James Atlee Phillips died in 1991. He and his musician son
Shawn (who looks to have been very much into the
counterculture of the 60s) apparently had a good
relationship. Everyone who followed the "Philip Atlee" novels
know he became disallusioned toward the end. But I was
unprepared for the bitterness of the 1974 poem by James A.
Phillips that his his son Shawn used for inspiration for an
album that same year. Called "Freeway Child," the poem talks
of "Amerika" and pot-bellied pigs as police.
His brother David A Phillips, who wrote one novel late in
life, died in 1988.
Some still claim Phillips met with Lee Harvey Oswald in
Mexico just prior to the Kennedy assasination. He was very
involved in the Bay of Pigs along with that other CIA
agent/mystery writer E. Howard Hunt. After the Senate
committee chaired by Sen. Frank Church, David A.Phillips went
public and formed an organization of former CIA agents and
was often on television shows debating the need for a strong
intelligence agency. He took some lumps during that period. I
read his memoir some years ago but skipped the novel he wrote
just before his death.
One has to wonder how much James A. Phillips was influenced
by the career and later infamy as a CIA operative.
According to chat rooms devoted to James Phillips son Shawn,
James claimed the CIA tried to recruit him if for no more
than to make certain tha the communists were always the
villains and etc. He told Shawn he refused. There are fans of
Shawn who make unsupported claims that others took the money
including the authors of the Chet Drum and Executioner
series. I say again "unsupported" for I cannot believe it and
think it is the product of a simplistic view of the
era.
But the more I look into James A. Phillips aka Philip Atlee,
the more interesting it becomes.
Richard Moore
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