The Mysterious Project Phoenix

ble. The mission's report says that a person arrested is taken before a military field court 'if the evidence and the testimony add up to a legal case.' But it notes that 'such legally admis- • •.:•.." sible evidence may be impossible to ob- the mysterious tain if most of the witnesses and the evidence are beyond the court's reach in enemy territory.' Project Phoenix "'If the case against the suspect is nevertheless conclusive, he is detained,' says the report. 'Under Vietnamese law, such a man may be detained by ERWIN KNOLL without judicial charge up to two years, and that detention period may be extended if the detainee's freedom would constitute a threat to the secu- A DOCUMENT filed with the U.S. nam. Emissaries from Kissinger's White rity of the nation.' " .L-1. District Court in Baltimore in be- House office have carried encouraging When Dudman filed his report last half of a young Army lieutenant seek- reports on Phoenix to Capitol Hill. July, he wrote that the Phoenix black- ing release from the service as a con- Despite the pervasiveness of the list of Vietcong suspects had been re- scientious objector. Phoenix operation—American "Phoe- fined "to eliminate mere rank-and-file An unusual press conference con- nix advisers" are assigned to the forty- and leave only the Vietcong leaders— ducted by the commandant of the four provinces, most of the 242 dis- members of the newly elected village Army's intelligence school. tricts, and all the major cities of South and hamlet 'liberation committees' and A startling speech delivered by a Vietnam—American news dispatches such officials as political, finance and self-styled "country lawyer" who visited have made only scant mention of the security chiefs in the shadow govern- Vietnam East summer. program. Two articles in The Wall ment." The new, refined list totaled These are among the fragments that Street Journal—in September, 1968, 70,000 names. are suddenly drawing attention to and March, 1969—indicated that Phoe- That American military advisers are Project Phoenix, a mysterious "advi- nix teams occasionally step outside the lending their good offices to a system sory program" jointly operated by the bounds of due process and conven- susceptible to such abuses as blackmail, U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence tional warfare to achieve their results. false arrest, and detention without trial Agency to help the Saigon govern- Reporting from Saigon last summer can hardly be expected to arouse mas- ment attack the Vietcong "infrastruc- on the "semipolice state" maintained sive indignation at this stage of the ture" in South Vietnam. by President Nguyen Van Thieu, sordid Vietnam adventure. But the Established in 1967, Project Phoenix Richard Dudman wrote in the St. most recent allegations about Project has been officially described—on those Louis Post-Dispatch: Phoenix raise a much larger question rare occasions when it has been offi- "Critics say the Phoenix system often —particularly in view of the disclo- cially described at all—as a scientific, is abused. Huong Ho, a member of sures about the massacre of Vietnam- computerized, intelligence operation the National Assembly from Kien ese civilians at Songmy. American designed to identify, isolate, capture, Phong Province, says police often pick officials, from President Nixon down, or convert important Vietcong agents. up someone on the street, order him have described Songmy as a "deplor- In one of the few public accounts of to denounce a wealthy citizen as a able but isolated incident." How iso- Phoenix issued by the American mis- Vietcong agent, arrest the rich man, lated and to what extent deplored? sion in Saigon, it was claimed a year and then release him on payment of Project Phoenix, it has been charged, ago that 8,600 blacklisted suspects had 25,000 or 50,000 piastres in ransom. is a concerted, deliberate program of been "captured, killed, or welcomed "Ngo Cong Duc, a deputy from torture and assassination. as defectors" in a nine-month peri- Vinh Binh Province in the Mekong od. More recently the Pentagon has Delta, says that malicious informants claimed a total "bag" of 30,000 Viet- and sometimes actual Vietcong agents cong suspects. supply names to the Phoenix blacklist, Among the strong supporters of getting around the Phoenix system of Project Phoenix in the Nixon Admin- cross-checks by reporting a person Francis T. Reitemeyer, twenty-four istration is Henry A. Kissinger, the through several different agencies. years old, of Clark, New Jersey, had a President's special assistant for national "U.S. officials contend that necessary degree in classical languages and phi- security affairs, who is known to be- flexibility makes some abuses inevita- losophy from Seton Hall University lieve the program can play a crucial and was studying for the priesthood role in destroying the Vietcong