David Atlee Phillips. The Night Watch. 1977

A readable but ultimately obnoxious memoir by a professional CIA agent.

It tries to frame itself as soul-searching, a probing moral exploration of a man's complicity in international crime, but there are only a few moments of moral doubt in long stretches of descriptions of operations which cannot, for security reasons, be described, and every CIA office party anecdote since 1960, the recounting of which seems to be the main enthusiasm the author brings to the project. Of all the things he knows and could be the first person ever to reveal, it is the cheap interoffice jokes he most wishes to attribute to his own authorship.

His tour takes him through pre-revolutionary Cuba, coup-era Guatemala, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, and Washington D.C.

The story of the rebel radio station in Guatemala is pretty remarkable and detailed. How many FCC violations would be broken if this were done by broadcasters in the states? And he even expresses reservations about the CIA-sponsored uprising in Guatemala: "Armas was a bad president, tolerating corruption throughout his government and kowtowing to the United Fruit Company more than to his own people..." (53) "Perhaps Arbenz, already a Soviet sycophant, would have become a Soviet hireling." (54) That's as critical as he gets.

It appears to be the overthrow of Allende where he can't avoid the uncomfortable questions. So he evades them, explaining how the CIA did not organize the coup, but they knew about it in advance, but they did not warn Allende because they chose not to interfere in another country's domestic affairs (snicker), but but but wanted to be able to negotiate with the new military government, so it was necessary not to alienate them by warning Allende. Before the military uprising, a memo from on high warned CIA officers that "keeping CIA's record clean was more important than predicting a coup." (238). So, even though they were not responsible, not being blamed for the tragedy was more important than averting it, according to official CIA mandate.

He describes the controversy over Chile as a "hullaballoo" and a "brouhaha." In flapping about the Agency's innocence, he seems to have forgotten the earlier chapters of his own book, in which he describes how CIA was instrumental in a regime change in Guatemala 19 years earlier. On 266-267 he manages to change the subject from unfavorable press the CIA received in 1975 to a dumb story about stolen turkeys, in a rhetorical move somewhere between sleight of hand and senility. On 271 he basically admits that the whole book is a propaganda piece to counter the claims made by Philip Agee. I wondered whether I should even finish. I skimmed it, but enjoyed an amusing moment when he started to list all the crimes of the CIA, mostly to justify them, and brings up, for example, the case of the unwitting subject of an LSD experiment who committed suicide, which he agrees was unfortunate. This is funny because his propagancda undermines its intention of claiming the CIA was not involved in Pinochet's uprising and reign of terror when he starts haphazardly to list the CIA's other misdeeds.

He denies the CIA was responsible for the coup in Chile, but at the same time doesn't acknowledge its horror, and shows no sympathy or misgivings whatsoever for the deposed, disappeared, tortured, massacred, and bombed. Beyond getting to tell dumb jokes, it seems the purpose of the book is to deny CIA involvement in September 11, 1973 - to reinforce deniability. Incidentally, on 28, in 1953, he hears Allende speak and notes that he is brilliant. He served in Chile, spying on communists, and developed a great fondness for the country.

Don't buy it, but if you happen across a copy, read the chapter on Guatemala.