Having managed the Vietnam desk in 1962 and 1963, III Corps CIA region officer in charge Donald Gregg understood the importance of the secretary’s information. He immediately focused everyone in the region on Tu Thanh’s network, which was diagrammed on a wall map to show where his deputies and family members lived. Enders and Gregg then dispatched Special Branch surveillance teams to take pictures of the suspects; meanwhile, they tried to place a penetration agent inside the apparatus.
“We tried to recruit a district cadre from Hau Nghia,” Enders recalled. “Tu Thanh’s secretary knew he had a girl friend, so we got her to narrate on a tape cassette a plea for him to work with us. The girl friend brought the tape to the cemetery where her mother was buried, and they exchanged it there. Next we sent a three-man PRU team from Hau Nghia to make a pitch, to get the guy to defect. But they came back empty-handed. Then we got wind that the next night the VC had come in for the tape recorder, so we ran a counterintelligence operation on the PRU and found out that the PRU commander was a VC penetration agent. So we changed commanders; Mr. Nha became the PRU commander.”
It was as a result of this failure that Gregg gave up on penetrations. “Shackley was interested in penetrations,” he recalled, “and the vehicle for doing that was the Special Branch working closely with PIC advisers.” Gregg added emphatically, “This is not Phoenix.” As for the nature of Phoenix operations in III Corps, he said, “The PIOCCs and DIOCCs had a guy asleep at the desk.”22
As Gregg explained it, “Because Three Corps had hard-core VC units in heavily mined areas, I decided I couldn’t penetrate. So I wound up trying to take apart the remaining elements of the VCI by putting together a chart of it from ralliers, prisoners, et cetera. I told ARVN I’d take all the POWs they couldn’t handle. We’d get battered people and treat them well. In return we’d get information on caches, supply dumps, river crossings, et cetera. We’d get them to point out the location on the map. Then Felix Rodriguez would take them up in a light observation helicopter to point out the hiding places on the ground. A PRU team would follow with the First Air Cav and [Phoenix Region Coordinator] Johnny Johnson. Felix would locate the bunker by drawing fire; then he’d mark it with smoke. The First Air Cav would provide two or three Hueys for fire support and two more with the PRU. Then they’d go in.” When bigger operations were mounted, the First Air Cavalry provided troops.
“So we went after Tu Thanh during Tet of 1971,” Rudy Enders went on. “We missed him by a step but found his hiding place and brought twenty-three people hiding there to the PIC. The PIC chief in Region Three, Colonel Sinh, did the interrogations. We brought guys in from Con Son to flesh out the reports, and we had guys analyzing reports, marking photographs, putting the pictures together on the wall, and then photographing that. As a result, we learned the names of ninety-six people in the organization, only two of whom had access to ARVN or the police. One was the province chief’s valet; the other was in the Hau Nghia police. But instead of four hundred fifty, like Adams said, it was only two.
“In the process of going after this organization,” Enders continued, “we got all of [III Corps Commander] General Hollingsworth’s assets, and together we took photos of the houses where they lived … then took the photos back to the helicopter where we had the twenty-three people plus the woman from Long An. The twenty-three people were hooded, and they circled the faces of the VCI. Felix Rodriguez was the guy doing this. Felix also got the choppers from Hollingsworth.”
Like Gregg, Enders claimed this was not a Phoenix operation. “Phoenix was just a record-keeping thing,” Enders said. “No organization is going to share intelligence because you didn’t know who was a double.” In other words, by 1971 the CIA was carrying the attack against the VCI, while Phoenix was merely keeping score.
Phoenix as defined in official reporting also differed from Phoenix in fact. While the directorate was promoting Phung Hoang as a Vietnamese program, the commander in chief, Pacific, was saying, “The GVN has not been able to secure the cooperation of officials at hamlet, village and district level that is required for a successful Phung Hoang-Phoenix program.”23 Likewise, Pacification Attitude Analysis System results revealed that Phoenix was penetrated by the VCI and that most Vietnamese considered Phoenix a U.S. program, preferred a modus vivendi, and had “a grudging admiration for the VCI struggle.”24
“I reported to this guy in the station, who I only knew by the name George,” Ed Brady said to me. “I told him, ‘Your flow of information is through guys like Joe Sartiano and Dave West. But what does Minh Van Dang tell Dave West?’ I said, ‘They know he’s there for you; they tell him what you want to hear. How would you like something in context? Something that wasn’t told to an American official?’ And I had a good record of doing that, so I was reassigned to become special assistant to the director, John Mason.”
Unfortunately, Brady’s reports did not show success and were roundly ignored. As he explained it, “I had a view that was different from the official reports. But this put the CIA in the position of having to decide, Is he right or not? Sometimes they’d go with me, but more often not. They frequently didn’t want to use material I generated—they didn’t want to report it to Washington—because it made them look bad.”
