Phoenix Program
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The Phoenix Program, known as Kế Hoạch Phụng Hoàng (a word related to fenghuang, the Chinese phoenix) in Vietnamese, 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 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. While the Phoenix operations were originated by the CIA, they were eventually turned over to the U.S. Army and Republic of 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 U.S. military advisors assisting. Gary Leroy and Karl Sherrick were two of the most effective advisors having 63 kills in the month of March. 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.
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Background
In South Vietnam during the 1960s and early 70s there was a secret communist 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 non-volunteer 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 through terror. 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 in such terrorist incidents, 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.
This communist 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 terrorism, publicized efforts to protect the people from communist injustices and atrocities and called upon all citizens to assist by providing information.
Since the VCI was a sophisticated and experienced enemy, "political warfare" experts were needed to combat it. From 1965 to 1968, the coordinated intelligence effort (reliant in large part on CIA activities) against the VCI was chaired by the Commander, United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (COMUSMACV) (GEN Westmoreland) in a joint civilian/military advisory activity entitled ?Intelligence Coordination and Exploitation (ICEX)? with the specific mission of assisting and supporting the GVN 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 enemy organization, identified the individuals who made it up, and conducted operations against them. As the ideal result, members of this enemy apparatus were forcibly captured, charged with crimes, tried and imprisoned (and some executed) or turned themselves in as "ralliers" to the anti-communist cause. However, in actuality many were killed in fire fights or seized and summarily killed. By 1969, the Phoenix Program was no longer a secret, having drawn the unwanted attention of the media, and 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, i.e. 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.
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.
Operations
The Phoenix Program was an attempt to isolate and target for "neutralization" 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 counter insurgency 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 U. S. 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 quietly "open for business" 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, Book of Revelation, specifically, The Apocalypse of John, 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 the capture or confirmed assassination of John L. Lee (allegedly referring to him as a "Zhopa"). 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 60's, Provincial Reconnaissance Units, called “PRUs”, consisting of North Vietnamese defectors, South Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Chinese Nung mercenaries were operating. 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.
Administrators of the program instituted quotas to be met by provincial offices, in an attempt to increase participation and effectiveness of the Phung Hoang program. In late 1969, the quota was 1800 per province.
By January 1970, there were as few as 450 U.S. military advisors assisting the South Vietnamese government with the Phoenix program.
Measures of success and failure
It was a program which 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 in 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 was an "assassination campaign" and has received much criticism as an example of human rights atrocities committed by the CIA and the organizations it supports. Indeed, faulty intelligence often led to the murder of innocent civilians, in contravention to the Geneva Conventions. American statistics showed 19,534 members of the Viet Cong “neutralized” during 1969 — 6,187 murdered, 8,515 captured, and 4,832 defected to the South Vietnamese side. South Vietnamese government figures were much higher. The record by one team was held by Karl Sherrick and Gary Leroy of 63 kills in one month. They accounted for more than 200 during their tour. 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.
Due to ineffective intelligence and minimal commitment, the Phoenix Program was ultimately a failure; its lesson is in the difficulties of dealing with an insurgent population during wartime. It is not clear, however, on what basis that judgment is made. 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.
DOD figures put the total number killed under Phoenix at over 1800 per month.
Quotes
- "I never knew in the course of all those operations any detainee to live through his interrogation. They all died. There was never any reasonable establishment of the fact that any one of those individuals was, in fact, cooperating with the VC, but they all died and the majority were either tortured to death or things like thrown out of helicopters."..."It [Phoenix] became a sterile depersonalized murder program... Equal to Nazi atrocities, the horrors of "Phoenix" must be studied to be believed."
- – Former "Phoenix" officer Bart Osborne, testifying before Congress in 1971
- "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 U.S. Army. Wounded 3 times. 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 book "Patriots: the Vietnam War remembered from all sides."
- "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.
See also
References
- Douglas Valentine, The Phoenix Program (1990)
- Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism., Newsweek, 19 June 1972