INTERVIEW WITH SUMMERS AND PHILLIPS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000303190037-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 11
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 23, 2010
• Sequence Number: 37
• Publication Date: June 16, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
The Today Show STATION WRC TV
NBC Network
June 16, 1980 7:00 AM
interview with Summers and Phillips
Washington, DC
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to be hearinOg aRgrea~t dealrabout.neltbwas writtentbyothis goln
over here, Anthony Summers. He's a British journalist, a former
BBC investigative reporter who took some time off a few years
ago to begin writing books. He says he has uncovered important
new evidence now possibly linking CIA agents with a conspiracy
to assassinate John F. Kennedy.
the book, indonemformhorkthesotherabostDavid~AtleesPhillupsln
who was the CIA's Latin American station chiet during thepKen-
nedy years.
First, Mr. Summers, we're going to begin with you.
What prompted you to write this book after all the attention
that this investigation and assassination has received already?
ANTHONY SUMP~IERS: You know, I think there's a great
national weariness about the Kennedy assassination because of
the years of rumor and counter-rumor. I was brought into the
case reluctantly when Congress's Assassinations Committee was
working two or three years ago. First i did a documentary which
was shown on the BBC and over here. And when I went down the
road and did the journalism, started wearing out the shoe lea-
ther, I found that I was seeing relevant, important witnesses
who had never been visited by the media before and in some cases
had never been visited by -- even by law enforcement.
That somewhat shocked me, and I started working on
what has ended up as the book.
BROKAW: We can't go through this, obviously, para-
STAT
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graph by paragraph. But let me, if I can, just try to summarize
what you concluded about Lee Harvey Oswald, based on your inves-
tigation. That he was a kind of a doubts agent, that he posed
as a very pro-communist sympathizer, pro-Castro, pro-Soviet Union.
But, in fact, you conclude, in a way, that he was really a right-
winger, he was a kind of low-level CIA operative, and that he had
connections with the CIA before the assassination of John Kennedy.
SUMMERS: I think to say "the CIA" at any point in this
whole story is wrong. American intelligence was and is an octo-
pus with many legs. And I don't conclude, as such, that he was
definitely anything at ail.
I think, however, it's too simplistic just to say that
he was a lone left-wing zealot.
What 1 would also like to add is that I think the star-
ting point of this book and any new consideration of the Kennedy
assassination is the fact that last year Congress's Assassinations
Committee, which you all paid for, concluded that there was a con-
spiracy, in the sense that there were two gunmen in Dealey Plaza.
The directions that the committee looked to for its conspiracy
were the anti-Castro movement and organized crime. Lee Harvey
Oswald, apparently =- the Lee Oswald that we know from official
reports in the past -- fitted neither of those frames.
BROKAW: Let's jump now to a man by the name of Antonio
Vesiano (?), who was an anti-Castro leader, who was a member of
Alpha 66.
SUMMERS: He was the civilian leader of Alpha 66, which
was one of the roost militant and best-known anti-Castro guerrilla
groups in 1963. Yes.
BROKAW: He told you that he saw Lee Harvey Oswald in
the company of who?
SUMMERS: Vesiano says that his U.S. intelligence case
officer, who was code-named, according to him, Morris Bishop, was
during 1963 attempting to subvert American national policy by
causing trouble in the wake of the missile crisis, a very dan-
gerous time, between the United States and the Soviet Union over
Cuba. He says that about eight weeks before the assassination,
he saw Morris Bishop., his case officer, in the company of Lee
Oswald.
And he also says, which I think, in a way, is much more
disquieting, that after the assassination, his case officer asked
him to fabricate, to help fabricate evidence linking Oswald with
Castro Cuban diplomats.
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BROKAW: And there has been some suggestion that this
man Mr. Bishop is the same man who's our other guest here this
morning. And he's here to deny that.
We're going to show you the artist's rendering made by
Mr. Vesiano and fihis man, who is, as you know, David [At]lee
Phillips. He was the Latin American station chief at the time.
There is a remarkable physical similarity.
Would you agree with that, Mr. Phillips?
DAVID PHILLIPS: There is some similarity. Yes.
BROKAW: But you met Mr. Vesiano, didn't you, now?
PHILLIPS: Yes, I have. Indeed, I have.
BROKAW: Had you met him before the Senate investiga-
tors brought him to you to be interviewed by you?
PHILLIPS: I met him in 1976 when the investigation
first began.
