Category:Rufus Phillips Collection

English: Files from Rufus Phillips Collection of Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive.
Majority of material found within 01 January 1952 - 31 December 1967

Collection description: Approximately three linear feet of documents and photographs from Rufus C. Phillips III's service in Southeast Asia in the 1950s and 1960s first with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as part of Edward Lansdale's operation, and later with the United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) U.S. Operations Mission (USOM), Office of Rural Affairs. The documents date from 1952 through 1967, with the bulk being from 1962 through 1967, and include information on South Vietnamese provinces; the structure of the South Vietnamese government; and papers on pacification, rural development, and the Viet Cong. Photographs date from mid-1950s to early 1960s.
Biographical: Rufus C. Phillips III (10 August 1929 - 29 December 2021) graduated from Yale University in 1951. Phillips joined the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1952 but was given no particular assignment at that time. He volunteered for the U.S. Army in 1953 and completed OCS. He was sent to Korea in 1954 and was soon picked up for CIA service.

He was assigned to Edward Lansdale's operation in Vietnam in the American Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), working as an advisor with the Vietnamese psychological warfare unit. He spent the rest of the decade working in Vietnam and Laos. In 1962 President Kennedy charged Phillips with organizing the United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) Office of Rural Affairs in Saigon, South Vietnam, where he was instrumental in developing the Strategic Hamlet Program in an effort to protect villages from Viet Cong infiltration.