Phoenix Program

For other uses of "Operation Phoenix", see Operation Phoenix (disambiguation).

Original unissued patch

The Phoenix Program (Template:Lang-vi) was a program designed and coordinated by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Vietnam War, involving cooperation between American, South Vietnamese and Australian militaries.

The program was designed to identify and destroy the Viet Cong (VC) via infiltration, torture, capture, counter-terrorism, interrogation, and assassination. The CIA described it as "a set of programs that sought to attack and destroy the political infrastructure of the Viet Cong". The Phoenix Program was premised on the idea that infiltration had required local support from non-combat civilian populations, which were referred to as the "political branch" that had purportedly coordinated the insurgency.

Throughout the program, Phoenix “neutralized” 81,740 people suspected of VC membership, of whom 26,369 were killed and the rest surrendered or were captured. A number of criticisms arose regarding the Phoenix Program, including the number of neutral civilians killed, the nature of the program (which critics have labelled as a "civilian assassination program"), the use of torture and other coercive methods, and the program being exploited for personal politics. Nevertheless, the program was described as suppressing Viet Cong political and revolutionary activities. Disclosure of the program publicly had caused significant criticisms, including congressional hearings, and the CIA was pressured to shut-down the Phoenix Program, although a similar program "Plan F-6" continued under South Vietnamese authorities.

History

The major two components of the program were Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs) and regional interrogation centers. PRUs would kill or capture suspected VC members, as well as civilians who were thought to have information on VC activities. Many of these people were taken to interrogation centers and were tortured in an attempt to gain intelligence on VC activities in the area. The information extracted at the centers was given to military commanders, who would use it to task the PRU with further capture and assassination missions. The program's effectiveness was measured in the number of VC members who were "neutralized", a euphemism meaning imprisoned, persuaded to defect, or killed.

The program was in operation between 1965 and 1972, and similar efforts existed both before and after that period. By 1972, Phoenix operatives had "neutralized" 81,740 suspected VC operatives, informants and supporters, of whom between 26,000 and 41,000 were killed.

The interrogation centers and PRUs were developed by the CIA's Saigon station chief Peer de Silva. DeSilva was a proponent of a military strategy known as counter-terrorism, which encompasses military tactics and techniques that government, military, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies use to combat or prevent terrorist activities, and that it should be applied strategically to "enemy civilians" in order to reduce civilian support for the VC. The PRUs were designed with this in mind, and began targeting suspected VC members in 1964. Originally, the PRUs were known as "Counter Terror" teams, but they were renamed to "Provincial Reconnaissance Units" after CIA officials "became wary of the adverse publicity surrounding the use of the word 'terror'".

In 1967 all "pacification" efforts by the United States had come under the authority of the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support, or CORDS. CORDS had many different programs within it, including the creation of a peasant militia which by 1971 had a strength of about 500,000.

In 1967, as part of CORDS, the Intelligence Coordination and Exploitation Program (ICEX) was created, from a plan drafted by Nelson Brickham partly inspired by David Galula's Counterinsurgency Warfare (1964), a book based on Galula's experiences in the Algerian War which Brickham was "very taken" with and carried with him around Vietnam. The purpose of the organization centered on gathering information on the VC. It was renamed Phoenix later in the same year. The South Vietnamese program was called Phụng Hoàng, after a mythical bird that appeared as a sign of prosperity and luck. The 1968 Tet offensive showed the importance of the VC infrastructure, and the military setback for the U.S. made it politically more palatable for the new program to be implemented. By 1970 there were 704 U.S. Phoenix advisers throughout South Vietnam.

Officially, Phoenix operations continued until December 1972, although certain aspects continued until the fall of Saigon in 1975.

Agencies and individuals involved in the program

• The CIA
• United States special operations forces
• U.S. Army intelligence collection units from the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV—the joint-service command that provided command and control for all U.S. advisory and assistance efforts in Vietnam)

• US Navy SEAL Detachment Bravo.

• USMC, 1st Force Reconnaissance Company stationed near Da Nang.

