Phoenix Program

by Douglas Valentine

  Always inextricably linked, the Phoenix and PRU programs were simultaneously brought under military review in 1969. On October 20, 1969, in a secret memo to Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, Army Secretary Stanley Resor referred to “the social and moral costs and the desirability of a selective attack” and expressed “concern over these programs.”13 Later that day Laird conveyed his concern over “lack of progress in the Phoenix/Phung Hoang Program” to General Earle Weaver, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.14 One month later Laird, referring to the My Lai massacre and the Green Beret murder case, informed Wheeler of his “growing anxiety over the PRU [sic] program in view of recent events concerning U.S. military conduct in South Vietnam.”15

  In response to Defense Secretary Laird’s concerns about the Phoenix program, MACV Commander Abrams assured Washington that “Statistically [sic] the program has made significant progress in recent months.” Abrams recounted the “reforms” cited on the preceding pages but then offered a candid and somewhat ominous appraisal, saying, “[I]t is clear to me and to the commanders in the field that the program does not yet have the degree of sophistication and depth necessary to combat the highly developed and long experienced VC infrastructure (VCI) in South Vietnam.” Abrams noted that Ambassador Bunker had agreed to talk to President Thieu about Phoenix, “especially with respect to improving GVN local official attitudes.” Abrams closed by promising “a separate report … on the PRU.”16

  At this point the Pentagon had three elements interested in Phoenix: The Joint Chiefs were involved through SACSA, the Defense Department was involved through its office of International Security Assistance (ISA), and MACV was involved through CORDS.

  For its part, SACSA was not in any chain of command but served the Joint Chiefs by bringing together representatives from the State Department, CIA, U.S. Information Agency, Agency for International Development, and the Department of Defense. Broad policies came down to SACSA from the White House through the National Security Council, while specific ideas regarding psywar and counterinsurgency came up from MACV or the individual services. SACSA assigned staff members to present recommendations for consideration by the Joint Chiefs. When the chiefs reached a decision on how a policy was to be implemented, the service responsible for implementing that policy was directed to provide manpower, materiel, and money. The Army Intelligence Corps had responsibility for over Phoenix.

  SACSA itself was divided into three parts: for special operations in South Vietnam; for special operations elsewhere; and for Revolutionary Development programs in Vietnam, including Phoenix. MACV reported data on Phoenix to SACSA only when solicited. SACSA’s Revolutionary Development component did studies and drafted papers on Phoenix for the Joint Chiefs’ signature.

  From the inception of Phoenix until January 1969, Major General William DuPuy served as SACSA. A former CIA deputy division chief, DuPuy met regularly with State Department officer Phil Habib and CIA Far East Division chief William Colby to coordinate unconventional warfare policy in South Vietnam. DuPuy was replaced by Major General John Freund, commander of the 199th Infantry Brigade while it supported Cong Tac IV. Freund had little clout with the Joint Chiefs and was fired after six months. Replacing him was the former SOG commander Brigadier General Donald Blackburn, under whose management SACSA had little involvement in Phoenix.

  The Defense Department’s office of International Security Affairs (ISA) was, by comparison, more deeply involved with setting Phoenix policy. According to its charter, ISA “provides supervision in areas of security assistance, Military Assistance Advisory Groups and Missions, and the negotiating and monitoring of agreements with foreign governments.” Insofar as Phoenix was a security assistance program funded by the military through CORDS—which ISA authorized in May 1967—ISA had overall supervision of the program.

  Called the Pentagon’s State Department by Robert Komer, ISA coordinated State and Defense department policy on Vietnam. ISA representatives sat on the State Department’s Ad Hoc Psyops Committee, and ISA representatives, along with CIA officers Jack Horgan and Tom Donohue, sat on the State Department’s Vietnamization Task Force, which, through the National Security Council, determined how to turn the war, including Phoenix, over to the Vietnamese.

  Within ISA, policy regarding Vietnamization was coordinated by the Vietnam Task Force (VNTF). Created in mid-1969, the VNTF was headed by Major General George Blanchard until October 1970, by Major General Fred Karhohs till May 1972, and by Brigadier General David Ott till the cease-fire. Each VNTF chief in turn reported to ISA chief Warren Nutter’s deputy for East Asian and Pacific affairs, Dennis Doolin, and Doolin’s assistant, Tom Constant. It was at the VNTF that Phoenix policies were coordinated between Saigon and the concerned parties in Washington.