Mr. Brokaw, I do want to say that I have mixed emotions
about being on this program.
PHILLIPS: I don't want to promote the sales of this
book, but I do appreciate the opportunity to defend myself, which
the author did not.
Welcome to America, Mr. Summers.
SUMMERS: Good morning.
PHILLIPS: I accuse you of assassination. The diction-
ary tells us there are two definitions of that. One is killing
people and the other is viciously denigrating a person, as in to
assassinate a man's character.
You've written a book which encourages the reader,
indeed cajoles the reader, to believe that I was somehow in-
volved in the Kennedy assassination. You've done that by writing
a book which supports your contentions, putting in things, and
then throwing in a barrel of question marks.
Well, in the short time that we have, I think you owe
me the answer to three questions.
One. You say you interviewed all the relevant witnesses.
Mr. Summers, why didn't you interview me?
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Two. I'm going to ask you, in this section on Vesiano
and Bishop, did you write this alone, or did someone else work
with you? Did you have a collaborator? Specially, a man named
Guitom Fonzi (?). I ask you that.
And third. I ask you to explain what you don't say
in this book. What was Mr. Vesiano doing during 1974 and 1975?
SUMMERS: I'd lika first of all to .answer you on your
first point, which is you say that I -- effectively, that I
assassinate your character in the book. What I actually do is
to report what the Assassinations Committee itself said in its
report and in Volume 10 of its appendices, which is precisely
what we were talking about just now, which is that the Assas-
sinations Committee considered the possibility that you might
have been the said Morris Bishop.
I have made no suggestion in the book, indeed I spe-
cifically disclaimed the notion that Morris Bishop, let alone
David Phillips, was involved in the assassination. t have
merely indicated that there may have been a connection between
Lee Oswald and Morris Bishop.
BROKAW: We have a moment or so left here. We're
going to continue with this in the next half-hour. But let's
get through the three questions.
Why didn't you interview him?
SUMMERS: I didn't interview him because I --'his name
did not surface publicly at all until after the Assassinations
Committee report came out. And I have been...
PHILLIPS: My name did not surface publicly? This is
my third appearance on the Today Show.
SUMMERS: Not so far as this particular issue is con-
PHILLIPS: I have been on the BBC in London twice,
French national television, Canadian television.
SUMMERS: Not so far as this matter of Bishop is con-
PHILLIPS: I beg your pardon. It surfaced in...
BROKAW: Did you write it in connection -- did you
write it with someone else, this section of the book?
SUMMERS: Absolutely not. I wrote the book entirely
on my own. But I have had access to committee sources, which is
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the normal, part of the normal work of an investigative reporter.
BROKAW: And the third part of the question.
SUMMERS: What was the third part of your question?
PHILLIPS: What was Mr. Vesiano doing during 1974 and
my book...
SUMMERS: In 1974 and 1975, as I have not mentioned in
PHILLIPS: You have certainly have not mentioned it.
SUMMERS: And I have not mentioned it because it is not
mentioned in the final report of the Assassinations Committee.
Mr. Vesiano was serving time in a federal prison in connection
with narcotics offenses.
SUMMERS: I have no problem with that. There's a long
and complicated background to that issue. The point is that in
1963, Mr. Vesiano was, as the readers of Time magazine and Life
magazine would know, the leader of one of the top anti-Castro
guerrilla groups in this country.
BROKAW: A11 right. Mr. Phillips, Mr. Summers, we're
going to come back to more of this.
BROKAW: Picking up where we were not too long ago on
this program -- in fact, about 10 minutes ago -- we have with
us an investigative reporter from Great Britain by the name of
Anthony Summers who's written a book called "Conspiracy" about
the assassination of John Kennedy. We also have with us a former
CIA agent, Latin American station chief of the ClA. His name is
David [At]lee Phillips. They are here together because Mr. Phil-
lips' name comes up frequently in a book written by Mr. Summers
about the possibility of a conspiracy involving some CIA opera-
tives and members of that intelligence apparatus and the assas-
sination of John Kennedy.
Mr. Phillips asked a series of questions of Mr. Sum-
mers a few moments of those. Most of those, I gather, were at
least answered. Maybe not to your satisfaction.
PHILLIPS: Partially.
BROKAW: Partially answered.
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Well,~let's get back to this business of Antonio Vesi-
ano, who is a key figure in all of this. He says that he worked
for a CIA man by the name of Bishop who was seen in the company
of Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination of John Kennedy.
