CIA agent turns Cuba travel agent

Philip Agee was expelled from the UK too

When the CIA wanted to vent its rage about Philip Agee - its ex-agent who wrote a bestselling 1975 book about CIA dirty tricks in Latin America - it accused him of being a traitor working for the Cuban Government.

This is very much in keeping with what the Pope exhorted when he was in Cuba

Philip Agee

Twenty-five years later this accusation has very nearly become reality - though he is working with, not for, the Cuban state tourism company, to lure US tourists to Havana.

Agee's Cubalinda.com is the first Havana-based internet travel agency that tempts Americans to break US law, and violate the trade embargo against Cuba.

"Some of you may be surprised to find me engaged in an ambitious project to promote travel and tourism in Cuba," he says in a letter posted on the Cubalinda site.

Revolution

"I decided to establish an e-commerce operation... This, I thought, would be another concrete way to support the revolution."

Agee: His own man, in Havana

Agee clearly takes pleasure in the fact that he was able to make use of the latest hardware and software - mostly of US origin, despite the ban on software exports to Cuba.

"At least in professional computing, the US blockade had failed totally," he writes.

But in a BBC interview, Agee denied he started Cubalinda.com (which means "pretty Cuba") simply in order to needle the US authorities.

"This is very much in keeping with what the Pope exhorted when he was in Cuba... the key line was, 'Let Cuba open to the world, and let the world open to Cuba'," he said

"And how better can you do this than by the advanced technology of the web and internet, especially where a country like the United States has had practically no people-to-people contact in some 40 years."

Bank secret

The company offers hotels and activities from golf to caving, but Americans must arrange their own air transport.

There is no reason why Americans should not meet Cubans

Philip Agee

Officially, US citizens are meant to apply for a licence to travel to Cuba, though most of the estimated 80,000 Americans who travel to the island each year do not bother.

Cuban immigration officers help US visitors avoid potential jail sentences, or big fines, by not stamping their passports.

Cubalinda.com claims to have 30,000 to 50,000 hits a day, and accepts payments by credit card via an un-named third-party European bank.

Mr Agee's US passport was revoked after the revelations in his book Inside the Company: CIA Diary, which was published in 20 languages and included a list of alleged CIA employees worldwide.

He was also expelled from the UK.

Fugitive

He subsequently wrote a second book, On the Run, about his struggle to live, write, get heard and get published, throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, having incurred the CIA's displeasure.

However he now says he has no row with the US government.

In his BBC interview he confines his criticism of Washington to the attempted blockade of Cuba - which he describes as "absurd" - and to the alleged influence over US policy exercised by the anti-Castro Cuban community in Miami.

"There is no reason why Americans should not meet Cubans," he says.

"They need each other."