  So it came to pass that in November 1969 the VNTF was saddled with the task of bringing into line with “USAID budgets and the law,” as one VNTF coordinator put it, a program that had been conceived by the CIA without any regard for legalities, and to do it without treading on the CIA’s ability to conduct covert operations. It was a ticklish job that required squaring the hard reality of political warfare in Vietnam with the fluctuating political situation in Washington. The major effects were to bring the military into an adulterous relationship with the Special Branch and to set the State Department on a collision course with international law.

  The Vietnam Task Force’s assistant for concepts and strategies became the staff officer responsible for Phoenix. A Marine lieutenant colonel standing over six feet tall and weighing over two hundred pounds, he was a tough Korean War veteran with a resume that included employment with the CIA and the State Department as well as with the military. From 1964 to 1967 he prepared military officers for civil operations service in Vietnam, and from late 1967 to early 1969 he was a member of CORDS, serving as John Vann’s deputy for plans and programs in III Corps. Jack, as he has been dubbed, preferred to remain anonymous when we met at his home in 1987.

  Jack was at the center of the Phoenix drama as it was acted out in Saigon and Washington, and according to him, the VNTF was “Laird’s baby; it was his locus.”17 Jack often briefed the defense secretary and prepared “hundreds” of memos for his signature; he wrote papers for and briefed the ISA director Warren Nutter; he coordinated on a daily basis with members of the National Security Council, the Vietnam Working Group, the Special Studies Group, the Vietnamization Task Group (over which the VNTF “had cognizance”), and Tom Donohue at SAVA. On matters affecting the Joint Chiefs, Jack coordinated with its representative, Colonel Paul Kelly—later commandant of the Marine Corps. Jack’s contact at SACSA was Colonel Ray Singer, and he worked with members of Congress investigating various facets of the Vietnam War. All in all, Jack was the man in the middle. He is an experienced military theorist, and his recollections and assessment of the Phoenix program are especially incisive and well worth noting.

  Jack adhered to Robert Thompson’s theory that in order to succeed, a counterinsurgency requires a coordinated military-police-intelligence attack against the insurgent’s political leadership. But, Jack contended, although the theory is valid, Thompson’s extrapolation from Malaya to Vietnam was doomed to fail, for whereas the ethnic Chinese leading the insurgency in Malaya were visibly different from the Malayan people, those in the VCI were indistinguishable from other Vietnamese and impossible to track by foreigner advisers. What’s more, said Jack, “the Brits were shrewd enough to offer large rewards … to informers. But no Vietnamese was going to turn in Uncle Ho for fifty bucks.”*

  Jack cited this misuse of resources as a major flaw in America’s counterinsurgency policy in Vietnam. “Komer was trying to solve problems through Aid-in-Kind,” he explained. “Komer would evaluate people on how many piasters they gave away. He did what corporate managers do; he set goals … which were higher than people could achieve. But these were managerial-type solutions, a repeat of World War Two, and this was a political war. And the way to win hearts and minds was through se
curity.”

  In order to establish security, Jack said, “You don’t need to get each individual VCI; you just need to neutralize their organization. For example, the presence of a terrorist unit confers influence, so the idea is to prevent any accommodation. As John Vann explained, it’s not enough to agree not to fight. That means you can still sell guns and medicine to enemy, like the Filipino group did in Tay Ninh. That is an active accommodation. The people had to have a dual commitment. They had to reject the VC and support the GVN. Many would support GVN, but not betray VC, and that was the problem.”

