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The Phoenix Program: a Retrospective Assessment

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The Phoenix Program: a Retrospective Assessment THE PHOENIX PROGRAM: A RETROSPECTIVE ASSESSMENT A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Baylor University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts By Douglas J. Brooks Waco, Texas August, 1989 Copyright, 1989 by Douglas J. Brooks APPROVED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY: (signed) ____________________________ APPROVED BY THE THESIS COMMITTEE: (signed)____________________________ Director _____________________________ _____________________________ APPROVED BY THE GRADUATE COUNCIL: (signed)____________________________ Dean of the Graduate School DATE:____________________________ ABSTRACT The CIA designed and implemented the Phoenix program during the Vietnam War in order to coordinate the attack on the political and military leadership of the Viet Cong. The program was actually a small part of the whole pacification effort designed to eliminate support for the Viet Cong among the rural population in South Vietnam. The Phoenix program employed very few Americans or Vietnamese on a full-time basis. It consisted mostly of committees at every political level, from the hamlet to the national level, representing all South Vietnamese agencies, departments, and military organizations. The program, which lasted from 1967 to 1973, was part of the overall pacification effort, under CORDS, designed to win the rural countryside away from the Viet Cong guerillas. Initially, Phoenix planners intended to include the South Vietnamese as participants, with the idea of eventually giving them full control. Despite such intentions, the program remained American. The predecessors to the Phoenix program included, PT-4 and ICEX, both CIA programs designed to coordinate and plan attacks on the VCI. Whereas the earlier programs had been unabashedly American operations, the Phoenix program actually attempted to involve the South Vietnamese in the planning and operations. Throughout the Phoenix program's existence, the GVN displayed little interest or desire to control the program, and, in fact, American advisors to the program often complained about the lack of South Vietnamese support. While under American management, the Phoenix program acquired an unsavory reputation for assassination and ineffectiveness. It was a reputation that came in part from the secrecy that surrounded the program, especially in the United States, and in part from the CIA-sponsored Provincial Reconnaissance Units that often worked for the program. The PRUs were paramilitary groups of ex-Viet Cong, convicts, mercenaries, and draft dodgers trained and led by Americans, often Green Berets, and generally accepted to be among the best Vietnamese iv soldiers fighting for the GVN. They also had a tough reputation for torturing and murdering captives. Now, twenty years after the event, the CIA has yet to authorize the release of many Phoenix documents, making a comprehensive history of the program at this point in time impossible. One particular section of the program of which there is very little information is that of operations to infiltrate the VCI, though indications are that it may have been one of the most effective segments. The CIA relinquished control of the program to MACV in 1968, but despite many humanitarian and procedural improvements instituted in 1968-69, the program's sordid reputation remained. Available documents, mostly MACV files, reveal nothing in the way of assassination plots. Only a few eyewitnesses have come forward since the end of the war. The Phoenix program suffered from bad press, a lack of GVN support, and an American unwillingness to take the time or effort to train properly their Vietnamese counterparts. Supporters and detractors alike complained of the program's ineffectiveness. The primary indicators that the program was actually quite effective come from the much maligned statistics of the Southeast Asia Analysis Reports, and the Phoenix program's targets: the Viet Cong infrastructure themselves. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT . iv LIST OF TABLES . ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS . x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . xii CHAPTER I. Setting the Stage . 1 Background . 1 1954 Geneva Conference . 5 Ngo Dinh Diem . 6 The American Influence . 10 Diem's Fall and Thieu's Rise . 15 Pacification . 16 II. Phoenix Origins and Organization . 30 Pacification Efforts and the Viet Cong Infrastructure . 30 The VCI Background . 31 Early Covert Operations . 38 Provincial Reconnaissance Units . 41 ICEX . 43 The Question of Origin and Control . 46 ICEX/Phoenix Hatches . 50 Methods: In Theory and Practice . 54 Bureaucratic Structure . 56 Intelligence Operation and Coordination Centers . 58 Operations: The Official Design . 62 Americans in Phoenix . 65 Training and Personnel . 