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<b><small><small><small><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/04/the-evil-that-was-phoenix/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/04/the-evil-that-was-phoenix/</a></small></small></small></b><br>
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Weekend Edition July 4-6, 2014<br>
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<div class="subheadlinestyle"><b><big><big>America’s Use of Terror
in Vietnam</big></big></b></div>
<h1 class="article-title">The Evil That Was Phoenix</h1>
<div class="mainauthorstyle">by RON JACOBS</div>
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<blockquote>
<p>“Phoenix was far worse than the things attributed to it.”<em>—Ed
Murphy, former member of the Phoenix program.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>There’s a reason the CIA wanted to prevent the publication of
Douglas Valentine’s 1990 book, <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0595007384/counterpunchmaga"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.amazon.com']);"
target="_blank">The Phoenix Program: America’s Use of Terror
in Vietnam</a>. This masterwork is more than an exposé of
the US pacification program in Vietnam the book is titled
after. It is an indictment of a cynical and bloody plan to
kill Vietnamese. In his book The Family Jewels, author John
Prado wrote, “When a (CIA) Publications Review Board lawyer
checked to see whether Phoenix was off-limits …, he was
advised to caution interviewees not to talk to Valentine.”
Valentine wrote in an email regarding the CIA’s attempts to
stifle his investigation: “There were other form of harassment
as well, the kind all investigators of CIA war crimes are
subjected to. The midnight calls threatening to kill me or
burn my house down. My wife got in the habit of telling the
callers to take a number and stand in line. We never took it
seriously. Ironically, everything I was doing was legal, and
I wasn’t trying to hide anything….Many of the threats came
from former Navy SEALs, who were angry about my portrayal of
them as psychopathic killers on a murder spree. A group of
former Phoenix advisors, who did not like characterizing them
as war criminals for conducting Gestapo style operations
against Vietnamese civilians, were also prone to threats and
later, after the book came out, slanders on Amazon and
elsewhere. This is the same “Swift Boat” clan that attacked
John Kerrey during his presidential campaign.”</p>
<p>However, times were slightly different then. Intelligence
agencies, while powerful, were not as powerful as they are
today, in part because of the popular revulsion at their modus
operandi. So, one assumes, the Agency really could not prevent
the book’s publication. It has been out of print until now.
Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media studies and a media
critic, is now publishing it as the first of his <a
href="http://www.openroadmedia.com/blog/2014-06-10/open-road-media-announces-creation-of-forbidden-bookshelf.aspx"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.openroadmedia.com']);"
target="_blank">Forbidden Bookshelf</a> series; an endeavor
involving reprinting hard-to-find books addressing the
realities of the US social-political infrastructures from a
critical (and mostly left) perspective.</p>
<p>The Phoenix program was the culmination of a number of
counterinsurgency plans undertaken by the Central Intelligence
Agency, the military and a few other related agencies. All of
these plans, like Phoenix itself, were designed to infiltrate
and destroy the infrastructure of the communist-led Vietnamese
insurgency—or as it was known by most US residents—the Viet
Cong. Valentine describes in specific detail a bureaucratic
machinery of torture and deceit: a single-minded operation
designed to sow distrust, uncertainty and death. The first
several chapters in the book describe and dissect the
agencies, programs and individuals involved in the
counterintelligence precursors to the Phoenix Program. It is a
tale of inter-agency competition and occasional cooperation,
clashing egos in Vietnam and DC and differences of opinion
between Vietnamese and US police and government agencies. The
latter is perhaps best exemplified by the different meanings
attributed to the Phoenix bird symbol. The Vietnamese word for
Phoenix is Phuang Hong, yet the graphic used by the Vietnamese
represented hope, while the US symbol was a bird of prey
holding missiles in its claws.</p>
<p>For those who don’t know, Phoenix was a systemic attempt to
find and kill Vietnamese fighting against the US and its
designs. It did this through terror, torture,
intelligence-gathering and the relocation (and murder) of the
insurgency’s civilian supporters. Even if one believes the
worst of the US military and intelligence agencies in Vietnam,
the facts on how Phoenix played out on the ground among the
Vietnamese people remains difficult reading. Valentines
journalistic “just the facts ma’am” approach does not hide
anything. Nor is that his intention. By laying out the facts
in the manner that Valentine does, the reader finds passages
in this book where the recitation of those facts cause great
sadness and anger. Perhaps the greatest such example of this
occurs in the chapter Valentine calls “Modus Vivendi” where he
summarizes the Vietnamese writer Truong Buu Diem’s 1968
article in the liberal Catholic Vietnamese newspaper Tin Sang
(Morning News). The article, which was titled, “The Truth
About Phoenix,” describes the violent and deadly effects of
the program, questions its purpose, and calls it American
revenge for Tet. The layers of hierarchy and bureaucracy
constructed and maintained in order to facilitate this machine
remind the reader of both General Motors and Nazi Germany’s
Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office.)
Morality was not part of the equation. Although some military
members assigned to Phoenix objected on moral grounds or
because they were expected to violate the Geneva conventions,
most of those who opposed their assignment did so on career
grounds or because they resented being under CIA command.</p>
<p>Valentine ends the body of his text with a look at the
US-sponsored warfare and counterinsurgency operations being
waged in Central America in the 1980s (when his book was
originally published.) If one extrapolates the essence and
practices of the Phoenix Program to Washington’s more recent
wars—from Afghanistan to Iraq to the so-called Global War on
Terror, it becomes clear that Phoenix remains a working
template of how the US continues to conduct such operations.</p>
<p>The Phoenix Program is an alternative history of the US war
on the Vietnamese. It is closer to the truth than anything
published by the military or intelligence establishment and
gives lie to the ongoing efforts by various veteran and
government historians to turn the US war into a noble
effort—something that it never was. There is currently a
campaign to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the US war
in Vietnam. The campaign relies on a revisionist retelling of
that adventure and attempts to relieve US forces (military and
otherwise) responsibility for the death and destruction they
caused. This is one more reason the republication of The
Phoenix Program is therefore quite timely.</p>
<p><em><strong>Ron Jacobs </strong>is the author of the just
released novel </em><a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1937677397/counterpunchmaga"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.amazon.com']);">All
the Sinners, Saints</a><em>. He is also the author of </em><a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1859841678/counterpunchmaga"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.amazon.com']);"
target="_blank">The Way the Wind Blew: a History of the
Weather Underground</a> <em>and </em><a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0977459098/counterpunchmaga"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.amazon.com']);"
target="_blank">Short Order Frame Up</a><em> and </em><a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0983206309/counterpunchmaga"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.amazon.com']);"
target="_blank">The Co-Conspirator’s Tale</a><em></em><em>.
Jacobs’ essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in
CounterPunch’s collection on music, art and sex, </em><a
href="http://www.easycarts.net/ecarts/CounterPunch/CP_Books.html"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.easycarts.net']);"
target="_blank">Serpents in the Garden</a><em>. His third
novel All the Sinners Saints is a companion to the previous
two and is due out in April 2013. </em><em>He is a
contributor to </em><a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1849351104/counterpunchmaga"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.amazon.com']);"
target="_blank">Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of
Illusion</a><em>, published by AK Press. He can be reached
at: <a href="mailto:ronj1955@gmail.com" target="_blank">ronj1955@gmail.com</a>.</em></p>
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