  Even if the Vietnamese had not identified with the VCI, and even if American resources had been properly used, Thompson’s three-pronged attack on the VCI was doomed to fail, explained Jack, because the CIA did not report to CORDS on highly sensitive matters, like tracking high-level penetrations. Phoenix could have been effective only if the CIA had brought its CIO, PRU, and Special Branch assets to bear. But when the CIA relinquished control of the program in 1969, it took those assets—which were the only effective tools against the VCI—with it. In order to protect its political intelligence operations, the CIA never shared its sources with the military officers or Public Safety advisers assigned to Phoenix—unless, of course, those people had been suborned.* In this way the CIA kicked out from under Phoenix one of the three legs it stood upon. After June 1969 the agency conducted its own unilateral operations against the VCI, apart from Phoenix, through the PRU in rural areas and through the Special Branch in the cities. MACV and the Office of Public Safety in Saigon complained to their headquarters in Washington, making reform of the Special Branch and the PRU the central Phoenix-related issues, but these were areas over which the Defense and State departments had no influence.

  After mid-1969 MACV tried desperately to obtain access to Special Branch intelligence in the DIOCCs. But, as Jack explained, Special Branch worked at the province level and above, primarily in urban areas, and avoided the rural areas where most DIOCCs were located. Nor did the Special Branch desire to share sources with its rival, the MSS, forcing the CIA into greater dependency on the PRU for its rural operations. Having been excluded by the CIA, military advisers to Phoenix relied totally on their ARVN counterparts, with a corresponding emphasis on tactical military rather than political operations.

  There were rare instances when a CIA province officer would send the PRU down to a DIOCC to assist the Phoenix adviser. Other times the PRU fed “washed-out” bodies into the PICs. On the other side of the coin, the Special Branch was usually chasing dissidents, not the VCI. A study by Robert Thompson on behalf of the National Security Council revealed the Special Branch to be undertrained, understaffed, suffering from bad morale, and racked by corruption. Jack put it this way: “Whereas the average cop on the street would take fifty piasters as a bribe, when the Special Branch got involved, the price went up.” He added, “There was good reason to believe that the VC had penetrated the inner circle of the Special Branch. This is why Colby requested that two FBI agents be sent to Saigon to set up a counterintelligence operation.”

  Knowing that the PRU and Special Branch were fractured beyond repair but that problems within them would remain hidden under layers of CIA security and that CIA officers would continue to mount their own operations apart from Phoenix, the State and Defense departments were compelled to seek other solutions. The question became whether—in the absence of intelligence officers—soldiers or policemen were better suited to mount anti-infrastructure operations.

  “What you needed,” Jack suggested, “was to be flexible in order to conform to Hamlet Evaluation System ratings; you needed police forces in secure areas, and the military in areas controlled by the enemy. But generally, in guerrilla warfare it’s more military than police, and so that’s where the emphasis should fall.” Nevertheless, Jack explained, this flexible approach, applied to Phoenix after 1969, was slow to develop and basically ineffective. “In the beginning of the Phoenix program,” he said, “the Army and Marines had a surplus of armor and artillery officers, who were assigned to the program but had no knowledge of running intelligence operations. We were sending out the third team against the first team. Then, when they began staffing the DIOCCs and PIOCCs with military intelligence officers, it became clear that their training was inadequate for the job. Six weeks is not enough time to train a Special Branch officer.

  “So it became clear that what they needed was experienced police officers, and in 1970 the police through USAID began playing a larger role. But there were defects on this side, too. They should have had seasoned civilians coming into AID, but instead they got all the losers in that one. The civilians coming to AID were running away from bad marriages and bad careers. Many were alcoholics; they’d get a Vietnamese girl and enjoy the cheap living. These people had a good war.” But they had little success against the infrastructure.

  Jack said he believed that military policemen were the answer, and on his advice, on a trial basis, Colonel Albert Escola was appointed the Phoenix region coordinator in IV Corps. Now corporate secretary of Bechtel, Escola had received a degree in police administration from Michigan State in 1957 and was known as a protege of General Abrams’s. For “improving procedures against the VCI,” Escola was awarded the Legion of Merit in 1970 and a few years later was promoted to major general—rewards never bestowed upon Doug Dillard.

  In any event, Phoenix as an organization proved far less than the sum of its parts. Moreover, by 1969 concerns about its concept had moved from the boardroom into the courtroom, where Phoenix was coming under attack as an assassination program. Suddenly its problems were legal and moral, not organizational and procedural.

