A Descripton of Phoenix
The Phoenix Program was a military, intelligence program designed by the United States CIA and coordinated with South Vietnam(from 1967-1972 although parts of it functioned until 1975).In 1967 all pacification efforts had come under the authority of the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support, or CORDS after the Phoenix Program was developed by Robert "Blowtorch" W. Komer. CORDS controlled different programs within it, including the creation of a peasant militia which by 1971 was ruffly 500,000.
As early as 1964 the CIA used counter terror teams to seek out and destroy Vietcong. In 1967, as part of CORDS, the Intelligence Coordination and Exploitation Program (ICEX) was created to gather information on the VC. It was renamed Phoenix later in the same year. The South Vietnamese side of the program was called Hoàng, after a mythical bird that appeared as a sign of prosperity and luck. The 1968 Tet offensive showed the importance of the Viet Cong infrastructure, and the Communist-led military setback made it easier for the new program to be implemented. By 1970 there were 704 U.S. Phoenix advisers throughout South Vietnam.
The chief aspect of the program was the collection of intelligence information that was used to find targets that were identified so that the local government militia and police forces, rather than the military could neutralize the target. Often the military did not do the neutralizing. According to MACV Directive 381-41, the intent of Phoenix was to attack the VCI with a "rifle shot rather than a shotgun approach to target key political leaders, command/control elements and activists in the VCI."
Between 1968 and 1972 Phoenix neutralized 81,740 NLF members. By 1970, Communist plans repeatedly emphasized attacking the government’s pacification program and specifically targeted Phoenix officials because of the effects of it against VC.Several North Vietnamese officials have made statements about the effectiveness of Phoenix.
The Phoenix Program is sometimes seen 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, including U.S. Military Intelligence. There was eventually a series of U.S. Congressional hearings. 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.
The primary intent was to capture, not to kill, in order to gain further information. However, decentralized operations did lead to abuse.
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.(Myra MacPherson, Long Time Passing)
The Phoenix Program in 1969 called for "neutralizing" 1800 VC a month. Aproximatly 1/3 of VC targeted for arrest had been summarily killed. Security committees were established in provincial interrogation centers to determine fate of VC suspects, outside of judicial controls.
According to www.bulatlat.com "Clearly, Phoenix's chest-deep gore flouted international humanitarian law like the fundamental Geneva Conventions of War. Against the backdrop of rampant trafficking of heroin and other illegal narcotics by the US covert action establishment, the US' use of horrific biochemical weapons as Agent Orange, the rampant corruption of both the US and puppet South Vietnamese governments, the illegal expansion of the Vietnam War to neighboring Laos and Cambodia, and the severe demoralization among US soldiers that led to widespread killings of middle-level US military officers called "fraggings", Phoenix loomed as the centerpiece terrorist act in the desperate US-directed criminal war of genocide against the Vietnamese people."
Of the officers involed many became legendary CIA covert action operatives who cut their teeth in the program, among them William Colby, Theodore Shackley, Evan Parker Jr., John Mason, and John Tilton. William Colby would later become CIA director.
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the memory hole
