Phoenix Program
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The Phoenix Program () was designed and initially coordinated by the United States
Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...
(CIA) during the
Vietnam War The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...
, involving the American, South Vietnamese militaries, and a small amount of
special forces Special forces or special operations forces (SOF) are military units trained to conduct special operations. NATO has defined special operations as "military activities conducted by specially designated, organized, selected, trained and equip ...
operatives from the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam. In 1970, CIA responsibility was phased out, and the program was put under the authority of the
Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support The Civil Operations and Rural Development Support (CORDS) was a pacification program of the governments of South Vietnam and the United States during the Vietnam War. The program was created on 9 May 1967, and included military and civilian compon ...
(CORDS).Lewy, Guenter (1978), ''America in Vietnam'', New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 280-281 The program, which lasted from 1968 to 1972, was designed to identify and destroy the
Viet Cong The Viet Cong (VC) was an epithet and umbrella term to refer to the communist-driven armed movement and united front organization in South Vietnam. It was formally organized as and led by the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, and ...
(VC) via infiltration,
assassination Assassination is the willful killing, by a sudden, secret, or planned attack, of a personespecially if prominent or important. It may be prompted by political, ideological, religious, financial, or military motives. Assassinations are orde ...
,
torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons including corporal punishment, punishment, forced confession, extracting a confession, interrogational torture, interrogation for information, or intimid ...
, capture,
counter-terrorism Counterterrorism (alternatively spelled: counter-terrorism), also known as anti-terrorism, relates to the practices, military tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, law enforcement, businesses, and intelligence agencies use to co ...
, and
interrogation Interrogation (also called questioning) is interviewing as commonly employed by law enforcement officers, military personnel, intelligence agencies, organized crime syndicates, and terrorist organizations with the goal of eliciting useful informa ...
. The CIA described it as "a set of programs that sought to attack and destroy the political infrastructure of the Viet Cong." The Phoenix Program was premised on the idea that North Vietnamese infiltration had required local support within noncombat civilian populations, which were referred to as the "VC infrastructure" and "political branch" that had purportedly coordinated the insurgency. Throughout the program, Phoenix "neutralized" 81,740 people suspected of VC membership, of whom 26,369 were killed, and the rest surrendered or were captured. Of those killed 87% were attributed to conventional military operations by South Vietnamese and American forces, while the remaining 13% were attributed to Phoenix Program operatives. The Phoenix Program was heavily criticized on various grounds, including the number of neutral civilians killed, the nature of the program (which critics have labelled as a "civilian assassination program,") the use of torture and other coercive methods, and the program being exploited for personal politics. Nevertheless, the program was very successful at suppressing VC political and revolutionary activities. Public disclosure of the program led to significant criticism, including hearings by the
US Congress The United States Congress is the legislature, legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, including a Lower house, lower body, the United States House of Representatives, ...
, and the CIA was pressured into shutting it down. A similar program, Plan F-6, continued under the government of
South Vietnam South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam (RVN; , VNCH), was a country in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975. It first garnered Diplomatic recognition, international recognition in 1949 as the State of Vietnam within the ...
.