  Jack said, “Colby pushed Khiem to get Phoenix legitimized so it would have a constitutional basis in Vietnamese law, similar to the FBI or the CIA. Colby tried to make Phoenix legitimate internal security—that to be a member of the Communist party is illegal. This is the nail upon which Phoenix is hung: If you’re a Communist, you’re breaking the law. Then Phoenix goes out and gets these guys.”

  Of course, Phoenix had been going out and getting those guys for fifteen years by the time 1970 rolled around. The effect of those fifteen years of illicit covert action, on both Vietnamese and Americans, is the next subject.

  * Jack suggested that a point system—ten points for a COSVN cadre down to one point for a messenger boy—with a monetary equivalent would have resulted in a truly qualitative attack.

  * According to Michael McCann, Saigon Public Safety director from July 1969 until April 1972, his biggest Phoenix problem was that the CIA used the Public Safety program as a cover for its case officers, bringing all Public Safety advisers under suspicions.18 Likewise, said Fred Dick, chief of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in Vietnam, “Everyone had his rock to hide under, but CIA kept using our rocks, listing its officers as narcotics advisors to the embassy.”19

  CHAPTER 21

  Decay

  After August 1969, writes Professor Huy, “Power in Saigon belonged to three generals: Nguyen Van Thieu as President; Tran Thien Khiem as Prime Minister; and Cao Van Vien as Chief of the Joint Staff. They kept their positions until the eve of South Vietnam’s collapse.”1

  As was customary in Vietnam, according to Huy, power was administered by each man’s wife. “Mrs. Thieu dealt with the businessmen, especially those of Chinese origin, and had her shares in profits obtained from import, export and international trade.” Mrs. Khiem “fixed a price for new appointments for the posts of chief of province, chief of district, and chief of police services at the provincial and district levels. Mrs. Vien’s domain was the army: contractors working with the army could pass through her intermediary, and she had her tariff for a quick promotion in the army.”2

  With the consolidation of power by these three men came a resurgence of what CIA Summary 0387/69, dated September 12, 1969, called “influence by the widely hated Can Lao group of the Diem era.” The CIA memo named as members of the neo-Can Lao cabal
“Foreign Minister Lam, as well as the ministers of information, economy, finance and legislative liaison.” The memo noted that Duong Van “Big” Minh had predicted “that renewed Can Lao influence could lead to a tragic clash between Catholics and Buddhists.” And, the memo noted, “apprehension is likely to increase over reports that the new information minister [Thieu’s cousin, Hoang Duc Nha] has appointed some 20 cadre from the Nhan Xa Party—a neo-Can Lao group—to key subordinate positions.”

  Indeed, political developments in 1969 mirrored those of 1955, when Ed Lansdale was told that Diem “needed to have his own political party.”3 Likewise, to strengthen Thieu’s position, the CIA in 1969 financed the creation of the National Social Democratic Front, described by former CIA officer Frank Snepp as “a pro-government coalition of political parties.” And, just as in Diem’s day, Snepp writes, “the CIA lavished large sums of money on the Thieu government to be used in cowing and ‘neutralizing’ its opposition,”4 the opposition being those nationalist parties, like the Dai Viets, that had relations with the Buddhists. With the Americans chasing the VCI, these domestic groups became primary targets of the Special Branch and its stepchild, Phung Hoang.

  In particular, Thieu felt threatened by Tran Ngoc Chau, the popular nationalist whose persecution was said to symbolize the “fratricidal” nature of the Vietnam War. But in fact, Chau’s persecution had less to do with regional differences than with rampant corruption, itself fueled by the CIA’s bottomless black bag and irrational obsession with internal security at any cost.

  Chau’s problems began in 1969, when he launched an anti-corruption campaign against Thieu, his old classmate from Fort Bragg. The gist of Chau’s claim was that Nguyen Cao Thang—a wealthy pharmacist and former Can Lao from Hue—was using CIA funds to undermine the National Assembly. Chau’s crusade was seen as a threat to GVN stability, and as a result, the CIA sent two case officers to offer him enough money to start his own political party in exchange for backing off. When Chau declined, Rod Landreth informed General Dang Van Quang that Chau was secretly in contact with his brother, Tran Ngoc Hien, a senior Cuc Nghien Cuu officer in North Vietnam. Quang issued an arrest warrant for Chau, charging him with the capital crime of espionage.