Phoenix Program

For the suspected 1979 Israeli-South African nuclear test allegedly codenamed "Operation Phenix", see Vela Incident. For the Good Riddance album, see Operation Phoenix (album).

The Phoenix Program (Vietnamese: Kế Hoạch Phụng Hoàng, a word related to fenghuang, the Chinese phoenix) or Operation Phoenix was a covert intelligence operation and assassination program undertaken by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in close collaboration with South Vietnamese intelligence during the Vietnam War. The program was designed to identify and "neutralize"—capture; induce to surrender; kill; or otherwise disrupt—the noncombatant infrastructure of Viet Cong (VCI) cadres who were engaged both in recruiting and training insurgents within South Vietnamese villages, as well as providing support to the North Vietnamese war effort. The operation was directed by the CIA's Evan J. Parker, then by Ted Shackley and his deputies, including Thomas Clines, Donald Gregg, and Richard Secord.

While the Phoenix operations were originated by the CIA, they were eventually turned over to the US Army and Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) military, and later as part of the "Vietnamization" program they were transitioned to a Republic of Vietnam military program with just a handful of US military advisors assisting. The Phung Hoang operations were officially established by Republic of Vietnam Presidential decree on July 1, 1968, although the program existed unofficially prior to that date.

President Thieu would later declassify the program, and announce its existence publicly on October 1, 1969, in order to gain wider acceptance and cooperation from South Vietnam citizens.

Background

In South Vietnam during the 1960s and early '70s there was a secret network within the society which had widespread authority among the populace. This network, called by the US the Viet Cong infrastructure (VCI), provided the political direction and control of North Vietnam's war within the villages and hamlets.

VCI laid down caches of food and equipment for the troops coming from border sanctuaries; it provided guides and intelligence for the North Vietnamese strangers; it conscripted personnel to serve in local force (militia) and main force mobile combat units of the Viet Cong, levied taxes to facilitate the administration of a rudimentary civil government, and enforced its will.

This apparatus had been operating in Vietnam for many years and was well practiced in covert techniques. To fight the war on this level, to counter-attack among the people in the hamlets and villages, the South Vietnamese government developed a specific program called Phung Hoang or Phoenix. Distinct from military efforts, Phung Hoang was the operational task of the National Police and directed through Phung Hoang committees composed of representatives of civilian and military agencies, including refugee relief/social welfare, intelligence and propaganda entities. The Saigon government enacted specific laws against sedition and called upon all citizens to assist by providing information.

The word Phung Hoang is derived from the Vietnamese word meaning coordination. The title of the program is also believed to have come from the rougher translation of phung hoang, a mythical Vietnamese bird endowed with omnipotent attributes.

Justification

In areas more or less loyal to the Saigon government, protection against the North Vietnamese forces—or even VC guerrillas—was often compromised, because an elected village chief would be assassinated, a bomb would explode in the market place, or a Southern patriot would be shot in the back.

During 1969, for example, over 6,000 people were killed, over 1,200 in selective assassinations, and 15,000 wounded. Among the dead were some 90 village chiefs and officials, 240 hamlet chiefs and officials, 229 refugees, and 4,350 of the general populace.

Since the VCI was a sophisticated and experienced enemy, "political warfare" experts were needed to combat it. From 1967 to 1968, the coordinated intelligence effort (reliant in large part on CIA activities) against the VCI was chaired by the COMUSMACV Commander, General William Westmoreland, in a joint civilian/military advisory activity entitled "Intelligence Coordination and Exploitation (ICEX)" with the specific mission of assisting and supporting the GVN (Government of South Vietnam) in a coordinated attack on the VCI. Initially this program received little official South Vietnamese government attention and support. Raids and apprehensions were most often dominated by US assets (including the CIA-sponsored Provincial Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) teams of "hired guns") and reaped mere dozens of VCI prisoners per month.

When thousands of VCI "broke cover" to support the Communist uprising of Tet in January 1968, the successor to ICEX, Phung Hoang/Phoenix, responded and neutralizations (by capture or death) soared. Support and interest within the GVN also soared, and the Phoenix program was officially sanctioned and expanded. Thereafter it brought together the police, military, and other government organizations (GVN, with US advisors) to contribute knowledge and act against this enemy infrastructure. It secured information about the Vietcong, identified the individuals who made it up, and conducted operations against them.

