 And you mentioned Phil Agee, and we have a surprise guest. He's not on the program, but we have his son Chris Agee here today, Executive Editor of Covert Action Magazine to give us a few lessons from his father. Well, hello everybody. Can you guys hear me? Yes. Okay, great. Hello everyone. Thank you. Thank you, Rachel, Frank, all of you put this event together, and all of you have joined the webinar and are watching online. My name is Chris Agee. I'm the Executive Editor of Covert Action Magazine and an adjunct professor at the City University of New York and the State University of New York. I'm also the son, as Rachel mentioned, of Philip Agee, former CIA case officer and whistleblower, who provided a firsthand expose of the Central Intelligence Agency. Let me just first say that as I registered for this webinar, I was asked to join a Facebook group, which I did, and it said, do you have a family member or friend that has been affected by the Cold War? Yeah, it upended my whole life. You know, it also gave me a front seat onto the crimes of our era. As we have been discussing, we are all victims in many ways. Let me explain and describe a few significant lessons from my father, Philip Agee, who taught me, and I thought I'd share those principles around a couple of stories. The first is debunking the myth of the Cold War, understanding U.S. plutocratic interests and third world revolutionary movements. The second principle was internationalism. Who can say no to international solidarity, right? And the third is political activism, keeping our eyes on the prize. All right, so what are we talking about here? Back in 1979, when I was starting high school, I was in a history class and I was being told what the international political situation was. And the teacher was presenting these graphs, which he gave us like a flyer. It had two big bubbles and one bubble said like the United States and the other bubble said like the Soviet Union. And so he presented and the title was the bipolar model. And I took this home to my dad and I said, what the hell is this all about? And he said, okay, sit down, son. Let me explain. All right, so he said, wait a minute, it's not that simple as these two models. But actually that oftentimes, for example, in cases like Angola, Iran, places like, you know, Guatemala, what had happened was that people were trying to struggle for their own sovereignty and independence and access to their own resources. And so he gave me a book and he said, read this, I was 15 years old and it was called The People's History of the United States. So by all means, everybody grab that book if you haven't already. Howard Zinn wrote it, A People's History of the United, and since then my life changed. From then on, then on in that class, I became the class dissident and organized the students in my class to take on the official narrative. This was part of many lessons from my father. Another one involved the summer job, for example, he gave me between my high school and sophomore year, my high school sophomore year. He asked me to organize the umpteen filing cabinets of newspaper clippings on my father. And I couldn't believe it as I was pulling them all out, you know, it was sort of a boring summer job, but the entire room was filled with all these clippings about how my father was drunk and despondent KGB double agent trader, all of that sort of stuff. And I was like sitting in the living room with my, you know, my father and I was like, what do you mean, you know, he's a, he's all these things. And so the propaganda campaign against people who stand up against these, the Cold War myth and all of these issues is truly gargantuan. And so the US, I became to learn that the US that US foreign foreign policy actually serves the plutocratic elite, and their efforts. And so I became I came to learn that the Cold War myth serves the following purposes to distract the masses from imperial strategies to justify huge military budgets for geopolitical control all for the purpose of securing cheap access to raw materials, cheap access to labor, international markets for corporate interests. And then, and then ultimately to oppress efforts to build truly democratic societies, politically, economically, and socially, the examples are endless Iran Guatemala Vietnam Chile and Golan Nicaragua. You know just to mention the few and during during that and during the middle of the last century. And so what we have is an imperial strategy that by the way did not begin with the Cold War as we have mentioned various times during this these testimonies, but goes back to the founding of this country. Read a book by William Bloom called killing hope. So, another story for example if you just take a look at my father's works, you can see that when for example he was a stationed in Uruguay, as a CIA case officer. While he was told when he was recruited that he was going to be building freedom and democracy for the rest of the world. He found that what he was actually doing was like rounding up dissidents like human rights activists, labor rights activists, and he would meet with the regularly with the chief of police. And at one point the chief of police says to him hey, you know, you know, as as he's meeting with him he's hearing these sounds of screaming going on in the background and he's saying to the chief of police hey have it what's what's that sound. So who's that screaming and he goes oh Philip Felipe. Don't you remember those are the people who you gave us last week. Okay, so he started to realize that the work that he was doing was, he was really acting as the as a secret policeman for international, a multinational corporate interests. I'm sorry. So, I know I only have probably a minute or two left. So the second lesson that he taught me was a very basic one called international solidarity internationalism, and you know what who could say no to being friends with people around the world. Okay, so he said hey you want to come to Cuba I was 13 years old and have a skateboard. And I said sure and I went to Cuba via East Berlin by the way, it's a long story. But I ended up finding that people were very interested in being friends and developing a society that that that prioritized friendship with all people's food, shelter, clothing, education and healthcare as a national priority and anti imperialism and self determination. So you can go through the examples with with respect to Cuba, and how the United States is trying to destroy that effort to to build that stuff. Yeah, and, and then and so like for example one of the jobs that my father had as a CIA agent was to literally put an incriminating message into a toothpaste tube and plant it on a Cuban diplomat and get that diplomat taken into custody. I mean so this is the kind of stuff that you know when you go into the details, and you figure that stuff out. And lastly, there are many more stories to tell my time has run out. I would simply say that we are doing the best we can to continue the work of my father we've relaunched covert action, read it. And get involved and we'd be very, very happy to, if anyone wants to write for us for example or even get involved and help. That would be great. So ultimately what he taught me was educate yourself about these things educate those around you and get involved. That's what we need to do to to have an impact on all of this stuff that we're talking about. Anyway, thank you very much. Thank you very much. And now Frank will introduce our next speaker who will give testimony. Yes, thank you I just want to say to Chris, your father is a big hero of mine. I went to Cuba 2000 I got to meet him at his travel agency. In my film when I learned us foreign policy and you mentioned two other heroes of mine, Howard Zen and William balloon. And thanks for your presentation Chris.