David Atlee Phillips

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David Atlee Phillips (October 31, 1922-July 7, 1988) was a highly successful career CIA officer for 25 years, one of a handful of people to receive the coveted Career Intelligence Medal. In 1975 he founded the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), an alumni association comprising intelligence officers from all services.

David Phillips joined the CIA as a part-time agent in 1950 in Chile, where he owned and edited "The South Pacific Mail", an English-language newspaper that circulated throughout South America and several islands in the Pacific. He became a full-time operative in 1954 and rose through the ranks to intelligence officer, chief of station and eventually chief of all operations in the Western Hemisphere, serving in primarily in Latin American, including Cuba, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic.

Mr. Phillips established his ties to the intelligence community during World War II, when as a prisoner of war in Germany he became a member of an escape committee, serving until his own escape.

During the 1970s the intelligence community was rocked by a number of leaks and embarassing revelations. This was enormously compounded by sophisticated disinformation campaigns thought to have originated in the Soviet Union. Mr. Phillips decided to react by taking early retirement in order to respond in public. The former officer felt strongly that intelligence communities should be kept from committing excesses, but not undermined or destroyed. Although much attacked at a time when many people called for the dismantlement of the CIA, Mr. Phillips toured the world to speak out in favor of the need for a strong intelligence community. Almost immediately thereafter he himself was accused by unconfirmed sources of being a participant in the Kennedy and Letelier assassinations. The former officer then successfully sued all the major newspapers in the United States and Great Britain that had printed the accusations for libel, despite the financial burden and warnings by his lawyers that less than 10% of libel lawsuits are successful. Mr. Phillips's response was that his children and grandchildren would never be sure he had been ethical unless he fought back. As part of the settlement full-page retractions were issued and monetary damages were awarded. Mr. Phillips donated these proceeds entirely to AFIO for the purpose of creating a legal defense fund for any American intelligence officers who felt they were the victims of either libel or deliberate misinformation or smear campaigns.

The accusations against Mr. Phillips took advantage of the fact that he was the agent 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)

After his vindication Mr. Phillips wrote and lectured frequently on intelligence matters. He authored five books, including his CIA memoir "The Night Watch", "Careers in Secret Operations" and spy novel called "The Carlos Contract".

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[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.