K Hoch Phng Hong The Phoenix Program From

Kế Hoạch Phụng Hoàng The Phoenix Program From 1971 to 2006 One Participant’s Viewpoint About The Program And Its Potential Application Today

Red Platoon, Dagger Company, 4 th Bn, 39 th Inf (Hardcore Recondo), 1 st Brigade, 9 th Inf Div, at Fire Support Base “Danger, ” 1969 Plt Ldr: 2 nd Lt Hughes Tiger Scout: Bui van Bon

Captain Hughes with PRU Member, near Xuan Loc and the Michelin Rubber Plantation, Long Khanh Province, RVN, 1971

Captain Hughes, Phung Hoang / Province S-2 Advisor, Advisory Team 49 about to board an Air America helicopter to go into War Zone D to assist a PRU element; the Provincial Police Field Force Advisor is holding the M-16 (April 1972)

Douglas Valentine author of The Phoenix Program • “>>> Created by the CIA in Saigon in 1967, Phoenix was a program aimed at "neutralizing"—through assassination, kidnapping, and systematic torture—the civilian infrastructure that supported the Viet Cong insurgency in South Vietnam. It was a terrifying "final solution" that violated the Geneva Conventions and traditional American ideas of human morality. While researching the Phoenix Program for my book on the subject, I conducted over a hundred interviews and collected boxes full of documents from individuals, as well as from the State Department and Department of Defense. The most important documents provided by any one individual came from retired CIA officer Nelson Brickham, the man most responsibile for the creation of the Phoenix Program. • Luckily for history, Brickham kept copies of the documents he wrote while with the CIA; otherwise, there would be no documentary evidence of how Phoenix was actually created. During the evacuation of Saigon in April 1975, the CIA destroyed most of the documents it had about its assassination program, and none of what it kept at Langley headquarters can be obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. This is no accident, for Phoenix is the model for the equally terrifying US homeland security aparatus. ” Douglas Valentine is an author, researcher, investigator, consultant, critic, and poet. His published works to date include The Hotel Tacloban, a highly praised account of life and death in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, and The Phoenix Program, which Professor Alfred W. Mc. Coy describes as "the definitive account" of the CIA's most secret and deadly covert operation of the Vietnam War.

Attack Against The VCI • "Attack" is important because it defines the VCI in its first sentence: "The VC organizational hierarchy, the management structure, as opposed to guerrillas for example, VC troops, and even, in many cases, VC terrorists. " It adds to this definition all communist party members, front officers, and suicide bombers (sappers). Brickham likened the "attack on the VCI" to going after the Mafia, because the Mafia attracts bad people and uses selective terror and extortion to achieve its goals. ” Douglas Valentine

The Initial Condition • • • The Viet Cong Infrastructure (VCI) operated sub-rosa to support the National Liberation Front (NLF) and the Viet Cong (VC). The VCI constituted the so-called “shadow government” that the NLF put in place to parallel the government of the Republic of South Vietnam. They also engaged in acts of espionage, sabotage, assassination and intimidation, and in today’s terms they “sponsored” acts of terrorism. They cloaked this activity in a political wrapping. We and our Allies could not allow the VCI to act freely. Who could? In order to “discover” the VCI members and their activities…programs (including the Phụng Hoàng (Phoenix) program) were begun to penetrate the VCI and then to neutralize them. The discovery and neutralization of the VCI was carried out in the context of a military theater of operations and with the support and participation of the South Vietnamese government. Contextually it was a “police” and “provincial reconnaissance unit (PRU)” operation. The activities of the program were dependent on a legal framework and a process and set of procedures that were known and understood by those who participated. The program was effective in reducing the capabilities of the VCI.