• Special forces operatives from the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV),
• The Republic of Vietnam's (South Vietnam) security apparatus

Operations

The chief aspect of the Phoenix Program was the collection of intelligence information. VC members would then be captured, converted, or killed. Emphasis for the enforcement of the operation was placed on local government militia and police forces, rather than the military, as the main operational arm of the program. Author and journalist Douglas Valentine states that "Central to Phoenix is the fact that it targeted civilians, not soldiers".

The Phoenix Program took place under special laws that allowed the arrest and prosecution of suspected communists. To avoid abuses such as phony accusations for personal reasons, or to rein in overzealous officials who might not be diligent enough in pursuing evidence before making arrests, the laws required three separate sources of evidence to convict an individual targeted for neutralization. If a suspected VC member was found guilty, he or she could be held in prison for two years, with renewable two-year sentences totaling up to six years. According to MACV Directive 381–41, the intent of Phoenix was to attack the VC with a "rifle shot rather than a shotgun approach to target key political leaders, command/control elements and activists in the VCI [Viet Cong Infrastructure]." The VCI was known by the communists as the Revolutionary Infrastructure.

Heavy-handed operations—such as random cordons and searches, large-scale and lengthy detentions of innocent civilians, and excessive use of firepower—had a negative effect on the civilian population. Intelligence derived from interrogations was often used to carry out "search and destroy" missions aimed at finding and killing VC members.

Torture

Methods of reported torture detailed by author Douglas Valentine that were used at the interrogation centers included:

Rape, gang rape, rape using eels, snakes, or hard objects, and rape followed by murder; electric shock ('the Bell Telephone Hour') rendered by attaching wires to the genitals or other sensitive parts of the body, like the tongue; the 'water treatment'; the 'airplane' in which the prisoner's arms were tied behind the back, and the rope looped over a hook on the ceiling, suspending the prisoner in midair, after which he or she was beaten; beatings with rubber hoses and whips; the use of police dogs to maul prisoners.

Military intelligence officer K. Barton Osborne reports that he witnessed the following use of torture:

The use of the insertion of the 6-inch dowel into the canal of one of my detainee's ears, and the tapping through the brain until dead. The starvation to death (in a cage), of a Vietnamese woman who was suspected of being part of the local political education cadre in one of the local villages ... The use of electronic gear such as sealed telephones attached to ... both the women's vaginas and men's testicles [to] shock them into submission.

The torture was carried out by South Vietnamese forces with the CIA and special forces playing a supervisory role.

Targeted killings

Phoenix operations often aimed to assassinate targets, or resulted in their deaths through other means. PRU units often anticipated resistance in disputed areas, and often operated on a shoot-first basis. Innocent civilians were also sometimes killed. William Colby claimed that the program never sanctioned the "premeditated killing of a civilian in a non-combat situation", and other military personnel stated that capturing VC members was more important than killing them. Lieutenant Vincent Okamoto, an intelligence-liaison officer for the Phoenix Program for two months in 1968 and a recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross said the following:

The problem was, how do you find the people on the blacklist? It's not like you had their address and telephone number. The normal procedure would be to go into a village and just grab someone and say, "Where's Nguyen so-and-so?" Half the time the people were so afraid they would not say anything. Then a Phoenix team would take the informant, put a sandbag over his head, poke out two holes so he could see, put commo wire around his neck like a long leash, and walk him through the village and say, "When we go by Nguyen's house scratch your head." Then that night Phoenix would come back, knock on the door, and say, "April Fool, motherfucker." Whoever answered the door would get wasted. As far as they were concerned whoever answered was a Communist, including family members. Sometimes they'd come back to camp with ears to prove that they killed people.

Strategic effect

Between 1968 and 1972, Phoenix "neutralized" 81,740 people suspected of VC membership, of whom 26,369 were killed. A significant number of VC were killed, and between 1969 and 1971 the program was quite successful in destroying VC infrastructure in many important areas. By 1970, communist plans repeatedly emphasized attacking the government's pacification program and specifically targeted Phoenix officials. The VC also imposed quotas. In 1970, for example, communist officials near Da Nang in northern South Vietnam instructed their assassins to "kill 1,400 persons" deemed to be government "tyrant[s]" and to "annihilate" anyone involved with the pacification program. Several North Vietnamese officials have made statements about the effectiveness of Phoenix. According to William Colby, "in the years since 1975, I have heard several references to North and South Vietnamese communists who state that, in their mind, the toughest period that they faced from 1960 to 1975 was the period from 1968 to '72 when the Phoenix Program was at work." The CIA claimed that through Phoenix they were able to learn the identity and structure of the VCI in every province.

