Phoenix Program

by Douglas Valentine

  Years later they met again in Gia Dinh Province, at which point McGehee describes Colby as “a harried, self-important, distracted bureaucrat” who “began calling for statistics. ‘How many VC killed this month? How many captured? How many firefights?’ Each unit chief answered. Colby checked the replies against the figures in his books, and questioned each chief about discrepancies or outstanding figures.” All this was a waste of time, McGehee contends. “Here the U.S. was trying to fight an enemy it only slightly acknowledged. Why? What had happened to all the idealism, all the rules of getting and reporting intelligence? Why did the agency blind itself while pretending to look for intelligence? Why did we insist on killing people instead of talking to them? How long would this insanity go on?”21

  In his defense Colby said to me, “We were getting all the statistics, and if you could get them on the computer, you could play them back and forth a little better, and see things you couldn’t see otherwise. It was really quite interesting. I never really believed the numbers as absolute, but they helped you think about the problems. We would use it for control of how local people were doing,” he explained, “how if one province reported they had captured a lot of category Cs, but no As, and another province said it captured 15 category As, first you’d check if there were any truth to the second story, and if it is true, you know the second province is doing better then the first one. You don’t believe the numbers off-hand, you use them as a basis for questions.”22

  Numbers as a basis for questions were a management tool, but they were also a way of manipulating facts. And William Colby is a scion of the gray area in between. In his autobiography, Honorable Men, Colby explains how his father converted to Catholicism, and how Colby himself, when he entered Princeton, was excluded from the in crowd as a result. An articulate man trained as a lawyer and spy, but with only one foot in the door, Colby embraced “the art of the possible” and cultivated his “grey man” mentality to achieve success in the CIA bureaucracy, as well as to dissolve the lines between right and wrong, enabling him to give Phoenix a clean bill of health. “I have no qualms about accepting responsibility for it,” he writes.23

  So it was in Vietnam, that just as criticism of Phoenix was building within the program, the press began turning its attention toward the subject. The calamity called Tet had subsided, the elections were over, and the Paris Peace Talks were about to start. The Communist shadow government was emerging into the light of day, and U.S. efforts to deal with it became the pressing concern.

  Glimpses of Phoenix began appearing in print. On June 29, 1968, in his “Letter from Saigon” column in The New Yorker, Robert Shaplen identified the program by its Vietnamese name, Phung Hoang, calling it the “all-seeing bird.” Shaplen rehashes the thrust of the program, citing statistics and quoting Robert Komer as saying “some 5,000 arrests have been made of alleged members of the [VC] command structure.” According to Shaplen, the program’s major weakness was “a tendency on the part of the Vietnamese to build up a massive dossier on a suspect until he gets wind of what is happening and disappears.” Shaplen notes that “district and village chiefs are sometimes loath to furnish or act on intelligence on the grounds that the war may soon be over.”

  Indeed, the possibility of a negotiated settlement raised the specter of those in the VCI—the people Phoenix was arresting and killing—gaining legal status. And that scenario sent chills running up and down every war manager’s spine. But the transition from supporter to critic of American conduct of the war did not come easily to reporters used to acting as cheerleaders. Reasons for withdrawing support had yet to be uncovered. However, sensing momentum in that direction, the information managers began to search for scapegoats. And who better to blame than the Vietnamese themselves? GVN shortcomings, which were previously swept under the carpet, were suddenly being aired. Suddenly the Vietnamese were corrupt and incompetent, and that, not any fault on the part of the Americans, explained why the insurgency was growing.

  Moreover, war crimes in 1968 still went unreported. The VC were “faceless,” an abstract statistic whose scope was negotiated by the CIA and MACV. Wall Street Journal reporter Peter Kann, in a September 1968 article on Phoenix, called the VCI “the invisible foe.” For Kann, they were an insidious “underground” enemy who could only be eliminated “at night” in their homes.

  Kann employed similar imagery in March 1969 in an article titled “The Hidden War: Elite Phoenix Forces Hunt Vietcong Chiefs in Isolated Villages.” Here Phoenix is characterized as a “systematic, sophisticated application of force.” The PRU and their U.S. advisers are “elite,” while far from having any popular support, the VCI members are outcasts in “isolated villages,” far removed from cities and civilization.

