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JFK Book Reviews - The Night Watch · The Lone Gunman Podcast : JFK Assassination

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to JFK Book Reviews. My name is
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Joe Borelli, and as always I am joined by my
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  Speaker 1: co host and partner in crime, Robert Clark, and today
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  Speaker 1: we will be joining reviewing the book The Night Watch
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  Speaker 1: twenty five Years of Peculiar Service by David Attlee. Phillips
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  Speaker 1: and Rob This is a first edition copy which I
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  Speaker 1: obtained a couple of years ago. So I'll let you
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  Speaker 1: kind of start it off and tell us a little
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  Speaker 1: bit about it.
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  Speaker 2: I want to see how think it is. First.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, it is.
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  Speaker 1: It's pretty.
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  Speaker 4: Pretty thick.
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  Speaker 2: And of the thickness, pretty thick.
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  Speaker 1: It's it's decently thick.
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  Speaker 2: Little smack.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, can you tell by the sound?
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  Speaker 2: I can? Yes, I'm a thickness of fishinado. Yes, lovely. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: So The Night Watch by David Attley Phillips is what
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  Speaker 2: we're going to be reviewing here today. This book, the
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  Speaker 2: one that Joe was holding in his hot little hand there,
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  Speaker 2: was published in nineteen seventy seven by Atheneum Publishing out
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  Speaker 2: of New York. It was published in a paperback I
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  Speaker 2: believe two years later. This book has about three hundred
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  Speaker 2: and twenty one pages to it. There's twenty five chapters,
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  Speaker 2: an epilogue, and a prologue. It does have a detailed
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  Speaker 2: eight page index. There are no footnotes or endnotes, as
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  Speaker 2: this book is kind of written as an autobiography. It's
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  Speaker 2: not really trying to prove anything one way or the other.
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  Speaker 2: It's just his words, a memoir if you will. There's
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  Speaker 2: sixteen pages dedicated to black and white photographs, mostly personal
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  Speaker 2: and operational photos from Phillip's career. There is no appendix,
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  Speaker 2: and let's see, if you're looking for this book, you
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  Speaker 2: can find it. But Joe, you're gonna pay a little
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: bit for this bad Boy. Yeah, I don't know how much.
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  Speaker 2: Your copy was not that much, but right now, if
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  Speaker 2: you want that on Amazon, you're gonna pay about eighty
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  Speaker 2: nine books. And for some reason, the paperback is going
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  Speaker 2: for one hundred and ten, so more than the original
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  Speaker 2: first edition hardcover. And it's that way too on a books.
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  Speaker 2: You're gonna you're probably gonna drop one hundred bucks on
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  Speaker 2: this book if you want it. This is not the
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  Speaker 2: only book that he wrote. He also wrote a book
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  Speaker 2: called The Secret Wars Diary, sometimes known as the am
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Lash Legacy. It was kind of an unpublished manuscript excerpt
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  Speaker 2: type of thing that they kind of found after he
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  Speaker 2: passed away and then put out. But yeah, I mean
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  Speaker 2: this book, if you read what David Atley Phillips says
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  Speaker 2: in here, it definitely aside from you know, the other
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  Speaker 2: things in his career, he does devote an entire chapter
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  Speaker 2: to November twenty second, nineteen sixty three, in which he
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  Speaker 2: talks about the JFK assassination very candidly and quite frankly
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  Speaker 2: proclaims this, and I quote, I do not believe there
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  Speaker 2: was a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy. After fourteen years
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  Speaker 2: of considering the matter, I'm convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald
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  Speaker 2: was the loan assassin. So Joe I would say this,
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  Speaker 2: well definitely takes a loan perspective.
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  Speaker 1: If you will, I I would definitely agree with that.
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  Speaker 1: And uh yeah, of course the Knight's Watch refers to
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  Speaker 1: the clandestine services and of course the officers who work
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  Speaker 1: in this shadowy milliere mostly you know, at night, literally
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  Speaker 1: and figuratively.