VC Flag Leaflet

To the North Vietnamese communists, super-spy Pham Xuan An was a patriot and a hero. To many South Vietnamese, he was a traitor. Following a long battle with emphysema, An died on Sept. 18 at the age of 79 in a military hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon. An was given full honors at a funeral on Sept. 23. He had been granted the title of Hero of the People’s Armed Forces and retired with the rank of major general. Pham Xuan An with his birdcages in Ho Chi Minh City, 2005 Photo: Dan Southerland © RFA

Execution of a Viet Cong Guerrilla 1968

1968 • • Giap's gamble had another side effect. When the Tet Offensive began, many US officials believed that the NLF had offered the Americans a golden opportunity by fighting a pitched battle where it could be defeated in open combat. In effect, the NLF was "leading with its chin" and the massive losses it suffered bear this out. The VC was not broken by the Tet Offensive but it was severely crippled by it and, from then on, the North took on the main burden of the war. Further fighting in 1968 and the increasing activity of the Phoenix Program further decimated the NLF's ranks and the role of the North grew even larger. The northern and southern parts of Vietnam had ancient cultural and social differences, and while the communist cadres at the center of the NLF had managed largely to suppress these natural antagonisms, there still were basic differences in goals and approach. The NLF had gone into the Tet Offensive in the hope of giving a death-blow to the Saigon Government and, if it couldn't capture power directly, it could at least gain a coalition leading to ultimate authority. The NLF's dream vanished in the rubble of South Vietnam's cities, and it would be Hanoi that conquered Saigon. Taken from the Vietnam Experience Ninteen Sixty-Eight. John Colvin author of "Giap Volcano Under Snow" This article appeared in the Vietnam Experience Boston Publishing Company

My Pathway • Training • Fort Bragg, Fort Holabird, Fort Bragg • Mechanisms at work • Results

Today’s Challenge • Today we are beset by a group of opponents who collectively are called “terrorists, ” and who engage in acts of terrorism – to attack the unwarned unprotected civil population and the physical and economic infrastructure of targets. • The US is the primary target. • Terrorists depend entirely on secrecy and surprise to achieve their goals. • They often ascribe their actions to a political-religious and philosophical context. • They can inflict effects that we can not afford to merely absorb or even tolerate. Who can? • Thus we are engaged in a kind of conflict now that requires consideration of counter-activities in order to prevent, preclude, interdict and stop preparations and attacks. • We have succeeded in neutralizing terrorist leaders and reducing the level of terrorist activity around the world – with some notable exceptions. • We have suffered at their hands. We are at War.

Quoted from AQ Manual on US Intelligence In The Name of Allah, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful Praise be to Allah and Peace and Prayers to the Last Prophet Dedication To the pious and the hidden… who are not known when they come… and who are not missed when they disappear… those whom their God will answer when they pray to Him… To all the eyes that are vigilant late at night to bring victory to this religion…

The Premise • To combat any individual or group [who can – through secrecy and surprise – and the application of indiscriminate weapons, achieve goals that we cannot absorb or tolerate], we must have a response. • In the current legal context – acts of terrorism constitute various levels and kinds of “crime. ” • The idea that we can somehow reason with and change the mind of our opponents is not viable without the threat of incarceration or death in the bargain. History and bitter experience tell us this. • Thus today we need and have effectively adopted some of the basic elements of the Phoenix Program – albeit in a different time and context. • We remain at War.

Conversation with Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr. March 6, 1996 (Barnes) I have been reading Bui Tin's memoirs. He was a North Vietnamese colonel; you may have met him at one time. He writes, "Nor did we learn from the military failures of the Tet Offensive, 1968. Instead, although we had lost the element of surprise, we went on to mount further major attacks in May and September '68 and suffered even heavier losses. This too has continued to be a subject of controversy in Hanoi. Our side also suffered seriously from the social pacification plans dreamed up by the Americans, such as Operation Phoenix, and the Chieu Hoi campaign, which was designed to induce our troops and supporters to defect. Yet, it has to be acknowledged that in the North, although we were constantly counterattacked and suffered heavy destruction from 5 million tons of bombs, we stood surprisingly firm in contending with the bombers of the Rolling Thunder Operations. "* I'm interested in your comments on the sentence about not having learned our lessons. What are the lessons of Vietnam? I guess the overwhelming lesson, which is not of particular value, is, Never get involved in a civil war in a former French colony in Indochina. (Barnes) That's rather precise. I don't see what the utility is, but that's certainly true. Because we lacked objectives, we had no accurate measurement. You know, Morley Safer, who is certainly not a pro-military guy, went back to Vietnam and interviewed the former heads of the National Liberation Front. He found them even more disgruntled than the Americans. They say they've been sold out by the North, they've been had, they've been deceived all the way along. One of the comments is that the Phoenix program was the most destructive program that we had ever mounted. Yet in this country it was seen as an assassination scheme and generally denigrated by the government.

Thank You for your time and attention!