In 1982 Jim Hougan, the Washington
Correspondent for Harpers Magazine, arranged for a documentary TV interview with
former CIA fugitive Frank Terpil, who after serving as a CIA officer with Ed
Wilson, began to freelance out his intelligence services to African dictators
like Gadafi and Idia Amin. Terpil trusted Hougan however, and talked to him on
camera that was broadcast as “Confessions of a Dangerous Man.”
In the course of their
conversations, Terpil degraded David Atlee Phillips and his Association of
Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), and acknowledged meeting Phillips at the
home of his girlfriend, a daughter of Hal Hendrix. Phillips, Terpil said, came
around to the house often, except he used the name “Maurice Bishop.”
Maxine Cheshire :
Re: Jim Hougan’s conversations with
Frank Terpil, Probe, March-April 1986
Lisa Pease –
Maurice Bishop and “The Spook” Hal
Hendrix
Gaeton Fonzi has written a book that
details his search for Maurice Bishop called The Last Investigation. To Fonzi's
detailed summary of reasons that David Atlee Phillips was indeed the Maurice
Bishop that Veciana saw with Oswald, there is a more recent addition. In the
back of his updated paperback version of Conspiracy, Anthony Summers tells
of Jim Hougan's talk with CIA agent Frank Terpil. Jim Hougan will be familiar
to Probe readers from our last issue. He's the author of the best book on
Watergate, Secret Agenda.
Hougan got to know Terpil rather
well while making a PBS documentary about him. In a tape-recorded interview,
Hougan asked why Terpil was going on and on about David Phillips and the AFIO.
Among other things, Terpil alleged (as have others) that Phillips'
"retirement" from the CIA was phony, and that he continued to work
for the CIA through the AFIO. Hougan asked Terpil why he kept talking about
Phillips-was it personal, or political? Political, Terpil replied.
Hougan asked
where Terpil and Phillips had met. Terpil's answer is astonishing, and terribly
important. Terpil had met him in Florida while living there with Hal Hendrix's
daughter. Really?
Asked Hougan. Yeah, said Terpil, Phillips used to come around
with Hal Hendrix, but he wasn't using his real name. He was using an alias.
What alias? Bishop, Terpil said, Something Bishop. Maurice Bishop? Hougan
asked. Yeah, Terpil replied, Maurice Bishop.
Hougan wanted to be sure Terpil
wasn't putting him on, but came away convinced that Terpil did not understand
the significance of what he was saying and that Terpil was answering honestly.
Hougan asked how Terpil knew Bishop was Phillips. Terpil said he had run Bishop
through the agency's file system in the CIA's Miami headquarters to find out
who this Bishop character was. The name that came out: David Atlee Phillips.
When Probe asked Hougan about this
incident, he responded, "Now, in my opinion, Terpil was telling the truth
about this-because, frankly, the subject of David Phillips' background and
alias would never have come up if I hadn't grown irritated with Terpil's
constant kvetching about the AFIO."
As a follow-up, Hougan contacted both
Seth Kantor, who confirmed his call to Hendrix, and Hendrix's daughter, who
Hougan says "seems to be as big a spook as her father was." She
issued an "I'm afraid I don't remember" when queried about having
lived with Terpil, which, as Hougan noted, "is not a denial."
In 1975, Seth Kantor, a
Scripps-Howard reporter and one of the first journalists to report on Oswald's
background immediately following the assassination, noticed that one of the
Warren Commission documents still being suppressed from the public was a record
of his own calls the afternoon of the assassination. Kantor was curious what
could have been so sensitive among those calls to require such suppression, and
starting actively seeking the document.
Listed in the FBI report he finally got
released-but not listed in the report of his calls published in the Warren
Commission volumes-was a call Kantor made, at the request of his managing
editor in Washington, to another reporter named Hal Hendrix, then working out
of the Miami office.
Hendrix was about to leave for an assignment in Latin
America but had told the Washington office he had important background
information on Oswald to relay. Kantor received from Hendrix a detailed
briefing of Oswald's defection to the Soviet Union, his pro-Castro leafleting
activities and other such details. Kantor didn't think, at the time, to ask
Hendrix where he got his information. Years, later, he wished he had, as
Hendrix was quite an interesting character.
Hal Hendrix had a claim to fame for
his insightful reporting on the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. His efforts
garnered him a Pulitzer Prize. It was perhaps because of his deep sources that
Hendrix was nicknamed "The Spook." Or perhaps it was for his near clairvoyance.
In a Scripps-Howard piece dated September 23, 1963, Hendrix wrote a colorful
article about the toppling of the Dominican Republic's president Juan Bosch.
The only problem was, the coup didn't happen until a day later.
In 1976, Hendrix pleaded guilty to
charges of withholding information when a Senate Committee was looking into the
corporate ties of ITT to the Chilean coup. Hendrix had worked for ITT in Chile
at the time ITT was working with the CIA to bring about the fall of Chilean
president Salvador Allende.
David Phillips was in charge of the CIA's end of
that operation. It is therefore of the greatest significance that Terpil puts
Bishop/Phillips in the presence of Hendrix, and that Veciana puts Bishop in the
presence of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Add the new revelation that a "Mr.
Phillips" was "running the show" in conjunction with Sergio
Arcacha Smith and Guy Banister in New Orleans, and we know where the
Assassination Records Review Board should be devoting the utmost attention.
The Guardian – March 2016:
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