Two months before JFK’s murder, Phillips became Mexico City’s Chief of Cuban Operations.[114] Phillips was, from the beginning to the end of his CIA career, a team player. Following the Kennedy assassination, he rose to the rank of chief of the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division. Shortly before his retirement in 1975, he was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the CIA’s highest honor.[115] In the fall of 1963, David Atlee Phillips was working under Richard Helms, the CIA’s Deputy Director of Plans and mastermind of covert action.