Public response and legal proceedings

The Phoenix Program was not generally known during most of the time it was operational to either the American public or American officials in Washington. One of the first people to criticize Phoenix publicly was Ed Murphy, a native of Staten Island, New York in 1970.

There was eventually a series of U.S. Congressional hearings. In 1971, in the final day of hearing on "U.S. Assistance Programs in Vietnam", a former serviceman named K. Milton Osborn described the Phoenix Program as a "sterile depersonalized murder program." Consequently, the military command in Vietnam issued a directive that reiterated that it had based the anti-VCI campaign on South Vietnamese law, that the program was in compliance with the laws of land warfare, and that U.S. personnel had the responsibility to report breaches of the law.

Former CIA analyst Samuel A. Adams, in an interview with CBC News, talked about the program as basically an assassination program that also included torture.

Abuses were reportedly common. In many instances, rival Vietnamese would report their enemies as "VC" in order to get U.S. troops to kill them. In many cases, Phung Hoang chiefs were incompetent bureaucrats who used their positions to enrich themselves. Phoenix tried to address this problem by establishing monthly neutralization quotas, but these often led to fabrications or, worse, false arrests. In some cases, district officials accepted bribes from the VC to release certain suspects.

After Phoenix Program abuses began receiving negative publicity, the program was officially shut down, although it continued under the name Plan F-6 with the government of South Vietnam in control.

See also

• CIA activities in Vietnam
• William Colby
• Edward Lansdale
• Nguyễn Hợp Đoàn
• Vincent Okamoto
• Operation Condor
• Republic of Vietnam National Police Field Force
• Russell Tribunal
• Special Activities Division
• Tran Ngoc Chau
• United States war crimes
• Vietnam War Crimes Working Group
• Winter Soldier Investigation

References

• Andradé, Dale W. (1990). Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix Program and the Vietnam War. Issues in low-intensity conflict series. Lexington Books. ISBN 978-0-669-20014-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Andradé, Dale W.; Willbanks, James H. (2006). "CORDS/Phoenix: Counterinsurgency lessons from Vietnam for the future" (PDF). Military Review (March/April): 9–23. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 June 2007. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• CounterSpy. Vol. 1. Organizing Committee for a Fifth Estate. 1973 https://books.google.com/books?id=2ec9AQAAIAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22f-6%22. {{cite magazine}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
• Evans, Stephen S. (2008). U.S. Marines and Irregular Warfare, 1898–2007: Anthology and Selected Bibliography (PDF). Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University Press. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Folly, M. (2014). "Phoenix Program". Historical Dictionary of U.S. Diplomacy during the Cold War. Historical Dictionaries of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 303. ISBN 978-1-4422-4215-9. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Frater, J. (2014). Listverse.com's Epic Book of Mind-Boggling Lists: Unbelievable Facts and Astounding Trivia on Movies, Music, Crime, Celebrities, History, and More. Ulysses Press. ISBN 978-1-61243-297-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Frazier, H. (1978). Uncloaking the CIA. Free Press. ISBN 978-0-02-915360-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Gidlund, Carl Arthur (1967). Vietnam Courier in 1966: An instrument of propaganda (M.A.). University of Montana / ProQuest. UMI:EP40912. {{cite thesis}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Hastedt, G.P. (2012). Controlling Intelligence. Studies in Intelligence. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-136-29138-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Hunt, R.A. (1995). Pacification: The American Struggle for Vietnam's Hearts and Minds. Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-8133-1182-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• In Thieu's Prisons. Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House. 1973.
• Keyes, R. (2010). Euphemania: Our Love Affair with Euphemisms. Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-12195-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Moyar, M. (1997). Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: The CIA's Secret Campaign to Destroy the Viet Cong. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-55750-593-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Nomination of William E. Colby: hearing, Ninety-Third Congress, first session, on nomination of William E. Colby to be Director of Central Intelligence, July 2, 20, and 25, 1973. U.S. G.P.O. 1973.
• North American Congress on Latin America (1974). Latin America & Empire Report. Vol. 8. North American Congress on Latin America. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Saunders, N.M. (2008). Combat by Trial: An Odyssey with 20th Century Winter Soldiers. iUniverse. ISBN 978-0-595-50591-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Subversion of law enforcement intelligence gathering operations: Organizing Committee for a Fifth Estate. Subversion of Law Enforcement Intelligence Gathering Operations: Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Ninety-fourth Congress, Second Session. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1976.
• Tirman, J. (2011). The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America's Wars. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-983149-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Tovo, Ken (2007). "From the Ashes of the phoenix: lessons for contemporary counterinsurgency operations". Special Warfare. 20 (1): 7–15. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Valentine, Douglas (2014) [1990]. The Phoenix Program: America's Use of Terror in Vietnam. Forbidden Bookshelf. Open Road Media. ISBN 978-1-4976-2020-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) Excerpt from Chapter 24 "Transgressions" online: [2]. Author permission further explained: [3]
• Vietnam Courier. No. 1–19. Hanoi: Vietnam News Agency / Xunhasaba. 1972 https://books.google.com/books?id=seAVAQAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22f-6%22. {{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help) For copies, see Cornell and Southern Illinois University.
• Ward, G.C.; Burns, K.; Novick, L. (2017). The Vietnam War: An intimate history. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-307-70025-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Further reading

