David Atlee Phillips

David Atlee Phillips (October 31, 1922 – July 7, 1988) was a Central Intelligence Agency officer for 25 years, one of a handful of people to receive the Career Intelligence Medal. He rose to become the CIA's chief of all operations in the Western hemisphere. In 1975 he founded the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), an alumni association comprising intelligence officers from all services.

Phillips was born in Fort Worth, Texas. He attended The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia and Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. Phillips was an actor prior to World War II. During the war, he served as a nose gunner in the United States Army Air Forces and was shot down over Austria. Phillips escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany and made it back to Allied lines.

Phillips joined the CIA as a part-time agent in 1950 in Chile, where he owned and edited "The South Pacific Mail", an English-language newspaper that circulated throughout South America and several islands in the Pacific. He became a full-time operative in 1954, and operated a major psychological warfare campaign in Guatemala during the US coup and its aftermath. He rose through the ranks to intelligence officer, chief of station and eventually chief of all operations in the Western hemisphere, serving primarily in Latin America, including Cuba, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic.