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The '''Phoenix Program''' ({{lang-vi|Chiến dịch Phụng Hoàng}}, a word related to [[fenghuang]], the [[China|Chinese]] [[Phoenix (mythology)|phoenix]]) was a controversial [[counterinsurgency]] program designed, coordinated, and executed by the United States [[Central Intelligence Agency]] (CIA), [[United States special operations forces]], and the [[Republic of Vietnam]]'s (South Vietnam) security apparatus during the [[Vietnam War]] that operated between 1967 and 1972. <ref name="Andrade"/>
The '''Phoenix Program''' ({{lang-vi|Chiến dịch Phụng Hoàng}}, a word related to [[fenghuang]], the [[China|Chinese]] [[Phoenix (mythology)|phoenix]]) was a controversial [[counterinsurgency]] program designed, coordinated, and executed by the United States [[Central Intelligence Agency]] (CIA), [[United States special operations forces]], and the [[Republic of Vietnam]]'s (South Vietnam) security apparatus during the [[Vietnam War]] that operated between 1967 and 1972.<ref name="Andrade">Dale Andrade. ''Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix Program and the Vietnam War''. Lexington Books. 1990.</ref>


The Program was designed to identify the Viet Cong Infrastructure (VCI) supporting the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, more commonly referred to as the or ''[[Viet Cong]]'' (VC) and neutralize it though capture, coercion or killing its members. Phoenix Program operation were carried out by the South Vietnam’s National Police, National Police Field Force, Special Police Branch, U.S. and Vietnamese conventional armed forces; and by what became known as the Provincial Reconnaissance Units, or PRU’s. <ref name="Andrade"/><ref name="RAND">William Rosenau and Austin Long. '' The Phoenix Program and Contemporary Counterinsurgency ''. [[RAND Corporation|The RAND Corporation]]. 2009</ref> By 1972, Phoenix operatives had neutralized 81,740 suspected NLF supporters, of whom 26,369 were killed.<ref name="Andrade"/>
The Program was designed to identify the Viet Cong Infrastructure (VCI) supporting the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, more commonly referred to as the or ''[[Viet Cong]]'' (VC) and neutralize it though capture, coercion or killing its members. Phoenix Program operation were carried out by the South Vietnam’s National Police, National Police Field Force, Special Police Branch, U.S. and Vietnamese conventional armed forces; and by what became known as the Provincial Reconnaissance Units, or PRU’s. <ref name="Andrade"/><ref name="RAND">William Rosenau and Austin Long. '' The Phoenix Program and Contemporary Counterinsurgency ''. [[RAND Corporation|The RAND Corporation]]. 2009</ref> By 1972, Phoenix operatives had neutralized 81,740 suspected NLF supporters, of whom 26,369 were killed.<ref name="Andrade"/>
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Results of the program’s effectiveness remain debated to this day however it is generally viewed by both US Military and former North Vietnamese officials as being the most productive counterinsurgency operation of the conflict and dealt a serious blow to the Viet Cong and the VCI. <ref name="RAND"/><ref name="Tovo"/> The Phoenix Program was widely criticized by [[Opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War|opponents of the conflict]] who called it little more than an “assassination program” utilizing “indiscriminate brutality” and a violation of international law. Much of the critical characterization arose from the classified nature of the program coupled with anecdotal, unsubstantiated, or false information relayed to the media and critical scholars about Phoenix . <ref name="Finlayson"> Colonel Andrew R. Finlayson, USMC. ''A Retrospective on Counterinsurgency Operations: The Tay Ninh Provincial Reconnaissance Unit and Its Role in the Phoenix Program, 1969-70''. Studies in Intelligence. Volume 51, no 2</ref>
Results of the program’s effectiveness remain debated to this day however it is generally viewed by both US Military and former North Vietnamese officials as being the most productive counterinsurgency operation of the conflict and dealt a serious blow to the Viet Cong and the VCI. <ref name="RAND"/><ref name="Tovo"/> The Phoenix Program was widely criticized by [[Opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War|opponents of the conflict]] who called it little more than an “assassination program” utilizing “indiscriminate brutality” and a violation of international law. Much of the critical characterization arose from the classified nature of the program coupled with anecdotal, unsubstantiated, or false information relayed to the media and critical scholars about Phoenix . <ref name="Finlayson"> Colonel Andrew R. Finlayson, USMC. ''A Retrospective on Counterinsurgency Operations: The Tay Ninh Provincial Reconnaissance Unit and Its Role in the Phoenix Program, 1969-70''. Studies in Intelligence. Volume 51, no 2</ref>
==Historical origins==
==Background==
Shortly after the [[Geneva Conference (1954)|1954 Geneva Conference]] and the adoption of the Geneva Accords, the government of [[North Vietnam]] organized a force of several thousand to mobilize support for the communists in the upcoming elections. When it became clear that the elections would not take place, these forces became the seeds of what would eventually become the [[Viet Cong]], an North Vietnamese insurgency whose goal was unification of Vietnam under the control of the North. <ref name="Tovo"> Lieutenant Colonel Ken Tovo. [http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/army-usawc/ksil241.pdf ''FROM THE ASHES OF THE PHOENIX: LESSONS FOR CONTEMPORARY COUNTERINSURGENCY OPERATIONS'']. United States Army War College</ref>
Shortly after the [[Geneva Conference (1954)|1954 Geneva Conference]] and the adoption of the Geneva Accords, the government of [[North Vietnam]] organized a force of several thousand to mobilize support for the communists in the upcoming elections. When it became clear that the elections would not take place, these forces became the seeds of what would eventually become the [[Viet Cong]], an North Vietnamese insurgency whose goal was unification of Vietnam under the control of the North. <ref name="Tovo"> Lieutenant Colonel Ken Tovo. [http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/army-usawc/ksil241.pdf ''FROM THE ASHES OF THE PHOENIX: LESSONS FOR CONTEMPORARY COUNTERINSURGENCY OPERATIONS'']. United States Army War College</ref>


