The Azalea Trail Guide to CIA

The Night Watch: 25 Years of Peculiar Service By David Atlee Phillips Atheneum, 320 pp., $9.95 At the outset it seems proper to acknowledge what author David Phillips states in his book, The Night Watch: that we were colleagues in the Central Intelligence Agency, and worked together during the Guatemalan and Cuban political-action projects. Moreover, in my book on the Bay of Pigs, Give Us This Day, Phillips appears as “Knight,” a capable, inspired officer whom I praise for his resourcefulness and dedication. Accordingly, I not only know Dave Phillips, but knew him professionally for over a decade, and have first-hand familiarity with some of the epochal events his book describes.

For those reasons I find it hard to understand Phillips’ fabricating several episodes in which I allegedly played a role. But aside from personal irritation over manufactured dialogue, I was disappointed in his book. What I had hoped for was a serious and anecdotal analysis of the profession of intelligence. Instead, the book comes off as a chatty tour-guide to personalities and events Phillips was involved with during his quarter-century with CIA.

EH

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E. Howard Hunt

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The Night Watch: 25 Years of Peculiar Service By David Atlee Phillips Atheneum, 320 pp., $9.95 At the outset it seems proper to acknowledge what author David Phillips states in his book, The Night Watch: that we were colleagues in the Central Intelligence Agency, and worked together during the Guatemalan and Cuban political-action projects. Moreover, in my book on the Bay of Pigs, Give Us This Day, Phillips appears as “Knight,” a capable, inspired officer whom I praise for his resourcefulness and dedication. Accordingly, I not only know Dave Phillips, but knew him professionally for over a decade, and have first-hand familiarity with some of the epochal events his book describes.

For those reasons I find it hard to understand Phillips’ fabricating several episodes in which I allegedly played a role. But aside from personal irritation over manufactured dialogue, I was disappointed in his book. What I had hoped for was a serious and anecdotal analysis of the profession of intelligence. Instead, the book comes off as a chatty tour-guide to personalities and events Phillips was involved with during his quarter-century with CIA.