69 Agent Penetration of the VCI . 72 Conclusions . 74 vi III. Apprehension, Interrogation, Detention, and Sentencing . 75 The Legal Niceties of Phoenix . 75 The VCI ABC's . 87 Interrogation and Detention Centers . 90 Conclusions . 96 IV. Phoenix Effectiveness . 98 Phoenix Effectiveness: Self Assessment . 99 Phoenix Effectiveness: Advisor's Assessment . 112 Phoenix Effectiveness: The Viet Cong Assessment . 115 Phoenix Forces: A Failure in Implementation . 118 Psychological Operations . 124 Cost of Phoenix in Dollars . 132 Lack of GVN Support . 134 Conclusions . 137 V. Criticisms of Phoenix . 139 Reasons for Widespread Criticism of the Phoenix Program . 139 Provincial Reconnaissance Units: Counter-Terrorism? . 141 Terror, Assassination, and Indiscriminate Murder . 146 Quotas . 166 Misuse . 170 Conclusions . 173 VI. Conclusions . 175 The End of Phoenix . 175 What Was the Phoenix Program . 176 Bibliography . 180 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 1. VCI Estimated Total Strength . 37 2. VCI Neutralizations, 1968-70 . 103 viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS APT Armed Propaganda Team ARVN Army of the Republic of Vietnam CIA Central Intelligence Agency CORDS Civilian Office of Revolutionary (or Rural) Development COSVN Central Office for South Viet Nam CPHPO Central Phung Hoang Permanent Office CSD Combined Studies Detachment CTZ Combat Tactical Zone DIOCC District Intelligence Operation and Coordination Center GVN Government of Viet Nam HES Hamlet Evaluation Survey ICEX Intelligence Coordination and Exploitation for the attack on the Viet Cong Infrastructure IOCC Intelligence Operation and Coordination Center JGS Joint General Staff KIA Killed In Action MACV Military Assistance Command Vietnam MR Military Region NLF National Liberation Front NP National Police NPFF National Police Field Force NVA North Vietnamese Army ix OSA Office of the Special Assistant to the United States Ambassador OSS Office of Special Services PAAS Pacification Attitude Analysis Survey PF Popular Forces PIC Provincial Interrogation Center PIOCCProvincial Intelligence Operation and Coordination Center PRP People's Revolutionary Party PRU Provincial Reconnaissance Unit PSC Provincial Security Committee PW Prisoner of War RD Revolutionary (or Rural) Development RF Regional Forces SEAL Navy SEA Air Land team SOP Standard Operating Procedure SP Special Branch Police SVG South Vietnamese Government USAID United States Agency for International Development VC Viet Cong VCI Viet Cong Infrastructure VCINIS Viet Cong Infrastructure Neutralization Information System x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The creation of this epic paper required almost two years, travel and research in four states and the District of Columbia, and a cast of thousands. Of those thousands, the first person I should like to acknowledge is my thesis director, Dr. Thomas Charlton, whose patience, wisdom, forgiveness, patience, and above all patience, allowed me to finish this ogre. Second, I owe much to my vicious and bloodthirsty proof readers who shredded my drafts mercilessly, and on rare occasions even offered constructive criticism. In alphabetical order: Cathy Hunter, Gene Novikov, Tom Trice, and Chantal Worzala. I would like to offer special thanks to Ambassador William Colby, Col. Dennis Porter, and their cats, for their generosity and frankness in my interviews with them. Finally, I would like to offer special thanks to Dr. Stanley Campbell, whose willingness to gamble on a wandering Hoosier, brought me to Baylor University in the first place. xi CHAPTER I SETTING THE STAGE On 8 March 1965, the United States committed the first regular American ground troops to Vietnam. Two battalions of the U.S. Marine Corps and their equipment landed near Danang on the northern coast of South Vietnam. American troops remained in Vietnam for most of the next decade. Yet the Marines were not the first Americans to fight in Vietnam; Special Forces troops and military pilots had already been involved for several years. The significance of the Marines' commitment in 1965 was that it marked the commencement of a tragic policy that turned out to be difficult, if not almost impossible, to reverse in the years to come. An oft-repeated adage said that "America had never lost a war," and no president wanted to lose this one. Ultimately, winning this war was not as easy as many contemporary observers and even some later critics would make it seem. Background Twentieth-century American involvement in Vietnam originated during the Second World War, when the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Office of Special Services (OSS), first engaged in rescuing downed American pilots and sabotaging the Japanese military occupying the country. The OSS found that a Vietnamese nationalist movement known as the Vietminh consisted of individuals eager to help the Americans, possibly in hopes of earning American
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