While [[counterinsurgency]] efforts had been ongoing since the first days of US military involvement in Vietnam, they had been unsuccessful with dealing with either the armed component Vietcong or the Vietcong’s civilian infrastructure (VCI) which swelled to between 80,000 and 150,000 members by the mid 1960’s. <ref name="Moyar"> [[Mark Moyar]]. ''Phoenix and the Birds of Prey : The CIA's Secret Campaign to Destroy the Viet Cong''. United States Naval Institute Press. 2007</ref> The VCI, unlike the armed component of the Viet Cong, was tasked with support activities including recruiting, [[political indoctrination]], [[psychological warfare|psychological operations]], intelligence collection, and logistical support. <ref name="Tovo"/> The VCI rapidly set up [[shadow government|shadow governments]] in rural South Vietnam by replacing local leadership in small rural hamlets loyal to the Saigon government with communist cadres.<ref name="Moyar"/> The VCI chose small rural villages because they lacked close supervision of the Saigon government or the South Vietnamese Army<ref name="Andrade">Dale Andrade. ''Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix Program and the Vietnam War''. Lexington Books. 1990.</ref>
While [[counterinsurgency]] efforts had been ongoing since the first days of US military involvement in Vietnam, they had been unsuccessful with dealing with either the armed component Vietcong or the Vietcong’s civilian infrastructure (VCI) which swelled to between 80,000 and 150,000 members by the mid 1960’s. <ref name="Moyar"> [[Mark Moyar]]. ''Phoenix and the Birds of Prey : The CIA's Secret Campaign to Destroy the Viet Cong''. United States Naval Institute Press. 2007</ref> The VCI, unlike the armed component of the Viet Cong, was tasked with support activities including recruiting, [[political indoctrination]], [[psychological warfare|psychological operations]], intelligence collection, and logistical support. <ref name="Tovo"/>


VCI tactics in establishing local communist control began by identifying towns and villages with strategic importance to either the Viet Cong or [[North Vietnamese Army|NVA]] and local populations with communist sympathies with the Hanoi government putting a great deal of emphasis on the activities and success of the VCI. <ref name="Andrade"/>. After a community was identified, the VCI would threaten local leadership with reprisals if they refused to cooperate or kidnap local leaders and send them to [[Reeducation camp|reeducation camps]] in North Vietnam. Local leaders who continued to refuse to cooperate or threatened to contact the Saigon government were murdered along with their families<ref name="Andrade"/>. After VCI agents took control of an area it would be used to [[Quartering Acts|quarter]] and resupply Viet Cong guerrillas, supplying intelligence on US and South Vietnamese military movements, providing taxes to VCI cadres, and conscripting locals into the Viet Cong.<ref name="Moyar"/>

