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Phoenix Program

Coordinates: 38°57′06″N 77°08′48″W / 38.95167°N 77.14667°W / 38.95167; -77.14667
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For other uses of "Operation Phoenix", see Operation Phoenix (disambiguation).

The Phoenix Program (Vietnamese: Chiến dịch Phụng Hoàng, a word related to fenghuang, the Chinese phoenix) was a 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.

The Program was designed to identify and "neutralize" (via infiltration, capture, terrorism, torture, and assassination) the civilian infrastructure supporting the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF or Viet Cong) insurgency. The major two components of the program were Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs) and regional interrogation centers. PRUs would kill suspected VC, and terrorize and capture civilians who were thought to have information on VC activities. These civilians were then taken to the interrogation centers where they were tortured in an attempt to gain intelligence on VC activities in the area.[1] Few of the prisoners survived -- most of them were tortured to death, and those that survived the torture sessions were generally killed afterwards.[2] The information extracted at the torture centers was then given to military commanders, who would use it to task the PRU with further capture and assassination missions.[1]

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 NLF supporters, of whom 26,369 were killed.[3]

History

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 unconvential 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.[1] 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'".[4]

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.[5]

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.[5]

Officially, Phoenix operations continued until December 1972, although certain aspects continued until the fall of Saigon in 1975.[6]

Operations

The chief aspect of the Phoenix Program was the collection of intelligence information.[citation needed] NLF members would then be neutralized (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.[5]

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.[5]

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."

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.[6][7][8]

Torture

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."[9]

Military intelligence office K. Milton Osborne 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."[10]

Targeted 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:[11][12]

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.[5] 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."[13]

"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]

Abuses were common.[6][14][15] In many instances, rival Vietnamese would report their enemies as "VC" in order to get U.S. troops to kill them.[16] 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 NLF to release certain suspects.[5]

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.[17]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Otterman, Michael (2007). American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond. Melbourne University Publishing. p. 62. ISBN 9780522853339.
  2. ^ 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.
  3. ^ McCoy, Alfred W. (2006). A question of torture: CIA interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror. Macmillan. p. 68. ISBN 9780805080414.
  4. ^ McCoy, Alfred W. (2006). A question of torture: CIA interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror. Macmillan. p. 63. ISBN 9780805080414.
  5. ^ a b c d e f http://usacac.army.mil/CAC/milreview/English/MarApr06/Andrade-Willbanks.pdf
  6. ^ a b c http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/army-usawc/ksil241.pdf
  7. ^ Phoenix Program 1969 End of Year Report. A-8.
  8. ^ Dale Andrade, Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix Program and the Vietnam War, pg 53 (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1990)
  9. ^ Blakely, Ruth (2009). State terrorism and neoliberalism: the North in the South. Taylor & Francis. p. 50. ISBN 9780415462402.
  10. ^ Vietnam: the (last) war the U.S. lost. Haymarket Books. 2008. p. 164. ISBN 9781931859493. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)
  11. ^ Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides by Christian G. Appy, Penguin Books, 2003, page 361. [1]
  12. ^ "County’s Newest Judge Sworn In, Promises to Protect Rights" By Kenneth Ofgang. April 30, 2002. Metropolitan News-Enterprise.
  13. ^ “Interview with William Egan Colby, 1981.” 07/16/1981. WGBH Media Library & Archives. Retrieved 9 November 2010.
  14. ^ Nick Turse, Kill Anything That Moves : U.S. War Crimes And Atrocities In Vietnam, 1965-1973, a doctoral dissertation, Columbia University 2005
  15. ^ 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
  16. ^ Myra MacPherson, Long Time Passing, New York: Signet, 1984, p. 625
  17. ^ The Washington connection and Third World fascism. South End Press. 1979. p. 428. ISBN 9780896080904. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)

Further reading

  • Andrade, Dale, Ashes to Ashes.
  • Cook, John L. The Advisor.
  • Herrington, Stuart, Stalking the Viet Cong.
  • Moyar, Mark, Phoenix and the Birds of Prey.
  • Douglas Valentine, The Phoenix Program, 1990. [2]. Chapter 24 "Transgressions" online: [3]. Author permission further explained: [4]
  • Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism., Newsweek, 19 June 1972. [5]
  • Don Luce, Hostages of War (Indochina Resource Center, 1973). [6]
  • Seymour Hersh, Cover-Up, Random House, 1972. [7]
  • Long Time Passing, by Myra MacPherson, Signet, 1984. [8]
  • Then the Americans Came, by Martha Hess, Four Walls Eight Windows Press, 1996. [9]
  • Deadly Deceits: My 25 years in the CIA, by Ralph McGehee, 1999. [10]
  • Patriots: the Vietnam War remembered from all sides, by Christian G. Appy, Penguin, 2003. [11]

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

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