David Atlee Philips’s The Carlos Contract
November 22, 2024
By William Kelly (billkelly3@gmail.com]
David A. Phillips has written a number of important books that have significant bearings on the assassination of President Kennedy, including his autobiography Nightwatch-25 Years of Peculiar Service, Careers in Intelligence for perspective wanna be spies, and one on his anti-Castro Cuban activities that I haven’t read yet but would like to if someone will send me a copy.
He also wrote a couple of unpublished manuscripts, including one on his WWII adventures as a forward gunner in a bomber that was shot down and his experiences in the prison camp escape committee.
One published book that has gone pretty much under the radar
is the fictional Carlos Contract.
In a statement in opening the book Phillips writes: “Carlos exists. He is Venezuelan named Ilyich Rameritz-Sanchez, and he is the world’s most audacious terrorist.” (BK Notes: Though now in prison in Europe).
Phillips: "While the story is imaginary, the events and counter-intelligence methods described are authentic, as I knew them during twenty-five years as an intelligence officer in eight foreign countries. Everything in this book was suggested by something that did occur, or could have, in the real life arena of espionage and secret operations"
Despite his denial: “The other characters in this novel are fictional,” all of the other characters have their real life counter-parts, much like Ian Fleming’s characters in his 007 spy novels, which is why I am writing this.
The book begins with a former intelligence officer William McLendon being called out of retirement to hunt down Carlos. Its a thinly veiled reference to the real life Gordon McLendon, co-founded with Phillips the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO).
Gordon McLendon was a Dallas radio station owner and close friend and associate of Jack Ruby, who called McLendon’s unlisted phone a number of times over the assassination weekend and delivered sandwiches to his radio station operators.
In a telephone conversation with me Phillips denied knowing Gordon McLendon during their intelligence careers and only got to know him when they founded the AFIO.
Financed by Scotts-Wagner Petroleum company of Dallas, McLendon puts together a team of other former intelligence agents and operators including Emilllo Gonzales, aka “EL Indio,” who is of course based on David Sanchez Morales a major assassination suspect. Then theres Jacob Klupperman, aka “Hyphenated-Jake,” known to CIA Cuban operators as the real life Jackob Easterline.
Former veteran CIA officer Rolf Mowatt-Larrsen says “I think we have solved the assassination, now we just have to prove it,” and I agree. Narrowing the Dealey Plaza operation to those who knew how to conduct secret covert intelligence operations certainly limits the suspects. Further narrowing the suspects down to those involved in Cuban operations we have a small number of suspects capable of being the mastermind of the assassination, complete with its deception aspects, and getting away with it.
Among those primary suspects are Desmond FitzGerald, J.Edger Hoover, James Jesus Angleton, David Morales, David Atlee Phillips, Curtis LeMay, Alllen Dulles and Mowatt-Larrsen adds Jacob Easterline to the pot.
Easterline was heavily involved in the Guatemala operation that overthrew the government there, then was put in charge of the Cuban operation that would become the Bay of Pigs, so he certainly fits the bill.
[https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB341/interview.pdf ]
When Mowatt-Larrsen told me he suspected Easterline, I mentioned how Phillips has a character based on him “Hyphinated Jake” in his book The Carlos Contract, and after digging it out of storage, I am sending Mowatt-Larrsen my first edition hard bound copy to see what he makes of it.
In the Carlos Contract Phillips makes an important point by telling a joke: “An important part of intelligence work is sensing, before you have hard proof that a critical development will occur. Call it professional intuition, the conviction that a number of pieces, when eventually assembled into enough of the entire puzzle, will constitute a revelation that is vital. I always try to think of it in terms of knowing when grandmother is on the roof.”
He then tells the story of a foreigner who immigrates to America and receives a letter from a relative back home informing him the beloved family cat went up to the roof, then fell to her death in the street below.
The immigrant then wrote home saying not to send such bad news all at once, but break it down, saying first the cat went onto the roof, then that he fell off and finally that he died. Not long afterwards the immigrant got a letter from home simply saying, “Grandmother is on the roof.”
“That’s what you have to look for” Phillips tells us, “….that one knew piece of information, perhaps a single line in a report, some awareness which gives you a funny feeling at the back of the neck- the suspicion which suddenly becomes a conviction that something important is in motion – that grandmother is on the roof.”
Not all of Phillips characters are thinly disguised, as my University of Dayton college mate Glen H. Gebbard is also mentioned because the real Carlos got a hold of Glenn’s stolen passport and used it.
Glenn told me the story long before I read about it in Phillip’s book, as he said he had a very difficult time returning home without his passport and obtaining another. Then, when he returned to Europe a few years later with his new passport, he was suspected of being Carlos and violently interrogated.
After reading The Carlos Contract in 1978, I had my first “Grandmother’s on the roof” experience when ii read a newspaper headline – “Castro plotting the assassination of President Reagan.”
Scripps-Howard
News Service – By R. H. Boyce. Thursday, March 12, 1981
Washington
– The National Security Agency has alerted the CIA, the White House and State
Department to a Latin American newspaper report saying Cuban President Fidel
Castro is plotting the assassination of President Reagan, Scripps-Howard News
Service has learned.
The NSA, which monitors published and broadcast information around the globe,
does not makes such “alert” messages available to the press. But SHNS obtained
a copy, which was marked “for official use only.” It included the text of the newspaper
report as well as a garbled message about the news story directed to the head
of Castro’s controlled news agency, Presna Latina.
Without revealing its sources, the news report, published yesterday in the
Caracas, Venezuela, newspaper El Mundo, asserted the assassination plot called
for the slaying to be carried out by Illich Ramirez Sancho, an international
terrorists known as Carlos the Jackal. Carlos is said to have organized the
massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, West Germany,
and has been involved in dozens of terrorists acts.
U.S. officials said the NSA’s action in alerting the U.S. intelligence
community “suggests that while they are not necessarily ready to believe the
report of an assassination plot, nevertheless they (NSA) find it at least
worthy of looking into.”
The Caracas newspaper story said the assassination plan, “was discussed in a
meeting of the International Trust of Crime in Cojimar, an exclusive beach club
east of Havana, with the participants of Montonero and Tupamaro thugs, Illich
Ramirez, Ramiro Valdez, Cuban Police Minister Carlos Rafael Rodriguez and Fidel
Castro.”
No identification was found of Ramiro Valdez. Montonero “thugs” are terrorists
operating primarily in Argentina while Tupumaros thugs operate in Uruguay. The
article said Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasir Arafat also
participated in the plan.
Presna Latina (Latin Press) often has been used by Castro for political ends.
The Pressa Latina correspondent in Caracas, at 9:47 a.m. EST yesterday, began
transmitting the El Mundo article by cable to Prensa Latina headquarters in
Havana. NSA monitored it. At the close of the text, Prensa Latina Caracas began
adding what appears to be commentary on the El Mundo report. It reads:
“Everything seems to indicate that Fidel Castro is planning the assassination
of U.S. President Ronald Reagan in the same way that he previously ordered the
assassination of John F. Kennedy and whose participation the high-ranking U.S.
government circles hid…”
There the Prensa Latina cable transmission stopped. Had it been ordered broken
off by the Venezuela government, say U.S. officials, NSA would have added the
words: “transmission interrupted,” to show Venezuela’s action. There was no
such NSA notation. Officials provided no explanation of why the transmission
ended in mid-sentence.
[BK
Notes: This is a good example of Black Propaganda. Of course a few weeks later,
on March 30, 1981, John Hinkly shot President Reagan.]
For more
on this subject see: https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2021/11/black-propaganda-and-jfk-assassination.html
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