  On January 6, 1969, The New York Times reporter Drummond Ayres gave Phoenix a favorable review, saying that “more than 15,000 of the 80,000 VC political agents thought to be in South Vietnam are said to have been captured or killed.” He also expresses the belief that “the general course of the war … now appears to favor the Government” and predicts that Phoenix would “achieve much greater success as the center’s files grow.”

  Despite the good reviews, the surfacing of Phoenix in the press sent the publicity-shy CIA running for cover. Under National Security Council Directive 10/2, the CIA is authorized to undertake secret political and paramilitary operations. As Ralph Johnson writes, “CIA was empowered to develop and test programs through its covert assets. If these programs were successful, and if approved, and if they supported U.S. policy objectives, then they would be turned over to appropriate overt U.S. agencies.” And so, in December 1968, the newly arrived CIA station chief informed DEPCORDS William Colby “that the Agency had fulfilled its function. [Phoenix] was now functional and CIA proposed to withdraw all its management and overall responsibility.”24

  Making this pivotal decision was Ted Shackley. A veteran CIA officer with experience in Germany and in Miami running operations against Cuba, Shackley had just completed a two-year tour as station chief in Vientiane, Laos, where he had acquired a detailed understanding of the situation in South Vietnam, primarily through meetings in third countries with John Hart and Lou Lapham, at which regional issues were discussed, strategy was coordinated, and briefings of deep-cover agents were held. “The big item,” according to Lapham, “was the NVA coming down the Ho Chi Minh Trail.”25

  Tall, thin, and pale, Shackley, in an interview conducted in his Arlington office, concurred. “It was the same war in the Laotian panhandle,” he said, “although Laos, in addition, had the basic political problem of coalition.”26

  No stranger to the types of programs the CIA was running in South Vietnam, Shackley reviewed them all upon arriving in Saigon in November. “It became clear to me then,” he told me, “that the pacification programs had come of age …that the agency contribution was no longer required. So my original proposal was to see about getting others to manage these…programs, to free up CIA resources to improve the quality of the intelligence product, to penetrate the Vietcong, and the NVA supporting them, and to concentrate more against the North and the VC and the NVA in Cambodia.

  “So negotiations were undertaken,” Shackley continued, “and an agreement was reached to phase out the CIA. Pacification programs were to go to the GVN, and CORDS was to provide the transition. We took a mission approach. Each program was approached specifically, including Phoenix, and a certain level of top management was provided for coordination. Static Census Grievance was taken apart; some functions went to Revolutionary Development, some to the Hamlet Evaluation System, and some were dropped. By 1969, static Census Grievance was out of business. RD and Territorial Security were merged and Phil Potter and Rod Landreth saw that the GVN took over the PRU program.” And Phoenix, too, was discarded.

  On December 14, 1968, MACV notified DEPCORDS William Colby of its intention to assume “responsibility for intelligence matters as they pertain to the VC infrastructure.”27 By June 1969 the trans
fer of Phoenix from CIA to MACV-J2 was complete.

  In early December, Evan Parker recalled, “I became the author of memos back and forth from Colby to Shackley putting myself out of business.” Parker, however, was not pleased with the reorganization, his main objection being that “the military staff officers were not ready to take over.”28

  “This was a difficult assignment for the military,” Shackley concurred, because there “had to be liaison with the Special Branch. You had to have a manager to coordinate intelligence problems. For instance, leads came out of the PICs and had to be coordinated with the highest levels of CIA.”