Background

Shortly after the 1954 Geneva Conference and the adoption of the Geneva Accords, the government of
North Vietnam North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; ; VNDCCH), was a country in Southeast Asia from 1945 to 1976, with sovereignty fully recognized in 1954 Geneva Conference, 1954. A member of the communist Eastern Bloc, it o ...
organized a force of several thousand to mobilize support for the
communists Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, d ...
in the upcoming elections. When it became clear that the elections would not take place, these forces became the seeds of what would eventually become the
Viet Cong The Viet Cong (VC) was an epithet and umbrella term to refer to the communist-driven armed movement and united front organization in South Vietnam. It was formally organized as and led by the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, and ...
, a North Vietnamese insurgency whose goal was unification of Vietnam under the control of the North.Lieutenant Colonel Ken Tovo
''FROM THE ASHES OF THE PHOENIX: LESSONS FOR CONTEMPORARY COUNTERINSURGENCY OPERATIONS''
. United States Army War College
While
counterinsurgency Counterinsurgency (COIN, or NATO spelling counter-insurgency) is "the totality of actions aimed at defeating irregular forces". The Oxford English Dictionary defines counterinsurgency as any "military or political action taken against the ac ...
efforts had been ongoing since the first days of US military involvement in Vietnam, they had been unsuccessful with dealing with either the armed VC or the VC's civilian infrastructure (VCI) which swelled to between 80,000 and 150,000 members by the mid 1960's. Mark Moyar. ''Phoenix and the Birds of Prey : The CIA's Secret Campaign to Destroy the Viet Cong''. United States Naval Institute Press. 2007 The VCI, unlike the armed component of the VC, was tasked with support activities including recruiting,
political indoctrination Indoctrination is the process of inculcating (teaching by repeated instruction) a person or people into an ideology, often avoiding critical analysis. It can refer to a general process of socialization. The term often implies forms of brainwashi ...
, psychological operations, intelligence collection, and logistical support.United States Senate
policy and prospects, 1970: hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate''
Author: United States. Congress (91st, 2nd session : 1970). Senate
The VCI rapidly set up shadow governments in rural South Vietnam by replacing local leadership in small rural hamlets loyal to the Saigon government with communist cadres. The VCI chose small rural villages because they lacked close supervision of the Saigon government or the South Vietnamese ArmyDale Andrade. ''Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix Program and the Vietnam War''. Lexington Books. 1990. VCI tactics for establishing local communist control began by identifying towns and villages with strategic importance to either the VC or North Vietnamese
People's Army of Vietnam The People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), officially the Vietnam People's Army (VPA; , , ), also recognized as the Vietnamese Army (), the People's Army () or colloquially the Troops ( ), is the national Military, military force of the Vietnam, S ...
and local populations with communist sympathies with the Hanoi government putting a great deal of emphasis on the activities and success of the VCI. After a community was identified, the VCI would threaten local leadership with reprisals if they refused to cooperate or kidnap local leaders and send them to reeducation camps in North Vietnam. Local leaders who continued to refuse to cooperate or threatened to contact the Saigon government were murdered along with their families. After VCI agents took control of an area it would be used to quarter and resupply VC guerrillas, supplying intelligence on US and South Vietnamese military movements, providing taxes to VCI cadres, and conscripting locals into the VC.


History

By April 1965, the CIA Counter-Terror Program supported 140 teams of between three and 12 men each. Aimed exclusively at the VCI, the teams claimed a kill ratio in excess of eight to one. On 9 May 1967 all pacification efforts by the United States came under the authority of the
Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support The Civil Operations and Rural Development Support (CORDS) was a pacification program of the governments of South Vietnam and the United States during the Vietnam War. The program was created on 9 May 1967, and included military and civilian compon ...
(CORDS). In June 1967, as part of CORDS, the Intelligence Coordination and Exploitation Program (ICEX) was created, from a plan drafted by Nelson Brickham. The purpose of the organization centered on gathering and coordinating information on the VC. In December 1967 the South Vietnamese Prime Minister signed a decree establishing ''Phụng Hoàng'', (named after a mythical bird) to coordinate the numerous South Vietnamese entities involved in the anti-VCI campaign. The 1968
Tet Offensive The Tet Offensive was a major escalation and one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War. The Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) launched a surprise attack on 30 January 1968 against the forces of ...
demonstrated the importance of the VCI. In July 1968 South Vietnamese President
Nguyễn Văn Thiệu Nguyễn Văn Thiệu (; 5 April 1923 – 29 September 2001) was a South Vietnam, South Vietnamese military officer and politician who was the Leaders of South Vietnam, president of South Vietnam from 1967 to 1975. He was a general in the Repub ...
signed a decree implementing ''Phụng Hoàng''. The major two components of the program were Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs) and regional interrogation centers. PRUs would kill or capture suspected VC members, as well as civilians who were thought to have information on VC activities. Many of these people were taken to interrogation centers and were tortured in an attempt to gain intelligence on VC activities in the area. The information extracted at the centers was given to military commanders, who would use it to task the PRU with further capture and assassination missions. The program's effectiveness was measured in the number of VC members who were "neutralized", a euphemism meaning imprisoned, persuaded to defect, or killed. The interrogation centers and PRUs were originally developed by the CIA's
Saigon Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) ('','' TP.HCM; ), commonly known as Saigon (; ), is the most populous city in Vietnam with a population of around 14 million in 2025. The city's geography is defined by rivers and canals, of which the largest is Saigo ...
station chief Peer de Silva. DeSilva was a proponent of a military strategy known as counter-terrorism, which encompasses military tactics and techniques that government, military, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies use to combat or prevent terrorist activities, and that it should be applied strategically to "enemy civilians" in order to reduce civilian support for the VC. The PRUs were designed with this in mind, and began targeting suspected VC members in 1964. 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. Officially, Phoenix operations continued until December 1972, although certain aspects continued until the
fall of Saigon The fall of Saigon, known in Vietnam as Reunification Day (), was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by North Vietnam on 30 April 1975. As part of the 1975 spring offensive, this decisive event led to the collapse of the So ...
in 1975.


