From its launch in 1961, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Office of Public Safety (OPS), assumed responsibility for counterinsurgency programs and police advisory services begun by the USAID- predecessor agencies first authorized under “Point Four” of President Harry S. Truman’s 1949 inaugural speech pledging “technical assistance” to developing nations. The various Public Safety country programs developed under these “Point-Four” agencies and transferred after 1961 to USAID/OPS included programs developed in Vietnam from 1955-1961 under contract to Michigan State University (MSU). First negotiated by the International Cooperation Agency (ICA), and managed by the United States Operations Mission (USOM) in Saigon, the original MSU programs continued to evolve under OPS and interagency administration until the United States Congress withdrew funding for the Vietnam operations in 1973.

The Records of the United States Agency for International Development (NARA RG 286: Series 1, ARC #5662049; Series 2, ARC #5661967) available at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, include records of the MSU contractors supporting the government of President Ngo Dinh Diem (1955-1963). These records of USAID/OPS in Vietnam document the roles of prominent MSU personnel who advised the Diem regime, including: MSU Chief Advisor Wesley R. Fishel, Ralph H. Smuckler, and the first Police Program Chief Howard W. Hoyt; as well as John F. Manopoli and Charles F. Sloane, who remained in Vietnam after MSU left in 1961.

The records also document the roles of “Point-Four” and other United States Government (USG) agency officials after USAID/OPS took over the MSU Police Program in 1962, including: Byron Engle, Robert C. Lowe, Frank E. Walton, Rufus Phillips, and Edward Geary Lansdale. USG personnel who appear prominently in the records during the 1960s and 1970s include Michael G. McCann, who arrived in Saigon as the last OPS Public Safety Division (PSD) Chief (1969-1971), after serving as Director of the OPS International Police Academy in Washington, D.C. (est. 1963).

From 1967, OPS functioned as a component of the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS), the new interagency coordination of civil-military operations in Vietnam headed by Robert W. Komer. The records document Komer’s impact on the existing Public Safety capability, and the role of William E. Colby, who in 1969 succeeded Komer as the CORDS Chief of Staff.

USAID/OPS participation in programs appearing in these records, include the Chieu Hoi (“Open Arms”) program for Communist defectors (South Vietnamese Communist sympathizers, often referred to as “Viet Cong” or “VC”), started on February 18, 1963 by retired Col. Charles Bohannan, a counterinsurgency expert who previously advised Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay in suppressing the Hukbalahap Rebellion (1946-1954). The records also document USAID/OPS support for the Phung Hoang (or “Phoenix”) program, a Government of Vietnam (GVN) effort to eliminate the Viet Cong Infrastructure (VCI), coordinated through the interagency CORDS group under both Komer and Colby.