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THE CIA killed Che Guevara and planned to do so from 1959 along with the destruction of the Cuban Revolution because of the example they set to the rest of Latin America, according to the celebrated former agent Philip Agee.

Speaking shortly after the discovery Che's remains, Agee, who served for the CIA as an agent for 20 years, told reporters in Havana:

"There was no person more feared by the company that Che Guevara because he had the capacity and charisma necessary to direct the struggle against the against the political repression of the traditional hierarchies in power in the countries of Latin America."

The former agent who from 1957 to 1968 worked in Ecuador, Uruguay and Mexico said that the regions CIA stations had has their number one job to obtain information about Che's plans and the actions he was carrying out because of the influence he had on guerrilla groups throughout the continent.

"For that reason it was important to know his whereabouts at all times," Agee said.

"The CIA opened a file on Che in 1953 in Guatemala, months before the downfall of Jacob Arbenz, where the young doctor arrived looking for work. There he joined the local popular militias which were asking to be armed to repel the North American intervention. When he later went to Mexico and joined up with Fidel and Raul Castro the CIA' preoccupation multiplied," he added.

Agee recalled how his career in the CIA had always somehow been related to Cuba.

He was recruited in 1957 shortly after his first visit to Cuba during which he had fallen in love with the country, its people and the food. That was forty years before the present visit during which he talked to journalists from the Cuban press agency Prensa Latina.

He told them that when he arrived in Ecuador on his fist mission he realised that Cuba was going to be the focus of his work. Agee was in fact given the task of trying to prevent the example of Cuba from being made known to the peoples of the region.

In Uruguay he was personally given charge of an operation to detect the movements of Che and developed a network of informants in the airport, installed wiretaps in the Cuba Embassy phones, intercepted the embassy mail and even put tails on the Cuban diplomats.

He finally left the CIA when he began to object to its methods after being given the job of infiltrating the Olympic Preparatory Committee prior to the 1968 Mexico games.

Agee explained: "In those days I had divorced and began to go out with a North American who was also divorced (from a Mexican) but who was the link between the US embassy and the Olympic Committee. "Without me realising it, Che became the reason for me leaving the CIA. "While we were eating, and I don't remember exactly what provoked the conversation, she began to attack the CIA saying they had assassinated the greatest hope of Latin America. She recounted all our dirty work, Guatemala and the commitment Che had made to the oppressed.

"That morning they had announced the death of Che"