On paper, members of this apparatus were to be forcibly captured, charged with crimes, tried and imprisoned (or executed), or turn themselves in as "ralliers" to the anti-communist cause. However, in actuality many were killed in firefights or seized and summarily killed.

By 1969, the Phoenix Program was no longer a secret, having drawn the attention of the media, and the CIA began distancing itself. Covert US agents were supplanted by US Army intelligence advisors (in keeping with the "Vietnamization" process of the Nixon administration) and emphasis put on training and organizing GVN personnel to keep the pressure on the VCI, everywhere in the RVN. Primary responsibility rested with the civil police forces, that is, the plainclothes Special Branch and the quasi-military Field Force gendarmes. Until the withdrawal of US forces was completed in 1973, the fortunes and successes of Phung Hoang/Phoenix varied widely and averaged mediocre. This was less due to ineptitude than to circumstance: the character of the war had changed and there were not as many VCI to find. Almost all "local" VC cells were kept afloat by North Vietnamese regulars who had infiltrated southward and had little interest in anything but armed warfare. After 1973, the GVN had more pressing priorities and redirected assets away from the effort.

Operations

The Phoenix Program was an attempt to capture or kill specific individuals within the VCI network using Human Intelligence (HUMINT) sources. One US Army method for targeting this Viet Cong infrastructure was the cordon and search method in which troops surrounded a village suspected of Viet Cong activity, and interrogated and evacuated its population. Some Phoenix operations were also military in nature, such as when ambushing an armed Viet Cong assassination squad at night between villages.

Most of the counterinsurgency Pathet Lao and VC infrastructure experts were in the "snuff and snatch" (assassination and kidnap) teams operating under the command (1962-1963) of John L. Lee, a CIA clandestine service field advisor, TDY (on loan) from the US Army.

A HALO-qualified Airborne Ranger and an "insurgent terrorist neutralization specialist," Lee had successfully trained, advised, and operationally commanded 3-5 man Black op "snuff and snatch" CIA counter-terror teams operating under the name of Project Pale Horse in the northeastern provinces of Laos between January 1962 and April 1963, when his "neutral civilian foreign aid worker" cover was compromised.

Project Pale Horse sidestepped the official U. S. Intelligence Coordination and Exploitation Program (ICEX), Lao, and GVN military chain of command, and had been running six years prior to the establishment of the "official" GVN Phoenix (Kế Hoạch Phụng Hoàng) program in Vietnam. The CIA-funded Black op project name (Pale Horse) was taken from the Bible, specifically the Book of Revelation 6:8 ("And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth").

Lee's CIA Pale Horse counter-terror ops were so effective against advisors of the Soviet KGB First Chief Directorate, the Pathet Lao, and Red Chinese military advisors that the KGB director at the time, Vladimir Semichastniy, placed a $50,000 bounty in gold bullion for Lee's capture or confirmed assassination (allegedly referring to him as a "Pale Horse's Ass"). The bounty was rescinded after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Lee reported to William E. Colby from 1962 to 1963, and to John Richardson in 1963, respective CIA Chiefs of Station, Saigon Vietnam, CIA Director of Central Intelligence John McCone, Lt. Gen. Wm P. Yarborough, Cmdr. Special Warfare Center, Ft. Bragg, N.C.

Later on, in the mid-to-late '60s, the program used Provincial Reconnaissance Units, called “PRUs”, consisting of North Vietnamese defectors, South Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Chinese Nung mercenaries. These units of about 118 men each were recruited, trained and paid by the CIA, with the help of Navy SEALs and Green Beret special forces. Ted Shackley gained control of the Phoenix Program in 1968 when he became the CIA's Saigon station chief.

By January 1970, there were as few as 450 US military advisors assisting the South Vietnamese government with the Phoenix program.

Measures of success and failure

The Phoenix Program resulted in both a refugee problem and greater discontent among the population. The Phoenix Program was dangerous, for it was being used against political opponents of the regime, whether they were Viet Cong or not. Phoenix also contributed substantially to corruption. Some local officials demanded payoffs with threats of arrests under the Phoenix Program, or released genuine Viet Cong for cash. Some military experts surmised that Phoenix was helping the Viet Cong more than hurting it. By throwing people into prison who were often only low-level operatives—sometimes people forced to cooperate with the VCI when they lived in Viet Cong territory—the government was alienating a large slice of the population.