And there is a suggestion in this book, and also in the Senate
investigation, that you might be one and the same man as Mr.
Bishop.
But in all fairness -- you accuse Mr. Summers of saying
that you have been identified as that man. In his book, he makes
it plain that "the Assassination Committee, considering whether
former Mexican CIA officer David Phillips was Bishop, was not
satisfied by his denials, nor by Vesiano's. So the search for
Bishop continues."
Are you satisfied that he is not Mr. Bishop, Mr. Sum-
SUMMERS: No. I've merely reported what Congress's
Assassinations Committee said. I think it is significant, cer-
tainly, that the committee, not me -- no coup of mine -- but the
committee found a former CIA case officer who worked in Miami
at the same time that Mr. Phillips was involved in anti-Castro
operations, and he did say that he was almost positive that David
Phillips did use the code name, or the cover name Morris Bishop.
PHILLIPS: I certainly would like to have an oppor-
tunity to talk to that gentleman, whose name is not given in the
book. It's a pseudonym and that sort of thing.
PHILLIPS: Throughout this book, it says that the com-
mittee doubted me, they didn't believe what I was saying. I deny
that.
And I suggest that you, Mr. Brokaw, might contact Con-
gressman Richardson Pryor, who was the head of that Committee on
Assassinations, and ask him if that charge is true.
Now, when the program closed a few minutes ago, we had
from Mr. Summers the admission, which was not in his book, that
Mr. Vesiano spent 1974-75 in prison.
SUMMERS: Because it wasn't in the report, either.
report.
PHILLIPS: I beg your pardon. It certainly was in the
SUMMERS: It was not in the primary report.
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PHILLIPS: It was in the appendix of the report.
SUMMERS: In the appendix.
PHILLIPS: And the incredible part about it, which
changed this whole entire story of Mr..Vesiano, is the circum-
stances.
Now, the fact that Mr. Vesiano...
BROKAW: He was put in -- he was put in federal peni-
tentiary on drug charges.
PHILLIPS: Yes. And the fact that he's an ex-convict
doesn't mean that his story is not necessarily true, except in
context.
SUMMERS: The whole of the rest of the record of Anto-
nio Vesiano is one of a courageous exile leader, whatever one
thinks of exile politics. And his associates down the years say
that he's a man of absolute integrity. And he has absolutely
no crime record whatsoever.
BROKAW: Isn't it possible...
PHILLIPS: No crime record.
SUMMERS: Apart from the one case...
PHILLIPS: Mr. Brokaw, I must say one thing. It says
in the report that he came out of the prison and immediately told
the congressional investigator that he thought he was in there
because of the CIA. He told another witness that he thought the
CIA had framed in. This gives a whole new light...
SUMMERS: It did not arise like that. He did not volun-
teer information. He was visited in the prison because of his
role -- not in the prison. He was out ofi prison by that time.
He was visited while on parole because of his past as an anti-
Castro leader.
PHILLIPS: Mr. Summers, I'm quoting the same material
you used for your book. He said he thought he was framed by the
CIA. That's a motivation.
SUMMERS: Excuse me. You said just now -- and I want
to catch you on your points, because you're coming out with them
one after one -- after the other. You said that you felt that
the committee was wholly satisfied with your -- with your respon-
ses in general. Now, what the report actually says, .in a long
footnote, is that...
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PHILLIPS: A footnote.
SUMMERS: Yes.
PHILLIPS: Written by Mr. Fonzi.
SUMMERS: is that the committee suspected...
PHILLIPS: Mr. Fonzi, the man that you said had...
SUMMERS: It's in the final report of the committee...
PHILLIPS: Mr. Fonzi had nothing to do with the book.
SUMMERS: It's in the final committee report, a congres-
sional report. Now, it says that the committee suspected that
Vesiano, the witness, was lying when he denied that the retired
CIA officer -- that's Mr. Phillips -- was Bishop, to protect the
officer from exposure.
For his part, David Phillips, the retired officer...
PHILLIPS: I probably won't get...
SUMMERS: ...aroused the committee's suspicion when he
told the committee...
PHILLIPS: I deny that I aroused the committee's suspi-
SUMMERS: That's what it says in the congressiona report.
PHILLIPS: No, that's written in a footnote...
SUMMERS: But I'm reading from the report.
