And the former CIA agent turned outspoken whistleblower, Philip Agee, has died. Agee authored the 1975 book Inside the Company: CIA Diary, which detailed several clandestine CIA operations around the world. Former President and CIA chief George H.W. Bush would later call him a “traitor.” I spoke to Agee about his book in October 2003.

Democracy Now!’s full interview

Philip Agee: “We were right to do it then, because the U.S. policy at the time, executed by the C.I.A., was to support murderous dictatorships around the world, as in Vietnam, as in Greece, as in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil. And that’s only to name a few. We opposed that use of the U.S. intelligence service for those dirty operations. And I’m talking about regimes now that tortured and disappeared people by the thousands.”

Agee died last night in Cuba at the age of seventy-two.