  To facilitate the process, Colby incorporated the Phoenix program as a division within CORDS, but with a senior CIA staff officer as director, functioning as the American counterpart to the secretary general of the Central Phung Hoang Permanent Office. In this way the CIA could, when necessary, direct Phoenix advisers and exercise jurisdiction over prisoners and penetration agents spun out of the program. Chairmanship of Phoenix committees at region and province became the responsibility, respectively, of the corps DEPCORDS and the province senior adviser. CIA region and province officers became deputy chairmen and ostensibly supported their new military managers with CIA intelligence.29

  “The idea,” according to Shackley, “was that Evan Parker, and three or four others, would slowly peel back people as the military marched in.” Thereafter the role of the Phoenix director was to meet “once or twice a week with the [Vietnamese] to iron out problems. Was there a province chief not willing to cooperate with the PIC? Was he funneling people to the Military Security Service, rather than to the Special Branch? Maybe there was overcrowding in a PIC that province or region couldn’t resolve. What to do? Well, the Phoenix director would go to the secretary-general and cite specific cases. There might be a knowledgeable source in a PIC who needed to be brought to Saigon. Were the line managers looking at the dossiers? Yes or no?”

  Despite the fact that the Phoenix director, a senior CIA staff officer, had cognizance over the PIC program, “Phoenix,” insisted Shackley, “had nothing to do with intelligence operations. It was completely separate from Special Branch trying to penetrate the Vietcong. Any guy who could be used as a penetration agent was spun out of Phoenix.” That was the job in 1969 of special unit analysts under the management of CIA officer George Weisz. In this way, Phoenix evolved into a massive screening operation, with its parent organization, the Special Branch, having, in the words of Ralph Johnson, the “intelligence coordination mission” of “keying important VCI political leaders and activists so as not to clog up the system with volumes of low level VCI cadre or front members.”30

  And so, in June 1969, the CIA receded into the dark corners of CORDS. Evan Parker, having brought the Phoenix program to fruition, was appointed deputy chief of the CIA’s Special Operations Division and was replaced as Phoenix director by veteran CIA officer John Mason. Described by Shackley as “a highly decorated World War Two Army colonel who served with the agency mostly in Europe (and with George French in Turkey),” Mason was a personal friend of General Creighton Abrams. “He followed Abrams’s tanks through Europe with an infantry battalion,” said Jim Ward, who, as the CIA’s Vietnam desk officer in 1969, asked Mason to take the job. At first he refused, but eventually Mason succumbed to Ward’s supplications—to his eternal regret.

  “Mason caught all the Phoenix flak.” Ward sighed. “The last time I spoke with him, the only thing he said to me was ‘You bastard.’”

  * Drugs were also smuggled on CIA/SOG black flights, which were exempt from customs checks. Likewise, SOG personnel carried military assistance adviser “Get out of Jail Free” cards, exempting them from search and seizure by their adversaries in the Military Police and Criminal Investigation Division.

  CHAPTER 19

  Psyops

  The fabric of South Vietnamese society, always loosely knit, began to unravel in 1969. As prospects for a clear-cut military victory for either side slipped away, psychological operations became the weapon of choice in what was an increasingly political war. Both sides played the psywar game. Its only rule: Post your own score.

  The insurgents scored the first points in June 1969, when they formed the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) to represent them in South Vietnam and at the negotiating table in Paris. The PRG was immediately recognized by thirteen Communist bloc and ten nonaligned nations—mostly Arab. Support was expressed as well by Scandinavian, African, and Latin American countries. One month later COSVN issued Resolution 9 directing its officers “to prepare political cadre to insure a capability to govern in anticipation of a coalition government in South Vietnam.”1 Liberation Committees were made subordinate to the PRG and were renamed Revolutionary Committees. At the village and hamlet level the insurgency was reinvigorated.

  Back at CIA headquarters in Washington, it was recognized that: “There were sufficient communist forces to keep the war going, and progress depended on the morale and determination of the communists.”2 Morale, however, is intangible, so CIA propagandists cited irrefutable statistical evidence as proof that the VCI was losing, not gaining—as was the reality3—support in the villages. In April 1969 HES reports indicated that more than three quarters of all Vietnamese were living in “secure” villages.