PHILLIPS: Listen, I find myself in the position of
having to prove a negative. I'm a writer, too. I've written
three books. Now, let's say that I have a theory, and the theory
is that Willard Scott's job here, it's really just a cover. Wil-
lard Scott is Santa Ciaus. So if I write a dishonest book, I
can convince a lot of people that Willard Scott gets thin and
goes down chimneys.
SUMMERS: Mr. Brokaw, I think -- I think that your
audience should also know that when Mr. Phillips said that he
had mixed feelings about appearing on this program, one needs
to point out that he's on this program not because this program
sought him out, or, indeed, because I would have wanted him to
be on this program, but because he volunteered. He wrote to
NBC in the advance of the program...
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PHILLIPS: To defend myself.
SUMMERS: Just in case the program might be doing an
item on my book. Thus has a very...
PHILLIPS: Mr. Summers, you have not accused me of
taking dimes from parking meters.
PHILLIPS: You've accused me of being involved in the
Kennedy assassination.
SUMMERS: i have done nothing of the sort.
PHILLIPS: It's false. You...
SUMMERS: 1 have not done...
PHILLIPS: The promotional material sent out by your
publisher to this media, to the media, to book reviewers says,
"The most serious accusations in the book concern a specific
senior American intelligence officer."
SUMMERS: No, it does not say that. It says...
PHILLIPS: I beg your pardon.
SUMMERS: It does not say that. It says that the most
specific serious allegation is the allegation that there was a
link between a man named Morris Bishop and Lee Oswald. And no-
where in the book do 1 suggest that I know who Morris Bishop is.
PHILLIPS: It's right there.
SUMMERS: I do report the congressional -- it is not.
I report the congressional committee considering...
PHILLIPS: May I have one last word?
BROKA~J: You may have one last word, then Mr. Summers
may have one last word. And then we have to move on to other
words.
SUMMERS: I report merely that the congressional com-
mittee considered in its final report, and elsewhere, the possi-
bility that you were Morris Bishop. You are the only name they
mention as a possibility. But I have drawn no conclusions. And
I certainly would now.
BROKAW: All right. Your final word, Mr....
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PHILLIPS: All right.
Mr. Summers is trying to sell his book. I've read only
one review. It was in The Times of London. It noted that he has
a previous book, a conspiracy book, and they called that a book
of immense silliness. And finally that review ended with his
theory, and it stated flatly...
SUh1MERS: I have to come back on that.
PHILLIPS: ..."It won't wash."
BROKAW: it won't wash.
SUMMERS: I have to come back on that one. This is
the same tactic as you used in a BBC interview against the con-
gressional investigator Fonzi. in fact, in general, in ali the
other serious newspapers in England, and so far in this country,
my book's been reviewed well.
You called the congressional investigator a man who'd
written about his paranoia about the Kennedy assassination.
SUMMERS: The fact is -- I know the article very well.
I've got it in my file .h ere -- it's a tongue-in-cheek article by
a serious journalist.
PHILLIPS: Entitled "Me and My Paranoia."
SUMMERS:. That's right. And it's a tongue-in-cheek
article written at the beginning of the '70s.
Mr. Fonzi is a man with a string of American investi-
gative reporting awards from bar associations and elsewhere.
BROKAW: Ali right, let's move on, if we can, to your
final to conclusion about it. What you generally conclude, this
personality and other names beside, is that Lee Harvey Oswald --
Lee Harvey Oswald was, as i say, a kind of double agent, a man
who was, in his heart, a hard conservative right-winger who was
anti-Castro.
sibility.
SUMMERS: No. I say that we cannot exclude that pos-
BROKAW: But that's the general conclusion that one
will have from reading the book. I mean almost everything that
you develop leads in that direction.
SUMMERS: I say we can't ignore the evidence that points
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BROKAW: And that there ought to be another investiga-
SUPgMERS: Yes. The chief counsel of Congress's Assas-
sinations Committee, Profiessor Blakey, has sais that there should
be a Justice Department unit set up and a grand jury to work fior
a year to see whether arrests could be brought in the conspiracy
to kill President Kennedy, which he regards as certain. He says
the only way to find out is to do it. And I think that's what
the Justice Department should do.
BROKAW: Mr. Summers, Mr. Phillips, obviously, as we
said at the outset, we could not settle all the matters here or
tidy up all the loose ends. But at least...
PHILLIPS: Goodbye, Mr. Summers. We'll be seeing each
other again.
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