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>>> This document will be the subject of an article by Douglas Valentine in the next issue of Covert Action Quarterly, due out in late August. Explanation of this document, by Douglas Valentine:

The Vietnamese finally got behind Phoenix with the Tet Offensive of February 1968. A directive (No. 89-Th.T/VP/M) had been prepared by the Prime Minister on 20 December 1967, and following the first Tet Offensive it was signed by Dang Van Minh on 5 March 1968. As noted, many VCI were captured or killed by the ICEX/Phoenix apparatus during this general uprising, including many of President Nguyen Van Thieu's political opponents.

After the dust had settled, In November 1968, CORDS Director William Colby launched his Accelerated Pacification Campaign, the centerpiece of Nixon and Kissinger's "Vietnamization" policy, in which responsibility for the counterinsurgency was ostensibly passed to the Republic of Vietnam. Accelerated Pacification was subdivided into military security (combating main force operations), territorial security (organizing the Vietnamese locally to fight VC guerrillas), and political security, which meant Phoenix, the CIA's two-track program to 1) destroy the VCI and 2) ensure the political stability of the Thieu regime by insulating him from the backlash of his repressive policies. The Accelerated Pacification purpose of Phoenix was to weaken the link between the people and the VCI, while the political Phoenix was designed to exploit that link.

Concurrent with Accelerated Pacification, Phoenix advisers were assigned a nationwide quota of 1,800 VCI neutralizations a month, which were tabulated through the Viet Cong Infrastructure Information System. VCIIS compiled information gathered from all US, Republic of Vietnam, and Free World units on VCI boundaries, locations, organizational structures, personalities, and activities. (In January 1969, VCIIS was renamed the Phung Hoang Management Information System. Phung Hoang was how the South Vietnamese referred to their facet of the CIA's Phoenix Program.)

With the advent of Accelerated Pacification and Vietnamization, and the acceptance of the Phoenix Program by the Vietnamese, two things happened. First, the CIA decided to withdraw its programs from the Phoenix, and formally did so in June 1969, although anyone the CIA could use as a penetration agent into the upper echelons of the VCI was spun out of the Phoenix Program and handed over to the CIA. The CIA created a special unit of analysts under the management of CIA officer George Weisz specifically for this purpose, and thus Phoenix became a massive screening operation for the CIA. Second, the Phoenix Program went public in August 1969, and in October the Phoenix Directorate launched its Popular Information Program, a psychological warfare campaign to recruit informants, make Phoenix seem popular, and attack the VCI, all under the banner of "Protecting the People from Terrorism." Psychological warfare operations in support of Phoenix were such a potent weapon that in August 1970, the Pentagon described Phoenix as its "number one Psyops priority."

Peace negotiations were in process, however, and despite the propaganda, at the local level district and village chiefs were reluctant to target and kill members of the VCI, because, if a settlement was reached with the Provisional Revolutionary Government (which had been formed in June 1969 to represent the Communists in the peace negotiations), the VCI would soon have legal status. Thus, the CIA used Phoenix to ensure the political stability of the Thieu regime by insulating him from the backlash of his repressive policies, and his reluctance to negotiate in good faith with the Communists.

Thieu had been elected President of South Vietnam in 1967 by stuffing the ballot boxes and using Phoenix to neutralize his political opponents. He also sabotaged peace negotiations in 1968, based on a promise from Richard Nixon that if he did so, Nixon would give him increased financial and political support. Thieu dutifully sabotaged the negotiations, costing the Democrats the 1968 presidential election. Having stolen his office, like Nixon and Bush, Thieu (again like Nixon and Bush) preferred political internal security over a peaceful settlement that would end the national emergency, suspend all police-state actions (like administrative detention), and allow for majority rule. Thieu's actions led to congressional investigations in February 1970, and the charge in the New York Times (17 February 1970, article by Robert Kaiser) that the CIA had used the Phoenix Program as "an instrument of mass political murder" to neutralize politicians and activists who opposed Thieu or espoused peace. "By analogy," said Representative Ogden Reid (D-NY) in 1971, "if the Union had had a Phoenix program during the Civil War, its targets would have been civilians like Jefferson Davis or the mayor of Macon, Georgia."

During the 1970 Congressional hearings, Senator Clifford Case asked William Colby if the Phoenix Program might be used "by ambitious politicians against their political opponents, not the Viet Cong at all."

Said Colby, "It is our impression that this is not being used substantially for internal political purposes."

Senator William Fulbright then asked Colby, "Where is Mr. Dzu, the man who ran second in the last election?"

Colby replied, "Mr. Dzu is in Chi Hoa jail in Saigon."

Fulbright asked Colby to reconcile that with his statement that Phoenix was not being used for political purposes.

Colby calmly said that Dzu was not arrested under the Phoenix Program but under a provision that made it a crime to propose the formation of a coalition government with the Communists.

Colby dazzled the Committee with his disinformation, and New York Times reporter Tom Buckley sarcastically observed: "The Senate Foreign Relations Committee may have been confused by last week's testimony on Operation Phoenix." Indeed, attempts to portray Phoenix as legal and moral were transparent public-relations gimmicks meant to buy time while Thieu consolidated power before the cease-fire. To ensure Thieu's internal security, CIA officers willingly betrayed their penetration agents, and this capacity for treachery and deceit is what really defined American policy in regard to Phoenix. Republican Senators, following the party line, viewed Phoenix as perfectly executed, legal, moral, and popular. The other, more accurate view, articulated by Senator Fulbright, is that Phoenix was "a program for the assassination of civilian leaders."

On 12 December 1970, the CIA issued a report titled "Internal Security in South Vietnam - Phoenix." It is significant for two reasons. First, it confirms that the CIA equated its Phoenix "anti-terror" Program with political "internal security." Second, it acknowledges that the VCI, with its political and psychological operations, was more dangerous to Thieu's political internal security than enemy main force military operations.

In this report, the VCI is defined as "the political and administrative organization through which the Communists control or seek to control the people of South Vietnam." It likens the VCI to both a mafia and an establishment, and predicts that it will exploit the contradictions of the CIA's political, social, and economic experiments in South Vietnam.

"Internal Security" gives an assessment of the VCI, including its estimated strength, which it claims had declined. It says on page five: "The best measure of VCI activity is in the statistics on terrorism." The VCI's primary tactics were terrorism, political proselytizing, and penetrating the GVN structure.

Page six begins a section on Phoenix, with a short history and sections on its structure, command attention, the role of the national police, how VCI were identified, neutralization quota statistics, operations, priority provinces, legal processing and detention procedures (which should be of profound interest to anyone concerned with the Bush regime's use of military tribunals), rehabilitation, the Phoenix Public Information Program, and Vietnamese attitudes towards Phoenix.

Starting on page 15, "Internal Security" discusses in depth the role of the National Police, putting it in a good light whenever possible. Remember, this report is propaganda.

Starting on page 20, it discusses neutralizations. Page 21 starts a section on advisory support. Page 22 begins a section on conclusions, in which Phoenix again is directly referred to as an internal security program for the Government of Vietnam. On page 24, the CIA offers its recommendations for improving the Phoenix capability to perform an internal security function. On page 26 it suggests that are rewards program be instituted, and shortly thereafter the Phoenix Directorate created its High Values reward program, putting bounties on the heads of top-ranking VCI. As anyone who watches the news is aware, the Bush regime has transplanted the Phoenix High Value rewards program to Iraq. In fact, the Bush regime is using an updated version of the Phoenix Program worldwide, and will soon start applying it within the United States through its homeland security apparatus. Beware.

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