• Buckley, Kevin (19 June 1972). "Pacification's Deadly Price". Newsweek. pp. 42–43.
• Chomsky, Noam; Herman, Edward S. (1973). Counter-Revolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact & Propaganda. Andover, Mass.: Warner Modular Publications. OCLC 2358907. Complete text at Noam Chomsky's Web site.
• Cook, John L. (1973). The Advisor: The Phoenix Program in Vietnam. Philadelphia: Dorrance & Company. ISBN 9780805919257. OCLC 250035420.
• Grant, Zalin (1991). Facing the Phoenix: The CIA and the Political Defeat of the United States in Vietnam. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 9780393029253. OCLC 440829893.
• Herrington, Stuart (1982). Silence Was a Weapon: The Vietnam War in the Villages: A Personal Perspective. Novato, Cal.: Presidio Press. ISBN 9780891411406. OCLC 7923168. Reprinted as Stalking the Vietcong: Inside Operation Phoenix: A Personal Account.
• Herman, Edward S.; Chomsky, Noam (1979). The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism. Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume 1. Boston: South End Press. ISBN 9780896080904. OCLC 855290980.
• Hersh, Seymour (1972). Cover-Up: The Army's Secret Investigation of the Massacre at My Lai 4. New York: Random House. ISBN 9780394474601. OCLC 251832675.
• Luce, Don (1973). Hostages of War: Saigon's Political Prisoners. Washington, D.C.: Indochina Resource Center. OCLC 471579109.
• McCoy, Alfred W. (2012). Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation. University of Wisconsin Press.
• Moyar, Mark (1997). Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: The CIA's Secret Campaign to Destroy the Viet Cong. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 9781557505934. OCLC 468627566.
• Scott, Peter (1998). The Lost Crusade: America's Secret Cambodian Mercenaries. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 9781557508461. OCLC 466612519.
• Tran Ngoc Chau; Fermoyle, Ken (2013). Vietnam Labyrinth: Allies, Enemies and Why the US Lost the War. Lubbock, Texas: Texas Tech University Press. ISBN 9780896727717. OCLC 939834065.

External links

• Documents and Taped Interviews from the Phoenix Program at the Internet Archive.
• Documents from the Phoenix Program
• Senate Review of Phoenix Program
• Phoenix Program Bibliography
• "Phoenix And The Anatomy Of Terror". By Douglas Valentine. CounterPunch. November 8, 2001.
• "An Open Letter to Maj. Gen. Bruce Lawlor". By Douglas Valentine. CounterPunch. August 25, 2002. Some history of a Phoenix officer.
• Vietnam: A Television History; Interview with Carl F. Bernard, 1981 on the Vietnam War, including the effectiveness of the Phoenix Program. WGBH Open Vault. Served in World War II, Korea, Laos and Vietnam.