David Atlee Phillips

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

David Atlee Phillips (October 31, 1922-July 7, 1988) was a CIA agent in charge of the CIA's Mexico City station when Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald visited the city.

Some Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists believe that Phillips occasionally went by the name "Maurice Bishop" (not to be confused with the former prime minister of Grenada, Maurice Bishop). He supposedly used this pseudonym while working with Alpha 66, an organization of anti-Castro Cubans. Alpha 66's founder, Antonio Veciana, claimed that during one of his meetings with "Bishop", Lee Harvey Oswald was also in attendance. HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi believed Phillips was Bishop. In the HSCA's report, it stated:

"The committee suspected that Veciana was lying when he denied that the retired CIA officer was Bishop. The committee recognized that Veciana had an interest in renewing his anti-Castro operations that might have led him to protect the officer from exposure as Bishop so they could work together again. For his part, the retired officer aroused the committee's suspicion when he told the committee he did not recognize Veciana as the founder of Alpha 66, especially since the officer had once been deeply involved in Agency anti-Castro operations. Further, a former CIA case officer who was assigned from September 1960 to November 1962 to the JM/WAVE station in Miami told the committee that the retired officer had in fact used the alias, Maurice Bishop. The committee also interviewed a former assistant of the retired officer but he could not recall his former superior ever having used the name or having been referred to as Bishop." (HSCA Report, page 136, footnote 23)

The report went on to dismiss Veciana's testimony:

"In the absence of corroboration or independent substantiation, the committee could not, therefore, credit Veciana's story" (page 137)

Phillips sued a number of newspapers which printed the accusation for libel.

[edit] See also

[edit] Bibliography

The Night Watch: 25 Years of Peculiar Service, 1977.
Carlos Contract (a novel), 1978.
The Great Texas Murder Trials: A Compelling Account of the Sensational T. Cullen Davis Case, 1979.
Careers in Secret Operations, 1984.