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  Speaker 4: Uh.
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  Speaker 1: It's written. It's written, uh with a lot of wit.
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  Speaker 1: Some of it's kind of funny, a little bit of
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  Speaker 1: uh uh theatrical flair and uh, like you mentioned it's
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  Speaker 1: part autobiography, part defense of the CIA and UH and
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  Speaker 1: and the need for for agencies like the CIA, and
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  Speaker 1: he is definitely unapologetically pro agency, but does admit some
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  Speaker 1: mistakes and excuses within the book. Look, it's kind of
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  Speaker 1: his first hand account of his twenty five year career
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  Speaker 1: inside the CIA from nineteen fifteen to nineteen seventy five.
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  Speaker 1: And everything in the book is presented real events, real operations,
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  Speaker 1: and his personal experiences, although he does, I feel gives
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  Speaker 1: some people some aliases, one being Wally, which we'll get to.
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  Speaker 1: But yes, it is comprised well. Actually, first let me
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  Speaker 1: read the inside, which is inside of the book, which
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  Speaker 1: is written by William Colby, of course, director of the CIA.
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  Speaker 1: At some point mister Phillips displays the night Watch, his
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  Speaker 1: skill and style with prose which made him the fine
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  Speaker 1: psychological warrior, the courage and integrity under pressure which he
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  Speaker 1: and his intelligence colleagues served the name, and the warmth
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  Speaker 1: and compassion he showed to the thousands of foreigners and
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  Speaker 1: Americans during his twenty five years of service. His rich
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  Speaker 1: account of the humanside of the business brings into clear
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  Speaker 1: focus its heart, discipline, its moments of comic relief and
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  Speaker 1: its stark moral and ethical dilemmas. Out of it comes
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  Speaker 1: the truth behind the sensational headlines of twenty five years
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  Speaker 1: in Latin American history. And you're right, it really is
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  Speaker 1: kind of an autobiography. He goes through his twenty five years.
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  Speaker 1: He starts in Chile in nineteen fifty. Chapter two is Guatemala,
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  Speaker 1: which was Pebe's success, which, of course he met a
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  Speaker 1: lot of the characters we are familiar with who were
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  Speaker 1: involved in that operation of over throwing that government, including
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  Speaker 1: gave him morales. Chapter three Washington, Cuba, Lebanon, thank you again,
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  Speaker 1: Bay of Pay, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Washington, Brazil, Venezuela, Washington again, and.
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  Speaker 3: Then let's see the other ones, sure.
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  Speaker 1: And then Washington again, and then the epilogue and the index,
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  Speaker 1: and you know, it's it's really interesting because the process
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  Speaker 1: to write in autobiography and detail a lot of the
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  Speaker 1: CIA operations is not an easy one to do.
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  Speaker 4: You have to get a lot of people within the
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  Speaker 4: CIA to approve you writing about this, and I'm sure
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  Speaker 4: it went through many, many, many edits and back and forth.
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  Speaker 1: I'm going to read a chapter, a little section here.
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  Speaker 2: He goes.
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  Speaker 1: This is the Mexico City. April sixty two to sixty
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  Speaker 1: four I reported from work at the Mexico City Station
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  Speaker 1: to take over the Covert Operation desk. Most of my
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  Speaker 1: work involved support to CIA projects in third countries and
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  Speaker 1: was relatively routine, allowing me some leisure to observe other
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  Speaker 1: CIA officers working against the quote hard targets the Soviets, Cubans,
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  Speaker 1: Czechs and other communist countries. The soft targets the Mexican
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  Speaker 1: and Latin American communist parties. It was new to me
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  Speaker 1: and a valuable learning period. Much of my time was
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  Speaker 1: spent on anti Castro propaganda operations, and yes, he was
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  Speaker 1: pretty much involved in psyops, as we like to call them.
