'THE CIA IS NOT THE BOY SCOUTS'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000200890007-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 6, 2010
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: March 10, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/06: CIA-RDP91-00587R000200890007-8
NEW HAVEN ADVOCATE (CT)
OPINION "The' 10 March 1986
CIA is n
t e
Boy Scoutsv
By Jim Motavalli cited in the retraction statement
Westport, Conn., publisher
Lawrence Hill initialed an agree-
ment with former CIA "super
agent" David Atlee Phillips on
Feb. 14. That signature-and a $1
cash award-ended a five-year li-
bel battle in which Phillips had
asked for $210 million in damages
stemming from charges made in
the book Death in Washington.
Written by Donald Freed and
Fred Simon Landis, the book
charged Phillips with involvment in
the murder of former Chilean Am-
bassador to Washington Orlando
Letelier. It also linked him with
the death of the Dominican
Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo
Molina, with attempts on the life
of Fidel Castro and with efforts to
destabilize the Nasser regime in
Egypt. In addition, the book
repeated previously published as-
sertions of Phillips' involvement in
the Kennedy assassination (as Lee
Harvey Oswald's CIA case
officer).
Phillips did not take all this light-
ly. After his retirement from the
agency he formed the Associ-
ation of Former Intelligence
Officers (AFIO) and an adjunct,
Challenge Inc., a legal assistance
fund. Challenge provided some of
the funds for Phillips' suit, filed in
1981.
"It was a standoff," said pub-
lisher Hill. "The authors admitted
they could not substantiate all the
charges and regret publishing the
information. But they're not ad-
mitting that they attemped to ma-
lign Phillips, and it in no way
eviscerates the main thrust of the
book, which is U.S. complicity in
the murder of Orlando Letelier."
"If [Phillips] thought he could
have won, he would have pursued
the case. Obviously, he thought
he couldn't win," Hill said, adding
that the case reached a turning
point when a federal judge ruled
that Phillips had played a role in
CIA activities in Chile and would
have to answer questions about'
them. Phillips has declined to an-
swer such questions on the
grounds of CIA secrecy require-
ments. These requirements are
as making it "difficult for Messrs.
Freed and Landis to secure
necessary evidence for their
defense."
The Advocate interviewed Phil-
lips by telephone from his Bethes-
da, Md., home.
Advocate: What do you con-
sider the meaning of this set-
tlement with Larry Hill? Why
did you embark upon this liti-
gation?
Phillips: Well, I did it for two
reasons. The first was to vindi-
cate myself personally from
charges that I was involved in as-
sassination. On the second level I
did it with the idea of finding out if
a retired intelligence officer could
prevail in a court given the prob-
lems intelligence officers have.
Active duty intelligence officers,
for instance, have never been able
to bring a suit for defamation be-
cause they couldn't answer the
relevant questions during the dis-
covery....
Now, the fact that
quite a bit of your career is
protected by the secrecy of
the CIA, doesn't that make it
pretty hard to defend against
the suit you brought?
Why? Because the complaint
didn't mention a single thing that
was said about me in the book
during the period of my CIA ca-
reer. There were dozens of fabri-
cations in that book. A good
example was the charge that
when I was in Mexico City I was
in charge of the assassination
squad run by Howard Hunt and I
dispatched Howard and assassins
to the Dominican Republic to as-
sassinate Trujillo. So none of
these things were in the com-
plaint. The complaint was very
carefully tailored and I only com-
plained about false statements that
were made about me after I re-
tired from the CIA.
But isn't part of the suit
that you were involved in the
Kennedy assassination?
That wasn't part of the suit. It
was during the settlement, part of
the negotiation was that since
they were making a complete
retraction, pease go ahead and
retract what they said about the
Kennedy business. There is a
photograph of me in the book with
the caption "The other Lee Har-
vey Oswald. " They invited the
reader to believe that I was [Os-
wald's] CIA case officer.
Did you know Lee Harvey
Oswald?
I did not.
Do you think the mood in
the country toward the CIA
has changed since the Water-
gate era, the revelations of
that period?
I think it's changed dramatically.
I take the temperature at such
places as college campuses and
town halls around the country,
that sort of thing. I'm frequently
on lecture tour.
Do you get protested by
leftists when you speak?