oppo- at Immaculate Conception Seminary sition during the period of American ERWIN KNOLL is the Washington editor when he enlisted in the Army in 1967. military withdrawals from South Viet- of The Progressive. He was commissioned a second lieu- February, 1970 19 1 tenant, and was assigned from October 18, 1968, to December 6, 1968, to the "Project Phoenix, Army Intelligence School at Fort Hola- bird, Maryland, where he was trained it has been charged, is a concerted, deliberate to be a "Phoenix adviser." When he program of torture and received orders for Vietnam, he ap- plied for discharge as a conscientious assassination." objector and retained a Baltimore ACLU attorney, William H. Zinman, to carry his appeal through the courts. On February 14, 1969, Zinman filed in Reitemeyer's behalf a "proffer," or to other Vietcong sympathizers, to dis- tor as 'one who no longer cared offer to prove certain facts in connec- close their identity and turn themselves whether we win or lose, as long as we tion with the appeal. The proffer in to the adviser and the mercenaries. have a war to fight.' stated in part: "Another field technique designed to "The petitioner was officially in- glean information from a captured structed that the purpose of the 'Phoe- "Your petitioner was informed that Vietcong soldier, who was wounded nix Program' to which he was assigned he would be one of many Army offi- and bleeding, was to promise medical was not aimed primarily at the ene- cers assigned as an adviser whose func- assistance only after the soldier dis- my's military forces, but was essentially tion it was to supervise and to closed the information sought by the designed to eliminate civilians, political pay with funds from an undisclosed interrogators. After the interrogation source eighteen mercenaries (probably enemies, and 'South Vietcong sympa- had terminated, and the mercenaries thizers.' Your petitioner was further in- Chinese, none of whom would be of- and advisers were satisfied that no fur- ficers or enlisted men of the U.S. mil- formed that the program sought to ac- ther information could be obtained complish, through capture, intimida- itary) who would be explicitly directed from the prisoner, he was left to die tion, elimination, and assassination, by him and other advisers to find, cap- in the middle of the village, still bleed- what the United States up to this time ture, and/or kill as many Vietcong and ing and without any medical atten- was unable to accomplish through the Vietcong sympathizers within a given tion whatsoever. On the following conventional use of military power.... number of small villages as was possi- morning, when his screams for med- "Your petitioner was warned that ble under the circumstances. ical attention reminded the interroga- loss of the war and/or his personal "Vietcong sympathizers were meant tors of his presence, he was unsuccess- capture by the enemy could subject to include any male or female civilians fully poisoned and finally killed by him personally to trial and punish- of any age in a position of authority decapitation with a rusty bayonet. The ment as a war criminal under the or influence in the village who were American advisers, who were having precedents established by the Nurem- politically loyal or simply in agree- breakfast forty feet away, acquiesced in berg Trials as well as other precedents ment with the Vietcong or their ob- these actions, and the death of this such as the Geneva Convention. jectives. The petitioner was officially soldier was officially reported 'shot "Your petitioner sincerely urges that advised by the lecturing U.S. Army while trying to escape.' this kind of activity was never envi- officers, who actually recounted from "Another field instructor suggested sioned by him, whether concretely or their own experiences in the field, that the advisers would not always be abstractly, as a function and purpose that the petitioner as an American ad- engaged in such macabre ventures, and of the United States Army, before and viser might actually be required to cited an incident on the 'lighter side.' even after he entered the service. .." maintain a 'kill quota' of fifty bodies The instructor recounted the occasion Lieutenant Reitemeyer was never a month. when a group of advisers together called to testify on the allegations in "Your petitioner was further in- with South Vietnamese soldiers sur- his proffer. His case—and a parallel formed at this Intelligence School that rounded a small pool where a number appeal for conscientious objector sta- he was authorized to adopt any tech- of Vietcong soldiers were attempting to tus from another student at the Army nique or employ any means through hide themselves by submerging under Intelligence School, LieUtenant Mi- his mercenaries, which was calculated water, and breathing through reeds. chael J.

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