed espionage against the United States.
Agee's alleged willingness to act as a field agent for the Cubans astonished U.S. intelligence officials.
They said they believe that Agee--who quit the CIA during the Vietnam War in 1968 and later was known for his willingness to expose undercover CIA officers and operations through public lectures, magazines and books--has been working for Cuban intelligence since the early 1970s.
A high-ranking Cuban defector in 1992 told The Times that Agee had repeatedly taken money that the Cuban intelligence service had received from the Soviet KGB intelligence agency.
But CIA officers said that they had never seen Agee work openly as a field operative for the Cubans until his alleged approach to the female CIA staff member in Mexico City--an incident that remains classified.
