David Atlee Phillips
The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) investigated a claim made by Cuban exile Antonio Veciana that Phillips (while using an alias) was meeting with Lee Harvey Oswald in the months prior to November 1963.
In 1980, Donald Freed and Fred Landis published a book accusing Phillips of being Oswald’s case officer, and of having a hand in the 1976 assassination of Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier.
"[5] He became a full-time CIA operative in 1954, working as E. Howard Hunt’s deputy in the major psychological warfare effort in Guatemala during the U.S. coup and its aftermath.
[6][7] In the weeks prior to the coup, Phillips was credited with devising a brilliant radio disinformation campaign to encourage defections within the Guatemalan military, and to create an impression among the populace that "rebels were everywhere in Guatemala" and that the Liberation forces were arriving imminently.
[8] He attempted a similar radio campaign in the first years of Fidel Castro's rule by broadcasting from tiny Swan Island between the Honduran and Cuban coasts.
[15] Then, years later at a 2014 conference entitled "The Warren Report and the JFK Assassination: Five Decades of Significant Disclosures", Veciana reversed his HSCA statements and asserted unequivocally, albeit not under oath, that he believed the agent he knew as Bishop was in fact David Atlee Phillips.
[2][3] In their 1980 book Death in Washington, authors Donald Freed and Fred Landis charged that the CIA was involved in the 1973 Chilean coup d'état and the 1976 assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C.[21] The authors specifically named Phillips as participating in a coverup of the Letelier assassination, and reiterated Gaeton Fonzi's claim that Phillips served as Oswald's case officer while using the alias "Maurice Bishop".
[23] He donated the proceeds to the AFIO for the purpose of creating a legal defense fund for American intelligence officers who felt they were the victims of libel.
[citation needed] In the aftermath of the lawsuit, Phillips wrote an article in Columbia Journalism Review questioning journalistic due process.
[25][26] In the April 5, 2007 issue of Rolling Stone, Saint John Hunt detailed a number of individuals implicated by his father, including David Atlee Phillips along with Lyndon B. Johnson, Cord Meyer, David Sánchez Morales, Frank Sturgis, William Harvey and an assassin he termed "French gunman grassy knoll" who many presume was Lucien Sarti.
[26][27] The two sons alleged that their father removed the controversial information from his autobiography, American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond, in order to avoid possible perjury charges.
He authored numerous books, among them his CIA memoir The Night Watch, plus Careers in Secret Operations: How to Be a Federal Intelligence Officer, The Terror Brigade, The Carlos Contract, The Great Texas Murder Trials: A Compelling Account of the Sensational T. Cullen Davis Case, Secret Wars Diary: My Adventures in Combat Espionage Operations and Covert Action, and Writing For Pleasure and Profit in Retirement: How to Enjoy a Second Career as a Professional Writer.
