The world is not enough
From CIA agent to renegade to left-wing activist, Philip Agee is a man adept at change. Now living in Havana, his latest venture is to entice tourists to Cuba with a new online travel agency, Cubalinda.com
By Anya Schiffrin
On a recent weekend in Havana, activists from around the world gathered for the Global Meeting on Solidarity and Friendship. Organised by the Cuban Institute for Friendship of the People, an offshoot of the ruling Communist Party, the four-day conference at the Karl Marx theatre was a magnet for earnest sandal-wearers from around the world. Latin American delegates danced the salsa in the streets of old Havana, and West Coast lefties showed up to express their support. Less committed Irish trade unionists skipped some meetings, staying out drinking until 5am and chatting up the locals in halting Spanish.
Another no-show was Philip Agee, who was supposed to speak on CIA disinformation campaigns. A former CIA agent, Agee became a renegade who went on to expose hundreds of other US agents around the world. He was banned from five NATO countries (including the UK) and stripped of his US citizenship in 1979. Today he lives in Havana.
Agee missed the meeting because he had too much e-mail to answer and there was work to do at his Internet start-up company. After spending hours at the office where he runs Cubalinda.com - a Web site for tourists who want to travel to Cuba - Agee prepared for lunch. This was followed by a visit to the old quarter of the city, where a state-owned construction company is renovating the 18th century apartment he was considering renting.
"What kind of idiot would choose those doors," he exclaimed on seeing the shiny wooden doors - with ugly brass-coloured handles - that had been just been mounted in one of the more attractive buildings in Havana's oldest plaza. "They must have read that these were traditional so they just stuck them on. It's a terrible disappointment."
From notorious spy to disgruntled homeowner, from wild-eyed activist and left-wing poster boy to expat small businessman, Agee at 65 is now on his third career. This time, though, it doesn't involve buying elections, planting stories in South American newspapers or railing against US imperialism from a podium. Rather, he has launched an online travel agency. Agee's business is to bring tourists to Cuba and to make money doing it.
There are former Black Panthers and other expatriate radicals living in Havana. There is a small community of foreign investors, diplomats and reporters in town. But Agee shuns their company in favour of working. He does attend to some visiting socialists and he maintains good relations with the Cuban government. But Saturday nights will find him at the Hemingway Marina trying to drum up business from visiting American yachts. He sleeps in a small room in his office. He spends hours every day answering his e-mails.
"I get irritable if I don't reply quickly," he says. "The amount we have received is overwhelming."
Indeed, in his neatly pressed khaki trousers and button-down shirt, Agee looks far more like the Florida businessman his father was than the notorious traitor still loathed by the CIA. But if he looks the same, he is not. Colleagues from the CIA remember the young man of 21 who joined the agency straight out of college and established his "cover" at George Air Force Base in Victorville California, before being sent down to Ecuador in 1960.
Agee describes himself as being politically "naive" at the time. Others, though, remember him as so right-wing that he argued against the minimum wage, saying it would bankrupt small businessmen such as his father, who ran a laundry and uniform rental service in Tampa.
There can't be many former agents who have an Internet start-up. The idea came to Agee when he bought a book from Amazon.com a few years ago and decided that the Web was a good way to sell trips to Cuba. His two sons, Chris and Philip, are computer consultants; they gave Agee advice about what he needed to do to set up his Web site. Agee registered a company in the Bahamas and raised funds from investors that he does not wish to identify.
The site launched last spring. After holding a press conference to announce the start-up of the first "wholly owned US business" on the island in 40 years (despite his German passport, Agee still thinks of himself as American), he got 800,000 page views. He also received a flood of e-mail which took months to answer, and included irate messages from Cuban Americans and former university and military colleagues outraged by his activities.
Today Cubalinda has a staff of 12, including a recent retiree from Cuba's ministry of foreign affairs. Foreigners are generally not allowed to set up tourism companies in Cuba unless they have established themselves overseas, but Agee has been exempted from this ruling. The company's offices, rented from the government's official news agency, Prensa Latina, are in a high-rise block near the US interests section of the Swiss embassy.
Internet speeds can be incredibly slow in Cuba. Agee says it's because the US embargo restricts Cuban access to undersea cables, so the country has limited bandwidth. Computers are rare in Cuba anyway, confined mainly to government offices. Agee is now using his third Internet service provider and usually gets a 64Kbps connection, though he pays a hefty $600 (650 euros) a month for his leased line.
It's not yet possible to book hotels and plane tickets on the site itself and payments are carried out via a wire transfer to Agee's account in Germany. But Agee hopes to have an online credit-card payment system in place before the end of the year. For now, visitors log on to the site and then e-mail Agee with specific requests for their trip.
He has organised biking tours for groups of Canadians and Americans, skydiving trips, and visits to Cuba's colourful carnival, which takes place in late July and August in Havana.
In the first six months of operation, Agee provided trips around Cuba for about 100 people and realised gross revenues of about $50,000 (54,000 euros). He passed the break-even point in November after invoicing nearly $100,000 (108,000 euros) and expects to become profitable by early this year.
He has big expansion plans and would like to provide customised tours, such as visits to Havana's old Jewish quarter, architectural and archeological tours, hiking and riding in the Sierra Maestra near Santiago de Cuba (in the east of the country) and white-water rafting. Agee also has plans to provide package tours in conjunction with carriers flying from major gateways such as Toronto, Madrid, London, Paris and Frankfurt.
It is illegal for Americans to visit Cuba for tourism and the ban is enforced through a prohibition on spending dollars there. But some 22,000 flew in illegally last year and prosecutions are rare. It's that group of adventurous travellers - as well as Europeans holidaymakers - that Agee wants to target with his Web site.
"The Cubans have been misunderstood and so have I," says Agee. "The plan is to continue what I have been doing for 30 years - working for solidarity projects in Cuba."
When it comes to tourism, the Cubans are not yet experts. True, they have fenced-off resorts in the north of the island which are purportedly as good as anything you would find in Phuket or Bali. But a lot of the country's "resorts" consist of stolid cement hotels, bad food and slightly grubby beaches.
It's all very reminiscent of the grim Cold War days, when trips to resorts were rewards for workers who had faithfully served their local coal-belching factory, or cadres who had done an above-average job at the requisite proselytising for the Communist Party were given a free trip to the seaside.
But it's that rough unspoiled atmosphere which adds to Cuba's charm. On the plus side, old Havana is one of the most attractive cities in the world, with streets of colonial buildings completely unsullied by modern development. The old plazas and restored houses and shops are beautiful examples of 18th and 19th century Spanish colonial architecture. Cars have been banned from old Havana and there is a constant background of live music. In addition, Cubans are incredibly open, easy going and friendly to visitors.
But it's strange to see Cubans - who made a revolution in the hope of getting rid of the dollar - now reduced to scrambling for it. And it's like something out of a Graham Greene novel to see a former spy like Agee spend his twilight years in Havana. It's a sign of the changed world that he spends his time working on a Web site rather than inciting revolt in Third World countries.
But what else can the Cubans do with him? They have nowhere to send someone like him because they don't support revolutionary movements anymore. It's years since the Cubans sent substantial numbers of cadres or troops to help developing countries free themselves from "imperialist tyranny".
So now, at the age of 65, Agee bides his time in Havana, living peacefully with his wife, running a small Internet business, waiting for his retirement and feeling grateful that the weather is as warm as the Florida he grew up in.
"On a sunny afternoon in November, Havana is not a bad place to be," Agee says.