The Phoenix Program is commonly referred to as an "assassination campaign," and has been criticized as an example of human rights atrocities alleged to have been committed by the CIA or other allied organizations. Indeed, faulty intelligence often led to the murder of innocent civilians, which contradicted the tenets of the Geneva Conventions. American statistics showed 19,534 members of alleged Viet Cong "neutralized" (a word used by the Phoenix Program) during 1969: 6,187 killed, 8,515 captured, and 4,832 defected to the South Vietnamese side. By 1971, William Colby put the number of killed at 20,857. South Vietnamese government figures were much higher with 40,994 dead [1]. The record by one team was held by Karl Sherrick and Gary Leroy of 23 people killed in one month. Their units accounted for more than 200 during their tours. However, fewer than 10% of the casualties attributed to Phoenix operations were actually targeted by program operatives, with most of the remaining casualties being assigned VCI status after they were killed. Efforts by provincial chiefs to meet quotas also led to manipulation of statistics by counting non-VCI arrests, arresting the same person multiple times, and attributing military casualties to the Phoenix program. It was widely recognized that statistical record keeping during the first few years of Phoenix program operations was subject to distortion, embellishment and was very inaccurate.

In many instances, rival Vietnamese would report their enemies as "VC" in order for US troops to kill them. (See Myra MacPherson, Long Time Passing, New York: Signet, 1984, p. 625.)

Despite the controversial nature of the Phoenix operations, certain limited levels of success were achieved. A Vietnamese communist vice-foreign minister, Nguyen Co Thach, remarked after the war that the Phung Huang program had weakened the Viet Cong, helping to assassinate or compromise as much as 95% of the communist cadres in some areas of South Vietnam. It is also significant that subsequent to Phoenix, internal security within South Vietnam presented less of a problem -- ultimately South Vietnam was overrun by a conventional North Vietnamese blitzkrieg, and not due to a great internal uprising. To the extent that Viet Cong operations were abandoned in favor of conventional military operations led by the North Vietnamese Army, Phoenix could be judged a success.

Quotes

"Operation Phoenix? Ask them [the army] about it, they know what it was, they'll tell you what it was. It was a black op - it was an assassination policy against suspected spies from North Viet Nam."

- Greg Friedman, military historian, in reference to the perceived lack of secrecy surrounding the program. Taken from an interview with Simon Demaine of the San Francisco Chronicle, in an analysis of the psychological effects of the war in 2004.

"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 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."

- Vincent Okamoto, combat officer (Lieutenant) in Vietnam in 1968, and recipient of Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest award conferred by the US Army. Wounded 3 times. He was the highest decorated Japanese American to survive the Vietnam War. He has served as president of the Japanese American Vietnam Veterans Memorial Committee. He has served as a Los Angeles Superior Court judge. He was also an intelligence liaison officer for the Phoenix Program for 2 months in 1968. Quote is from page 361 of the hardback 2003 first edition of the Penguin book "Patriots: the Vietnam War remembered from all sides" by Christian G. Appy. [2] [3]

See also

• General Nguyen Hop Doan of South Vietnam
• Sidney Gottlieb
• counter-insurgency
• Seymour Hollingsworth
• Commissar Order
• Death squad

References

Additional references

• Douglas Valentine, The Phoenix Program, 1990. [4]. Chapter 24 "Transgressions" online: [5]. Author permission further explained: [6]
• Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism., Newsweek, 19 June, 1972. [7]
• Don Luce, Hostages of War (Indochina Resource Center, 1973). [8]
• Seymour Hersh, Cover-Up, Random House, 1972. [9]
• Long Time Passing, by Myra MacPherson, Signet, 1984. [10]
• Then the Americans Came, by Martha Hess, Four Walls Eight Windows Press, 1996. [11]
• Deadly Deceits: My 25 years in the CIA, by Ralph McGehee, 1999. [12]
• Patriots: the Vietnam War remembered from all sides, by Christian G. Appy, Penguin, 2003. [13]

External links

• Documents from the Phoenix Program
• Senate Review of Phoenix Program
• CIA and Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, by Ralph McGehee, ex-CIA
• Counter-Revolutionary Violence - Bloodbaths in Fact and Propaganda, by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman
• Phoenix Program Bibliography
• Douglas Valentine articles online about the Phoenix Program
• "Focus on the Extrajudicial Killings in RP: Operation Phoenix's Long Shadow". By Joel Garduce. Bulatlat. Oct. 1-7, 2006. Republic of the Philippines (RP).