Philip agee and mark hosenball biography

One thing that I didn&#;t get to mention in my piece for New Matilda on the history of the intersection between national and border security in the UK was the Agee/Hosenball controversy of the late s, when Mark Hosenball, an investigative journalist and US citizen, was deported after writing about the secretive (and possibly illegal) work of GCHQ. This has obvious parallels with the pressures put on Glenn Greenwald and David Miranda today.

As I have briefly written in a forthcoming article:

Philip Agee and Mark Hosenball were two American nationals who were deported after a very lengthy process from the UK in the mids. Philip Agee was a CIA officer based in the UK, who was suspected by the US authorities (who allegedly put pressure on Merlyn Rees and James Callaghan to deport Agee) of exposing CIA activities in the Caribbean. Hosenball was a journalist who had written a piece for Time Out magazine on the UK security services. There was considerable public support for both men to remain in the country, but were eventually deported in  

When Willie Whitelaw and Peter Carrington were discussing, in , ways in which the border control system could be used for counter-terrorism purposes, Carrington pushed Whitelaw to revise the Immigration Act to give the Home Secretary greater powers to deport &#;undesirable&#; people. Carrington actually believed that many of the counter-terrorism measures being implemented by the border control system in were not effective enough (such as the mandatory visa/security checks for nearly all Middle Eastern and North African nationals) and was, according to one internal Foreign and Commonwealth Office document:

inclined to think there would be more substance in changing the immigration rules so that the Home Secretary could swiftly deport suspected terrorists without running into the Agee/Hosenball difficulties [my emphasis] and in extending the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

Several other do

CONFIDENTIAL PAGE 01 LONDON 01 OF 02 Z S ACTION EUR INFO OCT ISO EURE SS SP PRS INR ARA NSC CIAE / W P R Z NOV 76 FM AMEMBASSY LONDON TO SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY INFO AMEMBASSY BONN AMEMBASSY BRUSSELS AMEMBASSY COPENHAGEN AMEMBASSY DUBLIN AMEMBASSY THE HAGUE AMEMBASSY LUXEMBOURG AMEMBASSY PARIS AMEMBASSY ROME USMISSION EC BRUSSELS USMISSION NATO BRUSSELS USMISSION OECD PARIS AMCONSUL BELFAST AMCONSUL EDINBURGH C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 LONDON E.O. GDS TAGS: PINT, PFOR. PINR, UK SUBJECT: U.S. CITIZEN DEPORTATIONS CAUSE PROTEST REF: LONDON SUMMARY. PUBLIC PROTESTS HAVE RESULTED FROM HMG'S ACTIONS EARLIER THIS WEEK TO BEGIN THE DEPORTATION OF TWO AMERICANS: FORMER CIA OFFICIAL PHILIP AGEE AND EVENING STANDARD JOURNALIST MARK HOSENBALL. THE NATIONAL UNION OF JOURNALISTS (NUJ) AND CIVIL LIBERTARIANS, INCLUDING MP'S. HAVE JOINED IN CONDEMNING THE GOVERN- MENT'S DECISIONS TO EMPLOY A RARELY-USED DEPORTATION PROCEDURE IN THESE CASES. ONE LABOR MP HAS EVEN THREATENED TO WITHHOLD HIS VOTE ON CRUCIAL MEASURES CONFIDENTIAL CONFIDENTIAL PAGE 02 LONDON 01 OF 02 Z STILL PENDING IN PARLIAMENT UNLESS THE GOVERNMENT AGREES TO TAKE THE CASES TO COURT. REASONS FOR THE GOVERNMENT'S DECISION TO ACT AT THIS TIME ARE NOT APPARENT, BUT IT APPEARS TO HAVE INCREASED POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES FACING CALLAGHAN, AS WELL AS RAISED A STORM OF PROTEST. END SUMMARY. 1. THE NUJ, THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CIVIL LIBERTIES, MP'S, PORTIONS OF THE PRESS AND AD HOC "DEFENSE COMMITTEES" HAVE VIGOROUSLY PROTESTED THE HOME OFFICE'S DECISION THAT FORMER CIA OFFICIAL AND AUTHOR PHILIP AGEE AND EVENING STANDARD REPORTER MARK HOSENBALL ARE TO BE DEPORTED ON SECURITY GROUNDS. THE DECISION IN AGEE'S CASE WAS ANNOUNCED NOVEMBER 17 WHEN IT WAS CHARGED THAT HE HAD "MAINTAINED REGULAR CONTACTS HARMFUL TO THE SECURITY OF THE UK WITH FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE OFFICERS" AND "CONTINUES TO BE INVOLVED IN DISSEMINATING INFORMA- TION HARMFUL

Primary Sources

(1) Philip Agee, Terrorism and Civil Society as Instruments of U.S. Policy in Cuba ()

Warren Hinkle and William Turner, in The Fish is Red, easily the best book on the CIA's war against Cuba during the first 20 years of the revolution, tell the story of the CIA's efforts to save the life of one of their Batista Cubans. It was March , less than three months after the revolutionary movement triumphed. The Deputy Chief of the CIA's main Batista secret police force had been captured, tried and condemned to a firing squad. The Agency had set up the unit in and called it the Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities or BRAC for its initials in Spanish. With CIA training, equipment and money it became arguably the worst of Batista's torture and murder organizations, spreading its terror across the whole of the political opposition, not just the communists.

The Deputy Chief of BRAC, one José Castaño Quevedo, had been trained in the United States and was the BRAC liaison man with the CIA Station in the U.S. Embassy. On learning of his sentence, the Agency Chief of Station sent a journalist collaborator named Andrew St. George to Che Guevara, then in charge of the revolutionary tribunals, to plead for Castaño's life. After hearing out St. George for much of a day, Che told him to tell the CIA chief that Castaño was going to die, if not because he was an executioner of Batista, then because he was an agent of the CIA. St. George headed from Che's headquarters in the Cabaña fortress to the seaside U.S. Embassy on the Malecón to deliver the message. On hearing Che's words the CIA Chief responded solemnly, "This is a declaration of war." Indeed, the CIA lost many more of its Cuban agents during those early days and in the unconventional war years that followed.

Today when I drive on 31st Avenue on the way to the airport, just before turning left at the Marianao military hospital, I p