THE NIGHT WATCH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200150011-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 29, 2004
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: March 6, 1977
• Content Type: NSPR

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In yC1'X APP1 e1RJ? Approved For Release 2005/01/13 : CIA-RDPtaa a 20 G V5
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Fun with the C.X.A.
the
Night
\a. Bch
Vv.25 Years of Peculiar Service.. -
By David Atlee Philfips.
309 pp. New Yorh : Atheneum.. 9.95.
By DAVID WISE
To hear David Atlee Phillips tell it,
serving as a covert operator for the
C.I.A. was a barrel of, fun, a sort of
free-floating panty-raid where the
dirty tricks were played by the
fellows in the frat house mostly on
each other- Remember the time a Chief
of Station in Latin America got drunk
and stole the Ambassador's Thanks-
the 34-foot snake a C.T.A. man zipped haps he has indeed hung up his cloak
up into a bag in Peru? Or the time : and..dagger, but quign sabe? That is
a secret
s was station
oblems with
" Philli
h
"
.
p
p
e pr
Big Dave
one of t
when
ence agency in a democracy; .best to cover up Watergate, concealing
Rio and they had this party i
ieIli
hi
f i
n
g
n
e
c
and poured. champagne out the win- one never knows where covert opera- . vital evidence from the prosecutors for
dow? tions begin and end. months. Adiai Stevenson-to my pr.
Jeezus; aching it was fun, and back in In any event, Phillips makes a good sonal knowleJge?--veal not wholly
Washington the yarns made great
taken in when he read the C.IA.'s Bay
telling when the boys gathered at
Napoleon's, as they frequently did, publicist for the C.I.A. cause. He as of figs cover story into the record at
,__ _ .. ?: ;. ?
and ordered another round of drinks. likable, tall, breezy and ruggedly hand the U.N. . And soy on.
Sometimes it seemed there were so some in the manner of John Wayne, To Phillips's credit, he was, more
many pranks going on that the C.1-A. with whom he has sometimes been than Phill assailed by doubts during
would get little things wrong Like in compared. Phillips is. Marlboro in his clandestine career. When Nixon
rchetypa
September 1963, when someone named almost the al hero of a west- ordered C T.A. direct or Richard Helms
Lee Harvey Oswald turned up in Mexi- ern movie. For more than two decades to overthrow Allo in Richard
co City and visited the Soviet and C.I.A. -have him a badge and a gun and 1970,
felt it nexcusabled since the Chilean
. felt it "inexcusable,"
Cuban embassies. David Phillips was. 'told him to clean up Latin America.
been freely elected. Pres working in the C.IA.'s Mexico City He had failed as 'an actor, play- - Doubts t had, be n enough el quit.,
station at the aide time, and ab explains wright and lecturer, but he was a suc Phillips, by his own definition, was "a
that the who cabled head- cess as a spy. In 1974, he writes, good soldier." quarters simply mixed up Oswald and "After twenty-five years. in secret op- ?
another man who had visited the
Soviet erations I was promoted . , . to GS-18, One retains the image o# him sitting
embassy. Lee n the cable
refers to "Lee Henry Oswald" and in- the ultimate rank a C.I.A. officer can under a tree in his yard, and, as he
cludes a totally inaccurate description achieve ..." For all of the glamour describes it, alternately vomiting and
that makes Oswald sound 1i)ce a line- surrounding espionage, the C.T.A. is a downing martinis after the disaster at
'backer for the Oakland Raiders. bureaucracy. There are, as Phillips the Bay of Pigs. He is reassuringly
Still, for Phillips, a 25-year veteran notes, a great many 3 x 5 cards to Fill human, and vulnerable. John Wayne
never throws up. It had perhaps begun
of C.IA.'s clandestine services, spying out to dawn on Phillips that, although he
proved a rewarding and often pleasant when .the C.I.A. was busy over- sheriff for the Good
career. Rio, where orchids bloomed by throwing a government, or trying to, had Guys, signed on n as a turned out, more often
his house on the hillside, had been I Phillips was frequently there. He was not, to be. the Bad Guys. than "pretty close to paradise." . Then, in Guatemala in 1954 when C.1-A., abruptly, everything . changed. In i with President Eisenhower's blessing, .
December 1974, Seymour Hersh re-
vealed in The New York Times that
the C.I.A. had been spying on Amer-
icans. Suddenly there was the Rocke-
feller Commission, the Congressional .
Investigations, a riptide of daily news
stories, books criticizin pr9V lFor Release 2005/01/13 CIA-RDP88-01350R000200150011-6
the Justice Department' poking around.
C.I.A. employees got a memo from I
NEW YORK TIMES (BOOK REVIEW)
6 March 1977
- toppled the government of Jacobo
oa counsel's office reminding Arbenz. Next, he went to Havana, ?
their lof t, 1 their tt under deep cover as a "lecturer,' to
remain o under der the Miranda Mid ccare. Lebanon as a "businessman" and then
back to Washington. in 1960, to talk
"The Miranda Thesilent n decision?" PPhillips
writes. "That was for' criminals!" _ part in in operation designed to dupli-
ate-
sate the Agency's victory' in Guate-
Clearly, it_wasn't fun any more. male. This time, victory'
tarnYt was the
So in 1975 Phillips informed Director Castra`s Cuba, and the invasion was
William) E. Colbthat he was resign-
to take place at.' a location on the
ing p chief of the Western He o - south coast known as the Day of Pigs.
sphere re Division to lecture and write ; . .
in defense of C.I.A. and to form an By 1970, after posts as station chief
association of former C.I.A. officers. _ B the Dominican Republic and ief
The purpose, Phillips explained at the
Phillips was back in. Washington as t
time, was to correct . "erroneous im- . chief of. the task force assigned to t
pressions" and "snowballing innuendo" block the election of Salvador Allende
about the Agency. Phillips is now as President of Chile.
president of the.Association of Former Phillips's book is thus useful as a
Intelligence Officers (A.F.I.O.), head- quartered, as is C.IA., in McLean, Va. spy's-eye operational view, from in-
Was all this-his lecturing, writing side, of events that often became
and the association-just another - spectacularly publicized. As broader,
_ z.. Y e ? histnr1 . it leaves a lot to- be desired.
edic
i
t ,-i-
n tact pr
The C.i.ra- did
rising would occur after the ay of
Pigs invasion (that is not a "myth" as
s contends). The C.I.A. did its
Philli