==History==
The [[Military Assistance Command Vietnam]] (MACV) Directive 381-41 officially created the “Phoenix Program” on July 9 1967 calling it the Intelligence Coordination and Exploitation for Attack on VC Infrastructure or "ICEX". By the end of 1967 the name had been changed to Phoenix.<ref name="Tovo"/> The interrogation centres and PRUs were developed by the CIA's [[Saigon]] station chief [[Peer DeSilva]]. DeSilva was a proponent of a military strategy known as "counter terror" which held that terrorism was a legitimate tool to use in unconventional warfare, and that it should be applied strategically to "enemy civilians" in order to reduce civilian support for the Viet Cong. The PRUs were designed with this in mind, and began terrorizing suspected civilian sympathizers in 1964.<ref name="otterman-62-64">{{cite book|author=Otterman, Michael|title=American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond|publisher=Melbourne University Publishing|year=2007|isbn=9780522853339|page=62|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=wiVqrgS68NoC&pg=PA62}}</ref> 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'".<ref>{{cite book|author=McCoy, Alfred W.|title=A question of torture: CIA interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror|publisher=Macmillan|year=2006|isbn=9780805080414|page=63|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=FVwUYSBwtKcC&pg=PA63}}</ref>
The [[Military Assistance Command Vietnam]] (MACV) Directive 381-41 officially created the “Phoenix Program” on July 9 1967 calling it the Intelligence Coordination and Exploitation for Attack on VC Infrastructure or "ICEX". By the end of 1967 the name had been changed to Phoenix.<ref name="Tovo"/> The interrogation centres and PRUs were developed by the CIA's [[Saigon]] station chief [[Peer DeSilva]]. DeSilva was a proponent of a military strategy known as "counter terror" which held that terrorism was a legitimate tool to use in unconventional warfare, and that it should be applied strategically to "enemy civilians" in order to reduce civilian support for the Viet Cong. The PRUs were designed with this in mind, and began terrorizing suspected civilian sympathizers in 1964.<ref name="otterman-62-64">{{cite book|author=Otterman, Michael|title=American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond|publisher=Melbourne University Publishing|year=2007|isbn=9780522853339|page=62|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=wiVqrgS68NoC&pg=PA62}}</ref> 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'".<ref>{{cite book|author=McCoy, Alfred W.|title=A question of torture: CIA interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror|publisher=Macmillan|year=2006|isbn=9780805080414|page=63|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=FVwUYSBwtKcC&pg=PA63}}</ref>



Revision as of 21:00, 15 June 2011

The Phoenix Program (Vietnamese: Chiến dịch Phụng Hoàng, a word related to fenghuang, the Chinese phoenix) was a controversial counterinsurgency program designed, coordinated, and executed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), United States special operations forces, and the Republic of Vietnam's (South Vietnam) security apparatus during the Vietnam War that operated between 1967 and 1972.[1]

The Program was designed to identify the Viet Cong Infrastructure (VCI) supporting the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, more commonly referred to as the or Viet Cong (VC) and neutralize it though capture, coercion or killing its members. Phoenix Program operation were carried out by the South Vietnam’s National Police, National Police Field Force, Special Police Branch, U.S. and Vietnamese conventional armed forces; and by what became known as the Provincial Reconnaissance Units, or PRU’s. [1][2] By 1972, Phoenix operatives had neutralized 81,740 suspected NLF supporters, of whom 26,369 were killed.[1]

Results of the program’s effectiveness remain debated to this day however it is generally viewed by both US Military and former North Vietnamese officials as being the most productive counterinsurgency operation of the conflict and dealt a serious blow to the Viet Cong and the VCI. [2][3] The Phoenix Program was widely criticized by opponents of the conflict who called it little more than an “assassination program” utilizing “indiscriminate brutality” and a violation of international law. Much of the critical characterization arose from the classified nature of the program coupled with anecdotal, unsubstantiated, or false information relayed to the media and critical scholars about Phoenix . [4]

