Jim Glover on Phil Ochs

JIM GLOVER Wrote-

Well Bill, You may say "Glover thinks folks will think he is crazy" but I got Phil into trouble as much as himself.

My family was being surveilled before I was born. I was a real Cold War Kid. My Dad and some close political friends of my Dad persuaded me to go to Ohio State where ROTC was mandatory. So this real nice and understanding lady (about my run-ins with Poppy Bush for instance), Mrs. Tepletsky, from Port Clinton, said I should room with her grandson Mark. Well, when I got there Mark did not want a roommate (Smart kid) so I had to share a room at that house across and down the street from the Student Union.

One day Phil's roommate from upstairs came down and said I should meet Phil because he was too much into music and was driving him nuts.  I was also warned about Phil by my shoe salesman roommate, Daryl, may have been his name, a real character too. So I went upstairs by his room and Phil was playing his country hit records and I said "Hi".

When Phil learned I was a folksinger he right away was his regular charming warm personality and we started talking about music and a little politics and sometime soon after Phil wanted to be roommates at the new Steeb Hall starting the next quarter.

I was a private ROTC Army and they gave us uniforms. Phil was ROTC Air Force Sergeant. At first Phil was Gung Ho..."Commies" were the bad guys and he seemed like it would take a lot of work to turn him around but I did in short order.

It was kinda like I "sheep dipped" him for his future mission. He bragged about his photographic memory and how at Military Academy he was friends with Barry Goldwater's son. In 74 he told me he knew John Dean there too when he also confessed he was working with an up and coming young Air Force officer (after he got mad when I told him I heard Kissinger was paying him. 

I told him all my personal stories about Bush wanting me to be a spy on my family and he told me all about Prescott Bush getting Nixon his start in politics and the United Fruit Dulles brothers part in CIA coups and before I dropped out he made a bet with me that the CIA would kill Castro. He won his first guitar off me on the Kennedy/Nixon election.

Here is that Kay Guitar and this interview has important info on his trip to Chile and Victor Jara.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWmaF1DEEoA

Phil read me stories about how the mob fixed the election, about Lee Oswald defecting to Russia, and about how U2 pilot (Gary) Powers should have taken his suicide pill and on and on. He also was mad at me for going to a demonstration to protest Wernher Von Braun speaking on campus. I was prejudiced about Nazis I guess and Phil was pissed that one of the students who talked me into it was a Socialist Worker's Party guy. It was around then he spilled the beans about a big red scare surveillace program on campus and the first time I heard the term was when Phil said I was "Fair Game".

I think I converted him visibly after I boycotted ROTC classes and he told me they would get me for that.

Our last quarter at Steeb Hall he got super radical all of a sudden …wrote articles in defense of Castro for the Steeb Hall newsletter he put out himself called "The Word" and made all the mimeographed copies. He also reported for the Ohio State Paper "The Lantern".  

His first song was about the Cuban Invasion "The Bay of Pigs" which we would sing as the "Singing Socialists". After we did a Republican big wig house party an angry white man came up and asked us if we were Communists... Phil was a bit worried and wanted us to change our name to the "Sundowners" because it was more "euphonious". I went along.... Trouble is it took all the fun out of it for me.

So, by the time I dropped out he was into meeting a lot of people I did not know and some weirdos I did meet but we decided that we would work together and try to stop the war machine which I now call The War System.

Phil would tell me there were things he could not say but that he would not lie to me.

Before he went to Dallas he said his Mom told him to get a haircut (good advise) and he said he went there with one of the Gambino boys... one his age.  I now believe anyone who went there to watch or report were being set up in case the Oswald all alone thing did not pass, the next patsies would be us Castro sympathizers and then the Mob... or both.  

I know it sounds twisted but that is why they had to stick to Oswald "the lone nut" who I now believe (if what I believe is important to my own story) was really working to kill Castro with a new cancer causing bio weapon developed in New Orleans. 

Phil did not say who told him to go to Dallas and it probably saved our lives because I would have talked. All my life I got in trouble because I talked, so they used me for that. 

Phil was into the investigation of the plot before Dallas. He came over to my apt when Jean was gone to tell me that there was a plot to kill President Kennedy. He asked me if I knew anything and that he was going to the FPCC to find out more. He said he was working for National Security "Domestic Division" of something like the CIA and that FBI Hoover was the bad guy. Soon after two men identifying themselves as FBI came over and asked me if I knew where Phil was...  Of course I thought they really knew, but I lied and didn't even tell them about the Kennedy plot to protect Phil.  

It was a few months after Dallas that Phil showed up at our new apt at 55 Leroy St. He asked where I was and I told him about what I saw when I was forced onto the shadow bus after an airport stop in Texas and seeing Hoover and the man who wanted me to spy together late that afternoon.

Phil said "I told you not to go" and I said we were trying to find you but nobody knew where you were."

Next he said he was there in Dallas as a "national security observer" (new role to me but it made sense).

I asked if he had a gun and at first said "yes" so I said, "come on, Phil you shot yourself in the leg trying a cowboy holster quick draw, they wouldn't let you have a gun!"  So then he said he did not have a gun.  

I asked him if he could prove he was there and he said he was being filmed standing by the Garage Door of the Dal/Tex building. He also went over toward the crowd and saw a lady crying.

I don't remember him saying he was standing in the street keeping watch on Elm and Houston when the Limo passed but a few weeks ago I found him there, a bit blurry but it is in the utube "The First Shot" and I recently found him looking South into the camera from that pergola on the knoll in Robert Groden's latest films after the shooting.

Phil told me it was a paramilitary squad that did it.  Soon after I told his story during a solo set at the Gaslight and Phil found out he said "Are you trying to get me Killed?"  So after that I was more cautious about talking... but I never was quiet.

I still love Phil and Jean and all those who were afraid to tell me everything. They told me plenty to put the dots together which I now feel was my mission since I was the Cold War Kid.

I hope this explains the unspeakable a bit.

Jim   https://www.facebook.com/jim.glover.5815