Agencies and individuals involved in the program

*
Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...
* United States special operations forces * U.S. Army intelligence collection units from the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV—the joint-service command that provided command and control for all U.S. advisory and assistance efforts in Vietnam) * US Navy SEAL Detachment Bravo * USMC, 1st Force Reconnaissance Company stationed near Da Nang *
Special forces Special forces or special operations forces (SOF) are military units trained to conduct special operations. NATO has defined special operations as "military activities conducted by specially designated, organized, selected, trained and equip ...
operatives from the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV) * Republic of Vietnam National Police Field Force


Operations

The chief aspect of the Phoenix Program was the collection of intelligence information. VC members would then be 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. According to journalist Douglas Valentine, "Central to Phoenix is the fact that it targeted civilians, not soldiers". The Phoenix Program took place under special laws that allowed the arrest and prosecution of suspected
communists Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, d ...
. 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 an individual targeted for neutralization. If a suspected VC member was found guilty, they could be held in prison for two years, with renewable two-year sentences totaling up to six years. According to MACV Directive 381-41, the intent of Phoenix was to attack the VC with a "rifle shot rather than a shotgun approach to target key political leaders, command/control elements and activists in the VCI iet Cong Infrastructure" The VCI was known by the communists as the Revolutionary Infrastructure. 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. Intelligence derived from interrogations was often used to carry out "
search and destroy Seek and destroy (also known as search and destroy, or S&D) is a military strategy which consists of inserting infantry forces into hostile territory and directing them to search and then attack enemy targets before immediately withdrawing. Fi ...
" missions aimed at finding and killing VC members. 87% of those killed during the Phoenix Program were killed in conventional military operations. Many of those killed were only identified as members of the VCI following military engagements, which were often started by the VC. Between January 1970 and March 1971, 94% of those killed as a result of the program were killed during military operations (9,827 out of 10,443 VCI killed).


Torture

According to Valentine, methods of torture that were utilized at the interrogation centers included:
Rape, gang rape, rape using eels, snakes, or hard objects, and rape followed by murder; electrical 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 a 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; and the use of police dogs to maul prisoners.
Military intelligence officer K. Barton Osborn reports that he witnessed "the use of the insertion of the 6-inch
dowel The dowel is a cylindrical shape made of wood, plastic, or metal. In its original manufactured form, a dowel is long and called a ''dowel rod'', which are often cut into shorter ''dowel pins''. Dowels are commonly used as structural reinforceme ...
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 the women's vaginas and men's testicles [to] shock them into submission." Osborn's claims have been refuted by author Gary Kulik, who states that Osborn made exaggerated, contradictory and false claims and that his colleagues stated that he liked making "fantastic statements" and that he "frequently made exaggerated remarks in order to attract attention to himself." Osborn served with the
United States Marine Corps The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines or simply the Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is responsible for conducting expeditionar ...
in I Corps in 1967–1968 before the Phoenix Program was implemented. Torture was carried out by South Vietnamese forces with the CIA and special forces playing a supervisory role.


Targeted killings

Phoenix operations often aimed to assassinate targets or kill them through other means. PRU units often anticipated resistance in disputed areas, and often operated on a shoot-first basis.
Lieutenant A lieutenant ( , ; abbreviated Lt., Lt, LT, Lieut and similar) is a Junior officer, junior commissioned officer rank in the armed forces of many nations, as well as fire services, emergency medical services, Security agency, security services ...
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: William Colby denied that the program was an assassination program stating: "To call it a program of murder is nonsense ... They were of more value to us alive than dead, and therefore, the object was to get them alive." His instructions to field officers stated "Our training emphasizes the desirability of obtaining these target individuals alive and of using intelligent and lawful methods of interrogation to obtain the truth of what they know about other aspects of the VCI ... .S. personnelare specifically not authorized to engage in assassinations or other violations of the rules of land warfare."