Historical origins

Shortly after the 1954 Geneva Conference and the adoption of the Geneva Accords, the government of North Vietnam organized a force of several thousand to mobilize support for the communists in the upcoming elections. When it became clear that the elections would not take place, these forces became the seeds of what would eventually become the Viet Cong, an North Vietnamese insurgency whose goal was unification of Vietnam under the control of the North. [3]

While counterinsurgency efforts had been ongoing since the first days of US military involvement in Vietnam, they had been unsuccessful with dealing with either the armed component Vietcong or the Vietcong’s civilian infrastructure (VCI) which swelled to between 80,000 and 150,000 members by the mid 1960’s. [5] The VCI, unlike the armed component of the Viet Cong, was tasked with support activities including recruiting, political indoctrination, psychological operations, intelligence collection, and logistical support. [3]

The Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) Directive 381-41 officially created the “Phoenix Program” on July 9 1967 calling it the Intelligence Coordination and Exploitation for Attack on VC Infrastructure or "ICEX". By the end of 1967 the name had been changed to Phoenix.[3] The interrogation centres and PRUs were developed by the CIA's Saigon station chief Peer DeSilva. DeSilva was a proponent of a military strategy known as "counter terror" which held that terrorism was a legitimate tool to use in unconventional warfare, and that it should be applied strategically to "enemy civilians" in order to reduce civilian support for the Viet Cong. The PRUs were designed with this in mind, and began terrorizing suspected civilian sympathizers in 1964.[6] 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'".[7]

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. [8]

In 1967, as part of CORDS, the Intelligence Coordination and Exploitation Program (ICEX) was created. The purpose of the organization centered on gathering information on the NLF. 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 NLF infrastructure, and the military setback for the US made it politically more palatable for the new program to be implemented. By 1970 there were 704 U.S. Phoenix advisers throughout South Vietnam.[8]

Officially, Phoenix operations continued until December 1972, although certain aspects continued until the fall of Saigon in 1975. [3]

Operations

According to MACV Directive 381-41, the intent of Phoenix was to attack the NLF with a "rifle shot rather than a shotgun approach to target key political leaders, command/control elements and activists in the VCI." To this end, the Phoenix Program had two primary elements: intelligence gathering and military/police forces who carried out operations based on that intelligence. [8] Intelligence was gathered and disseminated through either Province Intelligence and Operations Coordination Centers (PIOCC’s) or their subordinate District Intelligence and Operations Coordination Centers (DIOCC’s) [2]

Neutralization was not arbitrary but took place under special laws that allowed the arrest and prosecution of suspected communists, but only within the legal system. 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 any individual targeted for neutralization. If a suspected NLF 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. [8]

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. It was also acknowledged that capturing NLF members was more important than killing them.[3][9][10]

Allegations of abuse and torture

Called an “assassination program” by its critics, allegations of widespread human rights abuses ranging from murder to torture were common.[11][12] It has been alleged that civilians who were detained in interrogation centers were tortured in an attempt to gain intelligence on VC activities in the area.[6] and that few of the prisoners survived their interrogation.[13]

Common methods of torture 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."[14]

Military intelligence officer K. Milton Osborne states 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 both the women's vaginas and men's testicles [to] shock them into submission."[15]

Charges that rival Vietnamese would report their enemies as "VC" in order to get U.S. troops to kill them were also made as well as allegations that Phung Hoang chiefs were incompetent bureaucrats who used their positions to enrich themselves.[16]

Extrajudicial killings

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:[17][18]

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 NLF membership, of whom 26,369 were killed. Although many of these were innocent civilians, a significant number of NLF were killed, and between 1969 and 1971 the program was quite successful in destroying NLF infrastructure in many important areas. By 1970, communist plans repeatedly emphasized attacking the government’s pacification program and specifically targeted Phoenix officials. The NLF also imposed quotas. In 1970, for example, communist officials near Da Nang in northern South Vietnam instructed their assassins to “kill 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. [8]According to William Colby, "in the years since the 1975, I have heard several references to North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese communists who account, who state that in their mind the most, the toughest period that they faced in the whole period of the war from 1960 to 1975 was the period from 1968 to '72 when the Phoenix Program was at work."[19]

