`Phoenix’ details deadly operation of Vietnam War

THE PHOENIX PROGRAM, by Douglas Valentine, William Morrow and Co. Inc., 479 pages, $24.95.

Many of the tragedies of the Vietnam War are well-documented, but the horrors of the wartime Phoenix Program have escaped in-depth coverage until now.

Douglas Valentine’s “The Phoenix Program” for the first time publicly describes in detail this secret operation from its creation to its implementation. Although William Colby was the man most closely associated with the program, his testimony to congressional investigators in the 1970s was just the tip of the iceberg. The rest of the iceberg can be found in Valentine’s book, which features firsthand accounts of CIA officers, members of the U.S. military and Phoenix participants.

Valentine, who researched the topic for more than four years, opens his book with a brief history of how the United States became involved in Vietnam. Valentine then goes into greater depth as he examines U.S. covert operations in Vietnam and how the Phoenix Program grew out of existing operations.

Phoenix, which operated between 1967 and 1973, was designed to weaken the Vietcong infrastructure. The program sought cooperation from villagers who would receive rewards for exposing Vietcong insurgents and sympathizers. The Phoenix Program used a variety of methods and front organizations to achieve its goals. Phoenix agents or their operatives would either assassinate their targets in nighttime raids or apprehend them and forward the subjects to interrogation centers. Once in a center the suspects might face torture and death. The lucky ones were set free, many after relatives had paid ransom for their release. Some interrogation center chiefs said they were unaware of any person surviving a visit to a center. Whether suspects died during interrogation, were killed at night while sleeping in their tent, or were thrown out of a flying helicopter, it is believed that some 40,000 Vietnamese died as a result of Phoenix.

Most of the people interviewed for this book believed Phoenix was a failure. Many said a key problem was that the program was used to produce statistics, the accuracy of which was often questionable. CIA operative Ralph McGehee says in the book that the reason America lost the war was that its policy was “decided from the top in advance,” then intelligence was selected or created to support it afterward. He says Colby’s briefings were “a complete hoax contrived to deceive Congress. I have watched him when I knew he was lying, and not the least flicker of emotion ever crosses his face.”

Colby and other bureaucrats defended the Phoenix Program as being a necessary part of a winning strategy.

Don’t expect a lot of undercover action in Valentine’s book. He focuses more on the political side of the program and its function rather than giving details of individual missions.

Although Phoenix went down in flames in Vietnam, it has come out of the ashes with new feathers and now flies in Third World countries. Some of the agents linked to the Phoenix Program are inside the U.S. intelligence network today, continuing similar acts of duplicity and profiteering that contributed to America’s failure in Vietnam.

Jim Emple is an editor on the NEWS copy desk.