Strategic and operational effect

Between 1968 and 1972, Phoenix officially "neutralized" (meaning imprisoned, persuaded to defect, or killed) 81,740 people suspected of VC membership, of whom 26,369 were killed, while
Seymour Hersh Seymour Myron Hersh (born April 8, 1937) is an American investigative journalist and political writer. He gained recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer ...
wrote that South Vietnamese official statistics estimated that 41,000 were killed. A significant number of VC were killed, and between 1969 and 1971, the program was quite successful in destroying VC infrastructure in many important areas. 87 percent of those killed in the program were attributed to conventional military operations by South Vietnamese and American forces; the remainder were killed by Phoenix Program operatives. By 1970, communist plans repeatedly emphasized attacking the government's pacification program and specifically targeted Phoenix officials. The VC imposed assassination quotas. In 1970, for example, communist officials near
Da Nang Da Nang or DanangSee also Danang Dragons (, ) is the fifth-largest city in Vietnam by municipal population. It lies on the coast of the Western Pacific Ocean of Vietnam at the mouth of the Hàn River, and is one of Vietnam's most important p ...
in northern South Vietnam instructed their assassins to "kill 1,400 persons" deemed to be government "tyrant and to "annihilate" anyone involved with the pacification program. Several North Vietnamese officials have made statements about the effectiveness of Phoenix. According to William Colby, "in the years since 1975, I have heard several references to North and South Vietnamese communists who state that, in their mind, the toughest period that they faced from 1960 to 1975 was the period from 1968 to '72 when the Phoenix Program was at work." The CIA said that through Phoenix they were able to learn the identity and structure of the VCI in every province. According to Stuart A. Herrington: "Regardless of how effective the Phoenix Program was or wasn't, area by area, the communists thought it was very effective. They saw it as a significant threat to the viability of the revolution because, to the extent that you could ... carve out the shadow government, their means of control over the civilian population was dealt a death blow. And that's why, when the war was over, the North Vietnamese reserved "special treatment" for those who had worked in the Phoenix Program. They considered it a mortal threat to the revolution."


Public response and legal proceedings

The Phoenix Program was not generally known during most of the time it was operational to either the American public or American officials in Washington. In 1970, author Frances FitzGerald made several arguments to then-U.S. National Security Advisor
Henry Kissinger Henry Alfred Kissinger (May 27, 1923 – November 29, 2023) was an American diplomat and political scientist who served as the 56th United States secretary of state from 1973 to 1977 and the 7th National Security Advisor (United States), natio ...
against the program, which she alludes to in Fire in the Lake. One of the first people to criticize Phoenix publicly was Ed Murphy, a peace activist and former military intelligence soldier, in 1970.''Famous Assassinations in World History: An Encyclopedia''; Michael Newton; ABC-CLIO, 2014; p. 427''Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates''; Congress, Volume 117, Part 4; pp. 4240–4249; U.S.
Government Printing Office The United States Government Publishing Office (USGPO or GPO), formerly the United States Government Printing Office, is an agency of the Legislature, legislative branch of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal gove ...
, 1971; (Original from Indiana University)
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", 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. Former CIA analyst Samuel A. Adams, in an interview with
CBC News CBC News is the division of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the news gathering and production of news programs on the corporation's English-language operations, namely CBC Television, CBC Radio, CBC News Network, and CBC ...
, talked about the program as basically an assassination program that also included torture. They would also kill people by throwing them out of helicopters to threaten and intimidate those they wanted to interrogate. While acknowledging that "No one can prove the null hypothesis that no prisoner was ever thrown from a helicopter," Gary Kulik states that "no such story has ever been corroborated" and that the noise inside a helicopter would make conducting an interrogation impossible. According to Nick Turse, abuses were common. In many instances, rival Vietnamese would report their enemies as "VC" in order to get U.S. troops to kill them. Myra MacPherson, ''Long Time Passing'', New York: Signet, 1984, p. 625 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 VC to release certain suspects. After Phoenix Program abuses began receiving negative publicity, the program was officially shut down, although it continued under the name ''Plan F-6'' with the government of South Vietnam in control.


See also

* Edward Lansdale * Nguyễn Hợp Đoàn *
Operation Condor Operation Condor (; ) was a campaign of political repression by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America, involving intelligence operations, coups, and assassinations of left-wing sympathizers in South America which fo ...
* Russell Tribunal * Special Activities Division * Tran Ngoc Chau *
United States war crimes This article contains a chronological list of incidents in the military history of the United States in which war crimes occurred, including the summary execution of captured enemy combatants, the prisoner abuse, mistreatment of prisoners duri ...
* Vietnam War Crimes Working Group * Winter Soldier Investigation


Notes


Citations


References

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Excerpt from Chapter 24 "Transgressions" online

Author permission further explained

* For copies, se
Cornell
an
Southern Illinois University
. *


Further reading

* *
Complete text
at Noam Chomsky's Web site. * * * Reprinted as ''Stalking the Vietcong: Inside Operation Phoenix: A Personal Account''. * * * * * * *


External links

* iarchive:cia-phoenix, Documents and Taped Interviews from the Phoenix Program at the Internet Archive
Vietnam: A Television History; Interview with Carl F. Bernard, 1981
on the Vietnam War, including the effectiveness of the Phoenix Program.
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