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Phoenix: Computerized Death Squads

By Bill Davis

The Phoenix program, at once controversial and, at the same time, little known by the bulk of the American people, was an anti-insurgency program initiated by William Colby, Deputy Director of the CIA in 1966.

As it was conceived, Phoenix was designed to centralize, under CIA management, the various Saigon intelligence services responsible for seeking out National Liberation Front (VietCong) agents in the civilian population. A tangle of military police and civilian officials were trained and guided by U.S. Army advisors (from the Special Forces) to penetrate the civilian population, gather information and arrest or "neutralize" suspected communist cadre.

By 1969 the CIA mission in Saigon listed 19,534 Viet Cong suspects as "neutralized."

As more information concerning the Phoenix program came to light, there followed an outcry by the American people and by anti-war Congressional representatives who referred to the program as "mass murder." CIA officials admitted to inefficiency, corruption and abuse in the operation. Further investigation showed Saigon officials functioning as usual: self-promotion, non-cooperation and massive graft of U.S. aid appropriations headed for the Phoenix program—in short, business as usual, only worse. Widespread reports show a high percentage of suspects were able to bribe their way to freedom. Still, the human toll was a horror.

Phoenix empowered village officials to fill quotas of enemy dead on a monthly basis. Needless to say, anyone killed was listed as an "enemy agent," similar to documentation used bu the U.S. military throughout Vietnam. Large numbers of peasants were rounded up, released if they could pay bribes, tortured (if they couldn't pay bribes) and then executed on little or no charges. Corrupt village officials operating from personal vendettas, if nothing more, could easily meet their quotas and more.

U.S. military involvement varied from zealous support to outright horror at the program. U.S. Special Forces advisor teams became triggermen for Phoenix. In November of 1969, Colonel Robert Rheault and his Special Forces team were charged with the summary execution of a suspected Viet Cong spy or "termination with extreme prejudice," in the official language. Recapping his tour in one district in Vietnam, LTC Stuart Herrington stated, "No single endeavor caused more grief or frustration" for American advisors in Vietnam.

When the program finally died in the early 1970's, William Colby, the CIA man who ran Phoenix, stated that "despite its flaws and excessed, Phoenix eliminated some sixty thousand authentic Viet Cong agents."

After the war, Vietnamese officials called the program "extremely destructive," and "a devious and cruel operation that cost the loss of thousands of our people." International peace and human rights organizations placed the toll of the Phoenix program at between 75,000 and 90,000 victims, the majority of them being peasants who couldn't buy the way off Colby's computer death list.

Bill Davis
National Coordinator
VVAW