  The purported success was attributed to VCI manpower shortages caused by aerial and artillery bombardment, defoliation campaigns, forced relocations, and mass arrests. The VCI was said to be collecting less tax money as a result of Phoenix and, out of desperation, to be using as cadre children who were too young to be issued IDs. But “the bulk of manpower shortages,” the Phoenix 1969 End of Year Report claimed, “were caused by deserters who rallied to the GVN.” In Vinh Long and Sa Dec provinces, it said, “manpower shortages at district, village and hamlet levels ranged from 45 to 100 percent during 1969. Unable to cope with the GVN accelerated pacification campaign, VCI members by late November 1969 had fled to areas of sparse population and even Cambodia where they could exert little influence over the population.”4

  From the language of the Phoenix report, one could easily think that the few VCI members who had not defected were hiding in Cambodia. But the author of “The Truth About Phoenix,” whose area of operations included Sa Dec and Vinh Long provinces, claims that most Chieu Hois simply regurgitated the American line in order to win amnesty, make a quick visit to their families, enjoy a few home-cooked meals, then return to the fray, fat and rested. Legitimate Chieu Hois, An writes, were pariahs who were not accepted back in their villages, while other Chieu Hois were trained by the VC to infiltrate the program and become spies.5

  In any event, from 1967 onwards, all “rallied” VCI members were included in Phoenix neutralization statistics, and by 1969 more than a hundred thousand defectors had been processed through fifty-one Chieu Hoi centers. The Chieu Hoi program was managed from 1966 until March 1969 by Ogden Williams, then turned over to Eugene P. Bable, a career CIA officer who had served with Ralph Johnson in the Flying Tigers.

  Evan Parker stated that Chieu Hoi offered more satisfaction than Phoenix, and “Chieu Hoi,” said Jim Ward, “was a great program. Well done.” Ward explained that most Chieu Hoi advisers were from the U.S. Information Service, although some were State Department or military officers. “But they wouldn’t have more than one American adviser in a province and,” Ward added, “it was usually the Vietnamese operating at district level.”6

  Upon arriving at the Chieu Hoi center, the defector was “interviewed” and, if he had information on the VCI, was sent to the PIC; if he had tactical information, he was sent to military interrogators. Next came political indoctrination, lasting from forty to sixty days, depending on the individual. “They had a formal course,” said Ward. “They were shown movies and given lectures on democracy.” Upon graduation each was given an ID card, a meal, some money, and a chance to repent. Political indoctrination was handled by defectors who said they had been well treated by the Americans a
nd had decided it was better to live for a free Vietnam than to die for the totalitarian North Vietnamese. “Chieu Hoi had lots of guys who had been with the enemy before,” Ward continued, “who knew how to talk to these people and would persuade them to join the Territorial Forces or the PRU.” Others joined armed propaganda teams, which went back into VC territory to contact Vietcong families and recruit more Vietcong defectors.

  “The great thing about the Chieu Hoi program,” Ward noted, “is that we didn’t have to put people in jails or process them through the judicial system, which was already overcrowded. You could talk to the Chieu Hois when you brought them in—talk to them about what the government was doing for the people.

  “They’d say, ‘But it’s a crooked government.’

  “You’d say, ‘Wait a minute. The government’s providing seeds for rice. This enables us to grow three to four times as much rice in the Delta as in the past. Now that’s good.’

  “The guy’d say, ‘I didn’t know that.’ All they’d hear from the Communists were the contradictions they’d devise, if they didn’t already exist. But now he was getting the picture from our side. And a lot of them would flip-flop because of it. Now some guys would come in, Chieu Hoi, spend time with their families, then go back out in the field again. That happened, but not to the extent that you might think. I’d say less than ten percent.”

  Despite his praise for the Chieu Hoi program, Jim Ward said that “Americans should have been targeted only against the North Vietnamese and left the South Vietnamese forces to handle the insurgency,” even though such a strategy would have precluded Phoenix. However, having made the mistake of military intervention, Americans looked for psychological ploys, other than an appeal to nationalism, to win people over to the GVN. High on the list were bounty programs. The Phoenix 1969 End of Year Report cites as an example Kien Phong Province, where the Phung Hoang Committee printed and had distributed a wanted poster featuring photographs of eight members of the Cao Lanh City sapper unit. “While a RD Cadreman was tacking up a poster he saw one of the members passing by,” the report says. “He called the police who arrested the suspect. Two other members were later arrested. Three were induced to rally claiming they were rendered ineffective having their names and faces known.”7