From 1975 to 1977 there many
such protests, and some of them I
considered more dangerous than
anything that ever occurred to me
during my CIA career. They were
really what we in the CIA would
call "hairy." That suddenly began
to change and I find that that kind
of situation does not exist now.
There are still questions of con-
cern, serious debate and dialogue,
but the feeling of hostility has
changed completely. There now
seems to be little doubt that there
should be the kind of intelligence
operations that we had in the
mid-1970's. The debate these
days is about whether there
should or should not be "covert
action, " and that's a debate that
ensues within the intelligence
community as well as in the
public.
Would you say it's an incor-
rect perception that the CIA
does engage in political
murder?
Yes, I would say that. There
have been two [murder] attempts
in the history of the CIA; one was
Lumumba in Africa and the other
was Castro in Cuba. But to say
that one should properly perceive
the CIA operating that way I
would doubt. But that is not the
reason I filed the suit and that's
not why I was concerned about
setting the record straight about
My own Self. I am cowinced that
STAT
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what happened is that this book
and the press conference that
proceeded it were like several
other books that were written
charging me with involvement one
way or another. They were writ-
ten by anti-establishment, anti-
CIA conspiracy buffs. That's why
they are written. Whether they do
that because they honestly feel
that way or whether they want to
make some money or both, I
don't know. But they are a pretty
sad bunch.
This book and this press
conference we're talking
about paint a picture of you
as a freelance hit man going
around the world committing
political murders and such.
What would you say were the
political contours of your CIA
career? What kind of things
do you do?
The kind of things I did I wrote
about in some detail in a book
called The Night Watch 10 years
ago, and it's still in print. It
describes my 25 years in seven
different countries in which I prac-
ticed all sorts of intelligence oper-
ations, becoming quite senior
before I retired. I was a specialist
for some of that period in covert
action, and that book is the reason
I think people saw me as a con-
venient target if they wanted to
paint a picture of someone. But to
answer your question directly, I
saw myself as a loyal American
responding to the instructions of
my presidents and my secretaries
of state, and I am not the least bit
ashamed of it. I'll be damned if
I'm going to let people go around
making wild assertions. I'm what
is known as a public figure by any
definition since I write and lecture
and certainly thrust myself into
the midst of a controversy when I
left the CIA to form the Associa-
tion of Former Intelligence
Officers. And so in our country
that makes it difficult, but despite
that fact I feel I have the right to
attempt to defend my reputation
when people say that I am a mur-
derer and sometimes worse.
You describe another pend-
ing suit involving Challenge.
What is the status of the case
involving Costa Gavras' film
Missing?
It's going through the discovery
process, and you know these
things go on a long time-my case
went on five years. It is in the
middle ground. the deposition
period.
In this case I assume that
there are considerable assets
that could be attached?
-Oh, there certainly are. But I'm
engaged in another suit in En-
gland. The story about me being
the mysterious "Maurice Bishop"
and involved in the Kennedy as-
sassination originated in England.
It was first published in England in
a book called Conspiracy, written
by Anthony Summers. Mr. Sum-
mers is a man who just finished
doing a book and a television
documentary which reports that
Robert Kennedy spent the night
with Marilyn Monroe just before
she was killed. That suit is now at
the stage where we're waiting for
the court in England to give us the
dates.
In a case like that, definite-
ly involving your CIA period,
how can the defense lawyers
learn much about what you
were doing in the period in
question?
There are no secrets about the
CIA and the Kennedy assassina-
tion that have not been brought to
light. There's no reason in the
world that in that suit I couldn't
subpoena CIA officials and get
them under oath to say what they
knew about the Kennedy assassi-
nation. So I have no problem say-
ing where I was and what I was
doing.
As a last question, do you
think the average person be-
lieves the CIA is involved in
political murder on a regular
basis?
Oh, I think the average person
probably does believe that. I
wouldn't be surprised if the aver-
age person does have that incor-
rect perception. That's why I've
been lecturing about the CIA for
the last 10 years. But it's quite
right to say the CIA is not the
Boy Scouts. It's quite right that to
say that if all men were angels.
we wouldn't need a CIA. But un-
fortunately, most of the countries
I've been in were run by non-
angels.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/06: CIA-RDP91-00587R000200890007-8