Lieutenant Vincent Okamoto, an intelligence-liaison officer for the Phoenix Program for two months in 1968, concerning extrajudicial killings, said, "If Phoenix goes in and murders someone who was not Viet Cong, and they abuse the mother and the sister, well anybody in the family who survives is going to be a card-carrying Viet Cong by the next afternoon."[17]

"One of the first people to criticize Phoenix publicly was Ed Murphy, a native of Staten Island, New York" in 1970.[citation needed]

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. Barton 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.[citation needed]

After Phoenix Program abuses began receiving negative publicity, the program was officially shut down. However, another program of a similar nature, code-named "F-6", was initiated as Phoenix was phased out.[20]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Dale Andrade. Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix Program and the Vietnam War. Lexington Books. 1990.
  2. ^ a b c William Rosenau and Austin Long. The Phoenix Program and Contemporary Counterinsurgency . The RAND Corporation. 2009
  3. ^ a b c d e f Lieutenant Colonel Ken Tovo. FROM THE ASHES OF THE PHOENIX: LESSONS FOR CONTEMPORARY COUNTERINSURGENCY OPERATIONS. United States Army War College
  4. ^ Colonel Andrew R. Finlayson, USMC. A Retrospective on Counterinsurgency Operations: The Tay Ninh Provincial Reconnaissance Unit and Its Role in the Phoenix Program, 1969-70. Studies in Intelligence. Volume 51, no 2
  5. ^ Mark Moyar. Phoenix and the Birds of Prey : The CIA's Secret Campaign to Destroy the Viet Cong. United States Naval Institute Press. 2007
  6. ^ a b Otterman, Michael (2007). American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond. Melbourne University Publishing. p. 62. ISBN 9780522853339.
  7. ^ McCoy, Alfred W. (2006). A question of torture: CIA interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror. Macmillan. p. 63. ISBN 9780805080414.
  8. ^ a b c d e Dale Andrade and Lieutenant Colonel James H. Willbanks(ret). CORDS/Phoenix – Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam for the Future . Military Review. March – April 2006
  9. ^ Phoenix Program 1969 End of Year Report. A-8.
  10. ^ Dale Andrade, Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix Program and the Vietnam War, pg 53 (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1990)
  11. ^ Nick Turse, Kill Anything That Moves : U.S. War Crimes And Atrocities In Vietnam, 1965-1973, a doctoral dissertation, Columbia University 2005
  12. ^ Nick Turse, “A My Lai a Month: How the US Fought the Vietnam War”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 47-6-08, November 21, 2008
  13. ^ Harbury, Jennifer (2005). Truth, torture, and the American way: the history and consequences of U.S. involvement in torture. Beacon Press. p. 97. ISBN 9780807003077.
  14. ^ Blakely, Ruth (2009). State terrorism and neoliberalism: the North in the South. Taylor & Francis. p. 50. ISBN 9780415462402.
  15. ^ Vietnam: the (last) war the U.S. lost. Haymarket Books. 2008. p. 164. ISBN 9781931859493. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)
  16. ^ Myra MacPherson, Long Time Passing, New York: Signet, 1984, p625. [1].
  17. ^ a b Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides by Christian G. Appy, Penguin Books, 2003, page 361. [2]
  18. ^ "County’s Newest Judge Sworn In, Promises to Protect Rights" By Kenneth Ofgang. April 30, 2002. Metropolitan News-Enterprise.
  19. ^ “Interview with William Egan Colby, 1981.” July 16, 1981. WGBH Media Library & Archives.
  20. ^ Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism (The Political Economy of Human Rights - Volume I). 1979. ISBN 9780896080904. South End Press. [3]. Page 428.

Further reading

  • John L. Cook. The Advisor. [4].
  • Stuart A. Herrington. Stalking the Viet Cong. [5].
  • Douglas Valentine. The Phoenix Program. 1990. [6]. Chapter 24 "Transgressions" online: [7]. Author permission further explained: [8].
  • Don Luce. Hostages of War. Indochina Resource Center, 1973. [9].
  • Seymour Hersh. Cover-Up. Random House, 1972. [10].
  • Martha Hess. Then the Americans Came. Four Walls Eight Windows Press, 1996. [11].
  • Ralph McGehee. Deadly Deceits: My 25 years in the CIA. 1999. [12].

38°57′06″N 77°08′48″W / 38.95167°N 77.14667°W / 38.95167; -77.14667