Philip Agee: The Playboy Interview/August 1975

PLAYBOY: Are you in danger here?

AGEE: Probably not. If they tried any rough stuff, it would have
to look like an accident, and if anybody slipped up, there would
be a very big flap.

PLAYBOY: Is the room bugged?

AGEE: I doubt it. Too much trouble for a short visit. But the
phone may be tapped. The hell with them. Let's talk.

PLAYBOY: How do you like having the Central Intelligence Agency
breathing down your neck?

AGEE: Not much. That's a dangerous bunch of people to tangle with.
I don't want to sound as if I think I'm a hero. I'm not. I just
think something's got to be done about the CIA. Remember, I'm not
the first ex-CIA man to come out against the agency. Victor
Marchetti was the first. But while he was fighting to get his book
published, I was working fast and furiously on mine in secret.

PLAYBOY: Why did you decide to blow the whistle on the CIA?

AGEE: I finally understood, after 12 years with the agency, how
much suffering it was causing, that millions of people all over
the world had been killed or at least had had their lives
destroyed by the CIA and the institutions it supports. I just
couldn't sit by and do nothing.

PLAYBOY: Millions of people? Aren't you overstating the case?

AGEE: I wish I were. Even after the revelations we've had so far,
people still don't understand what a huge, powerful and sinister
organization the CIA is.

PLAYBOY: How big is it?

AGEE: In my opinion, it's the biggest and most powerful secret
service that has ever existed. I don't know how big the K.G.B. is
inside the Soviet Union, but its international operation is small
compared with the CIA's. It's known now that the CIA has 16,500
employees and an annual budget of $750,000,000. But that's not
counting its mercenary armies, its commercial subsidiaries. Add
them all together, the agency employs or subsidizes hundreds of
thousands of people and spends more like billions every year. Even
its official budget is secret; it's concealed in those of other
Federal agencies. Nobody tells the Congress what the CIA spends.
By law, the CIA isn't accountable to Congress. Not for anything.

PLAYBOY: To whom is it accountable?

AGEE: To the National Security Council, which is composed of the
President and officials chosen by him. So it's really an
instrument of the President to use in any way he pleases. If there
are legal restraints on this, I don't know of them. It's
frightening, but it's a fact: The CIA is the President's secret
army.