Edges of my Life.

    The Unheeded Message of the Holocaust   An interview with Polish underground courier, Jan Karski. 1986. Audio   Jan Karski, Polish underground worker, Catholic – he wrote a book called “Story of a Secret State” (Houghton Mifflin, 1944) after the war - describes his experiences - visit Warsaw Ghetto - invited by the Jews - and to a concentration camp to see for himself - an eyewitness - not a Jew but a Catholic - to take back word of the Holocaust to Britain and America. Claude Lanzman’s ground-breaking film Shoah, explores Polish communities' passive participation and complicity in the Jewish holocaust. Jan Karski appeared and initially refused to be interviewed by Lanzman and stalked out of the room. The filmmaker finally  persuaded Karski to return and sit for his first interview following the war.   I'd seen Shoah in three long sittings over three days in New York. About a month later I was returning on the train from an a...

I was invited to write this piece for Project Censored  by its director Mickey Huff.  At the time I was interim general manager at KPFA, Pacifica Radio in Berkeley CA (2011-2013). Project Censored is a media research, education and advocacy initiative that champions the importance of free press. The project's mission is to expose and oppose news censorship and promote independent investigative journalism, media literacy and critical thinking.  The Pacifica foundation was founded in 1946 by poet and journalist Lewis Hill and a small group of pacifists, intellectuals and experienced radio people They did not have the same political or economic philosophy but shared a vision which supported a peaceful world, social justice and creativity. At 3pm, April 15, 1949, Lew hill sat behind the microphone and announced: "This is KPFA, listener sponsored radio in Berkeley, the first such radio station in the world”. At the time, less than nine-percent of the Bay area radio audience o...

  Hiroshima Countdown   An Oral History Interview with Cmdr. Paul Tibbets. 1985.    P aul Tibbets dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. I met him thirty-nine years later in Columbus Ohio where he ran the first corporate air charter company in the United States. After the “Good War”, Tibbets’ fame comprised cache and notoriety and business was prosperous I’d conduced a telephone interview with Tibbets the previous year - in 1983 - for a 12-hour marathon radio production exploring Hiroshima on New York City Pacifica Foundation radio station, WBAI. I said at the beginning of this memoir that I was born in the shadow of the Holocaust and Hiroshima. This radio program was my chance to get to the heart of the matter.  more

   Back to Note Books..                   James Jesus Angleton   I n May 1977 I received a call to come to the ABC ( Australian Broadcasting Corporation ) office in New York for an assignment with Australia’s top television documentary program, Four Corners .  Ray Martin  landed an interview with James Jesus Angleton who had been head of counter intelligence at the CIA for twenty-five years. Angleton was ready to spill the beans on the CIA’s influence in sacking Australia’s Labor Party Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam. I’d heard speculation about CIA involvement in Australian politics but here it was from the horse’s mouth, from the man who knew the back-story. Gough Whitlam was a charismatic, ambitious and intelligent politician, He was loved by the left and hated by the right. After twenty-three years of conservative government, in 1972 he  became Prime Minister. In his first days in office Whitla...

Back to Note Books... © Andrew Leslie Phillips 011488 "When you're driving a yellow cab through New York City's streets at night,  sometimes you see your life in the bright lights and shadows - those you loved and those who died reflected in the streets. "Driving in New York at night behind the wheel of a yellow cab with your cheap old radio on the dash and cassettes rattling round -  Ginsburg and Gandhi - and a blue and white Greek take-out coffee cup and the New York Post." W hen you 've driven a cab through the good and the bad then you've seen life anew, the false and the true. You’ve lined up for the shape with your mates, white, black, yellow and brown, dollar bills in their hands: “here’s your trip sheet and keys. The cabs over there by the broken down fence, the one with the dents. Please take care”.

  Flying into Binghamton’s Johnson City airport and the trees are bare and gray and the green pines sprinkled with snow. It’s still winter here in the northeast, early spring.  Stanley’s leaning against the wall - one knee up - leaning back with his hand on grandson Nathaniel’s shoulder and he points and Nathaniel breaks out in a toothy smile like Sponge Bob.  He’s chirping like a happy bird as we slip past the sliding door outside into the cold.  The car smelt bad from cigarette smoke. I’d forgotten. I’ve been away in Asheville, North Carolina for a week. They hardly smoke at all down there. I saw one woman - the same woman twice - huddling in a corner outside the Kress Emporium on Patton Avenue, smoking. The building is full of individual stalls of high quality craft and art. It costs $400 a month to rent a hundred square feet of floor and wall space. There was a waiting list.The owners of the space take a percentage. It was crowded and the tourist season...