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  Speaker 1: In short, this called for many hours of coordination with
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  Speaker 1: the station officer, whose job it was to know what
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  Speaker 1: was going on in and around the Cuban embassy. The
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  Speaker 1: Cuban section was Wally Would. I don't know if he's
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  Speaker 1: referring to Win Scott here. He does refer to as Wally.
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  Speaker 1: I'm not sure who he had first met at the
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  Speaker 1: University of Chile in Santiago. He too, had been hired
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  Speaker 1: by the CIA as an intelligence officer, and he also
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  Speaker 1: describes an interesting meeting he had with President Kennedy. Suddenly
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  Speaker 1: this president headed straight for me. He put out his
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  Speaker 1: hand high, said the President of the United States. I'm
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  Speaker 1: Jack Kennedy. I was surprised that at close range he
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  Speaker 1: was much a larger man than I had imagined from photographs,
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  Speaker 1: and that his face was not only ruddily but downright
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  Speaker 1: read sir. I shook hands. MY name is David Phillips.
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  Speaker 1: What do you do here in Mexico? Mister phillips.
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  Speaker 3: Ka asks.
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  Speaker 1: The forty news people behind the president were adjusting for
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  Speaker 1: a place near him. I work for you, mister President,
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  Speaker 1: in the embassy, I see, and Kennedy kind of kept pressing,
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  Speaker 1: was persistent. He wanted a straight answer. What do you
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  Speaker 1: do precisely? Jfk asked precisely? God, would I be forced
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  Speaker 1: to lie to my commander in chief? I write reports,
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  Speaker 1: mister President. Kennedy's hard face hardened, reddened even more. I continued, lamely,
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  Speaker 1: reports which I have, which I hope will be useful,
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  Speaker 1: mister phillips I. The President stopped abruptly, his jaw dropped.
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  Speaker 1: He finally realized my dilemma. He touched his lips momentarily
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  Speaker 1: with the tips of his fingers, and as a little
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  Speaker 1: girl might do when you when caught out than in
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  Speaker 1: clear tones, I see, well, good luck to you.
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  Speaker 5: Mister Phillips, and then kind of goes on to see how,
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  Speaker 5: say how the President was sorry that he called him
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  Speaker 5: out in front of this reporters.
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  Speaker 1: So when you're dealing with a psyops officer, right, someone
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  Speaker 1: that's that's trained in this, it's really hard to believe
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  Speaker 1: what is truth.
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  Speaker 6: What is.
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  Speaker 1: Defense of the CIA, and what tidbits are in this
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  Speaker 1: book that maybe could be interesting and useful, and you
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  Speaker 1: know what I mean. He obviously portrays the CIA as
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  Speaker 1: a necessary patriotic night watch, as the title says, defending
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  Speaker 1: America in the Cold War, but he does acknowledge some
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  Speaker 1: abuses and and and morally gray areas. And he also,
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  Speaker 1: as we know, ended up forming the association of Former
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  Speaker 1: Intelligence Officers, the a FIO an Alumni Association, comprising intelligence
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  Speaker 1: officers from all services, not just the CIA. So he
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  Speaker 1: was obviously a company man. He obviously you know, probably
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  Speaker 1: we probably got like a little glimpse of some tidbits
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  Speaker 1: of the truth with obviously a description of his whole career,
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  Speaker 1: But I don't know where I'm gonna land on this rating, Rob.
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  Speaker 1: It's I don't know how much exactly of it is
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  Speaker 1: misinformation and how much exactly of it is truth. And
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  Speaker 1: with the psyops CIA officer, you can really never know.
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  Speaker 1: So let me throw it back to you for your rating, sir.
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  Speaker 2: Amen to that. You know another CIA guy who used
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  Speaker 2: to write a lot of novels, hunt under some pseudonyms,
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  Speaker 2: And I don't think the CIA was quite aware of
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  Speaker 2: all that he was doing at the time, because he
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  Speaker 2: was writing novels as early as the fifties and sixties.
