David Phillips tried his hand at acting prior to World War II. During the war he was a nose gunner in the Army Air Corps, where is plane was shot down. He was captured by the Germans, but managed to escape and return for another round. After the war he lived in Santiago, Chile as an expatriate and published an English language newspaper that circulated through South America and some Pacific Islands.

In 1954 he was recruited by the CIA and immediately proved his value with propaganda about the US backed ouster the the democratically elected president of Guatemala. He did such a good job getting the public to believe the CIAs version of the story that he was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal for his work in shielding the public from knowledge that the coup was orchestrate to protect the property of the American owned United Fruit Company that the newly elected president was about to nationalize.

Phillips was assigned to the Casablanca of the west, Mexico City in 1962. The city was the haunt of spooks from all over the world – friendly and unfriendly. It was his plan to tell the story of Lee Oswald's visit, even though Oswald was in Texas at the time. Photographs of the visitor to the Russian Embassy are of an older, huskier man.

Phillips was spotted chatting with Lee Oswald in Dallas during the summer of 1963 by Antonio Veciana who also worked with the CIA. This conversation was recorded in a book by Donald Freed and Fred Landis named Death In Washington. He sued the men and the publisher for 230 million. They settled for an undisclosed amount. Apparently Phillips and his cover story was more convincing then Veciana's testimony.

Phillips was called to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations and gave several accounts of his conversation with Oswald and other activities relating to the assassination. The accounts were so different that investigator Gaeton Fonzi thought he should be tried for perjury.

As E Howard Hunt was experiencing his last days, he confirmed that he had been involved in the Kennedy killing as had Lyndon Johnson, Cord Meyer, Frank Sturgis and David Phillips. Phillips initially dismissed this as the ramblings of a senile old man, however, on his own death bed he is reported to have admitted to being at Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination.

BOOK: Death in Washington / Freed & Landis

The Night Watch: 25 Years of Peculiar Service
by David Atlee Phillips

For 25 years David Atlee Phillips stood "the night watch" for the CIA. He directed Western Hemisphere Operations when the Chilean government was overthrown (with CIA help) in 1973.Phillips details his experiences in 18 countries. Along the way, we learn much about "the company," certainly one of the least understood and most controversial pillars of our defense ever to have been invented.

"Phillips is as skilled a writer as he was a spook, and his astonishingly readable book makes a convincing case for the necessity of an intelligence service such as the CIA." --Joseph C. Goulden.

Trained to Kill: The Inside Story of CIA Plots against Castro, Kennedy, and Che
by Antonio Veciana, Carlos Harrison, David Talbot (Foreword)

Antonio Veciana fought on the front lines of the CIA’s decades-long secret war to destroy Fidel Castro, the bearded bogeyman who haunted America’s Cold War dreams. It was a time of swirling intrigue, involving US spies with license to kill, Mafia hit men, ruthless Cuban exiles—and the leaders in the crosshairs of all this dark plotting, Fidel Castro and John F. Kennedy.

Veciana transformed himself from an asthmatic banker to a bomb-making mastermind who headed terrorist attacks in Havana and assassination attempts against Castro, while building one of the era’s most feared paramilitary groups—all under the direction of the CIA.

In the end, Veciana became a threat—not just to Castro, but also to his CIA handler. Veciana was the man who knew too much. Suddenly he found himself a target—framed and sent to prison, and later shot in the head and left to die on a Miami street.