Agee, CIA Foe and Ex-Agent, Returns to U.S.

Philip Agee, the former CIA agent and agency foe who now lives in self-exile in Spain, has returned to the United States and said today he plans to remain for another few weeks despite the risk of prosecution.

Agee, whose U.S. passport was lifted in 1979 after he disclosed the names of key CIA employees abroad, said he has been back in the United States since Sunday. He spoke on the street outside a Manhattan television studio after appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America” to promote his new book, “On the Run.”

He said he had entered the country without any understandings about whether he’d be arrested for entering without a U.S. passport.

However, a State Department press officer, Ruth van Heuven, said Agee’s return to the United States without a U.S. passport violated no U.S. law.

‘Right to Return’

“As a U.S. citizen, he has a right to return whenever he wishes. He knows that,” she said.

Agee said he was “going about my activity in normal fashion” and has visited his parents, whom he had not seen in seven years, in North Carolina.

He said he would be returning to his wife in Spain eventually, but did not detail his schedule here.

Agee said in his television interview that he entered the United States via Canada after traveling there with a Nicaraguan passport and meeting with lawyers.

He said that against all advice, he decided “to run the risk of coming back and possible prosecution.”

Station Chief Killed

Agee, 52, has written several books about CIA activities since announcing in 1974 that he would work against the CIA by exposing agency operatives and doing what he could to drive them out of countries where they were stationed.

His first book, “Inside the Company,” revealed the names of CIA agents overseas. The agency says its station chief in Athens was killed as a result.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 1981 upheld the suspension of Agee’s passport.

Agee’s new book covers the last 15 years of his life and also talks about the Administration’s policy in Central America.