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  Speaker 2: But yeah, the question is can how much of this
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  Speaker 2: stuff can we believe? And I mentioned before that he
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  Speaker 2: had written another manuscript that kind of went unpublished, called
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  Speaker 2: The Secret Wars Diary, and in that book he kind
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  Speaker 2: of started walking things back when it came to a conspiracy. Now,
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  Speaker 2: this book focuses on the Cuban operations, and on his
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  Speaker 2: deathbed he reportedly told HSCA investigator Kevin Walsh, and this
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  Speaker 2: is in nineteen eighty eight that quote, my private opinion
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  Speaker 2: is that JFK was done in by a conspiracy, likely
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  Speaker 2: including rogue American intelligence people. But he refused to elaborate further.
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  Speaker 2: This is documented in Larry Hancock's book Someone would Have Talked,
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  Speaker 2: and n HSCA staff notes, huh yeah. Now, not a
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  Speaker 2: lot of people have seen this unpublished manuscript, but some
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  Speaker 2: people that have allegedly say that it contains veiled admissions
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  Speaker 2: that certain CIA officers may have had foreign knowledge or
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  Speaker 2: been involved in the cover up. But Phillips never published
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  Speaker 2: it and the full text has never been released. You know,
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  Speaker 2: I heard it was like when you say like thinly veiled, right,
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  Speaker 2: Like if you're trying to say David Morales, for instance,
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  Speaker 2: you know his name would be.
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  Speaker 1: Like, uh, Davey or something, or I don't know.
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  Speaker 2: Daniel Moran, right, you know, something like that, right, very
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  Speaker 2: thinly veiled. But again it's unpublished and we only have,
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  Speaker 2: you know, some questionable researcher's word on it. But again
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  Speaker 2: in the book, he says there was definitely no CI involvement.
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  Speaker 2: He defended the Warrant Commission conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald
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  Speaker 2: acted alone. He ridicules conspiracy theories in general, calling many
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  Speaker 2: of them absurd, and he claims that the agency was
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  Speaker 2: as shocked as everybody else and immediately began reviewing all
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  Speaker 2: files on Oswald, who had been in Mexico City visiting
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  Speaker 2: the Soviet and Cuban embassies only weeks earlier, and Operation
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  Speaker 2: Phillips himself oversaw when he was chief of Cuban operations
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  Speaker 2: in Mexico City. So you know, for what it is,
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  Speaker 2: and it's a memoir about his life in the CIA.
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  Speaker 2: The question is how truthful is it? How truthful could
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  Speaker 2: it have been? Because the CIA does not want you
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  Speaker 2: to divulge methods and you know, means or what do
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  Speaker 2: they call it, methods and methods.
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  Speaker 1: It's not techniques, methods and.
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  Speaker 2: Operations. I forget the exact Yeah, I do too, methods
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  Speaker 2: and means or whatever. So of course that would have
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  Speaker 2: been obscured or changed or something. But the main gist
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  Speaker 2: of what he was trying to say that he did
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  Speaker 2: in the course of his career, his twenty five year
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  Speaker 2: career with the CIA, probably doesn't stray too far from
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  Speaker 2: the truth. Again, by the time he wrote this, excuse me.
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  Speaker 2: By the time he wrote this book, he was retired
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  Speaker 2: from the CIA. He retired in nineteen seventy five and
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  Speaker 2: the book came out in seventy seven. I believe he
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  Speaker 2: started writing it as soon as he retired, maybe a
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  Speaker 2: little before. The CIA did review the book in nineteen
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  Speaker 2: seventy six and made very minuscule changes to it. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: I believe he understood the assignment that, you know, you
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  Speaker 2: can't say everything, you know. I'm sure he's signed some
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  Speaker 2: kind of an NDA when it came to like actual
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: clandestine operations, and there's probably a lot of stuff that
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: he couldn't even talk about or touching this book. He
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: is very vague about some things, and I'm sure some
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  Speaker 2: places and names have been changed to protect the innocent,
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  Speaker 2: you know, type of thing. But for what it is,
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  Speaker 2: I mean, it is definitely not a JFK assassination book,
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  Speaker 2: although there is a chapter devoted just to that subject.
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  Speaker 2: Of course, you can't do a book and be David
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  Speaker 2: Atley Phillips and not talk about November twenty second, nineteen
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  Speaker 2: sixty three in some capacity. But you know, that was
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  Speaker 2: a very short part of this man's twenty five year
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  Speaker 2: career with the CIA, and that's what this is. It's
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: a memoir, an autobiography, if you will, and maybe in
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: the close confines of very personal, out of the way things,
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: he may have actually told some people that he believed different,
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: but being a good soldier, being a good employee, he
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: told the company line when it mattered in his autobiography,
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  Speaker 2: So for that he's going to look a little bit.
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  Speaker 2: But for this being what it is, Joe, with it
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  Speaker 2: being an autobiography of being a memoir with one short
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  Speaker 2: chapter about November twenty second sixty three in it.
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  Speaker 1: Uh man, it's a hard one.
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  Speaker 2: It is. It is because you don't know if what
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: you're reading is true. That's the problem, right. I guess
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  Speaker 2: I'm gonna give this book a very middle of the
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  Speaker 2: road five guns up baby, all right.
• 19:50
  Speaker 6: I you know, I I am kind of right there
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  Speaker 6: with you, because I think there is some value in this,
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  Speaker 6: uh in terms of understanding his career with with the CIA.
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  Speaker 1: I think he was, uh, you know, maybe struggling internally
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  Speaker 1: with with his with his morality and in a sense
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: in some ways, but like you said, definitely a company man,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: I think for what it is, and I think the
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: goal that he was trying to do was to obviously
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: protect the CIA in a sense, protect his fellow intelligence officers.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Obviously he made that union essentially after a.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: Pension, I'm sorry, and protect his own pension.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And and his own reputation too, and so it
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: is really really hard to gauge it. I think, if
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: you know, I read it a couple of years ago
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  Speaker 1: and I skimmed a lot of it today, I definitely
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: would need to read it again in full to maybe
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: give it a more accurate rating. But I'm going to
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  Speaker 1: go middle of the Road also five guns up, because
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: it at least gives you insight into his motive motivations,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: into his career and in a lot of the operations,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: you know, from nineteen fifty to nineteen seventy five. So
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: I think I'm not sure if it's worth eighty or
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: one hundred bucks. I think I got it for like
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: twenty or thirty, so, but I think there is some
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: value to it. So I'm gonna land with you there,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: middle of the Road, five out of ten.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: And I should say here also there. It is free
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: on the Internet Archive site, but there's no way to
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: download it, and I don't know how to at borrowing
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: things works. I don't know, but I'll put the link
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: in the description for anybody wants to try to get
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: it that way for free if you really really want
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: to read it. And it is available on the Internet
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: Archive dot org and if you enjoyed this book review, folks,
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: we do a show all about the JFK assassination. It's
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: called the Lone gum And Podcast, and we do it
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: every Friday night live stream here at seven pm Eastern,
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: and we do it again on Wednesday nights at seven
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: pm for our channel members exclusively because we love them,
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: and so check it out. Follow the link there to
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  Speaker 2: our channel and you'll find all of our lives under
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  Speaker 2: the live tab. Hit the playlist and you'll find all
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: kinds of other stuff as well, as well as every
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: JFK book review we've ever done. And in the meantime,
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: check out our last one that we did somewhere here
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: and I'll put up the playlist too for our Love
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: and Guming podcast, you can check that out as well.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: Until next time, folks, that's it for us, Thanks for
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: hanging out with us, and peace.
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: Thank you,