For another inside view of Phoenix in 1971, we turn to Colonel Chester McCoid, who in February 1971 replaced Colonel James Newman as deputy to John Mason. A veteran of four years and ten separate assignments in Vietnam, McCoid chronicled the program’s major developments in letters to his wife, Dorothy. On February 18 he writes:
Yesterday afternoon … with two other Americans … from the Saigon City Advisory Group, I drove first to 6th Police Precinct Office and then on to the 7th. Our purpose was to inspect the work in progress to eliminate the enemy agents and shadow government apparatus in these critical areas.
The net result was an acute sense of distress! This was due directly to the inadequate job the American advisers were doing in both precincts. Here, in a situation where the enemy are hardcore old timers, we are employing callow young lieutenants to give advice to Vietnamese National Policemen who have been on the job for as many as 17 years. Naturally our people are far over their heads and find that they are rarely listened to by those whom, in theory, they are to give operational assistance. One of the officers, a captain, knows what should be done. He is familiar with his duties and does know a great deal about the precinct—population, size, state of the economy, ethnic breakdown, enemy strength, recent VC activity, who their supporters are, the true identity of the VC leaders, etc. His only difficulty is that he hasn’t won the confidence of the National Police chief yet.
In the 7th Precinct the situation is so unsatisfactory that it is sickening. There a lazy young punk is absolutely without any influence and, unless there is a dramatic improvment in his efforts, there is little hope there ever will be. This member of the “Pepsi Generation” knows almost nothing of the area for which he is supposedly accountable. In response to questions relating to the enemy … he had no answers. He complained that the Chief of the Special Police would spend no time with him, and that he, our lieutenant, was never approached for advice. Small wonder.
What are our advisory personnel like? Well, they range from being as useless as the clod in the 7th Precinct to some who have spent years in the Counter-intelligence Corps. Most of these are majors or chief warrant officers; they know their trade and they manage to establish effective relationships with the National Police and Province S2s early on. Our best people aren’t in Saigon because the need is greater out in the remote border areas where the Vietnamese dump their duds. They naturally concentrate their most competent searchers for the VCI here in the nation’s capital; after all, they don’t want to have the Prime Minister or the President unhappy with the program.
In an April 2 letter, McCoid discusses the Thu Duc training center, where two thousand ARVN officers were to be sent for Phoenix training in preparation for assignment as village police chiefs:<
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The frustrations of working with some of these little bastards are formidable. They absolutely cannot do anything requiring any initiative—or perhaps the term should be “will not.” The school is for their case officers, yet they rely almost exclusively on the efforts of one of our personnel to draw up the program of instruction, the lesson plans, and the schedules. The course is to commence on the 19th and they’ve invited the Prime Minister to attend the opening ceremony; yet the building needs repairs and there is little or nothing available in the way of furnishings. There are only four of the required 10 instructors and few of the other personnel on hand—and no steps are being taken to correct the situation. By this time, if they were Westerners, they would be in a state of emotional collapse; but the Vietnamese face the situation with perfect equanimity—in fact, Monday the 5th is a holiday and they all are taking the day off. What are they waiting for? Well, American funding for one thing. They know that we will eventually come through with about seven million piasters ($25,000) and they see no reason to get excited until our money starts to flow.
In an April 14 letter McCoid announces the transfer of power on April 25 from John Mason to the third and final Phoenix director, John Tilton.* A graduate of George Washington University, Tilton had served most of his career in Central and South America, where he served as operations officer in two countries. He also served as chief of station in two other Latin American countries, including Bolivia, where he mounted the successful manhunt and capture of Che Guevara. Colonel Paul Coughlin, chief of operations at the Phoenix Directorate throughout 1971, claimed that a photo taken of Che’s spread-eagled corpse—which was leaked to the press and depicted the revolutionary as a crucified Christ figure—was the reason why Tilton was exiled from his area of expertise to Southeast Asia.25 Tall and thin, gaunt and gangly, Tilton, according to McCoid, was like Mason insofar as they both held Ted Shackley “in awe.”†
Tilton served as Phoenix director from May 1971 till August 1973. From August 1972 till August 1973, he also served as deputy chief of station and senior adviser to the Special Branch in Vietnam. Under Tilton, Phoenix was reunited with its foster parent, the Special Branch.
Tilton considered himself a hands-on manager who worked closely with his region and province officers on operational matters. He inspected DIOCCs, evaluated the military officers posted to the directorate, attended Central Phung Hoang Committee meetings, and occasionally visited the Phung Hoang Office. In return, the Phung Hoang chief, Colonel Ly Trong Song, was frequently in Tilton’s office and house. Song, Tilton noted, was replaced by Colonel Nguyen Van Giau.
Tilton defined Phoenix as basically committees and cited this as one of the program’s faults—because committees are okay in setting broad policy, but a single agency in charge of the program would have been more effective. His other gripes were that Americans were trying to organize a country that wasn’t a country, that Phoenix advisers were too dependent on their interpreters, and that most informants were working for both sides. Tilton described Phoenix as a Special Forces program run out of Fort Bragg, and he tried hard to conceal the role of his parent agency. Prior to an interview with reporter Michael Parks, Tilton told McCoid not to reveal that Tilton was with the CIA. “He was very cherry about that,” McCoid noted.
On May 30, 1971, on orders from President Thieu, Colonel Ly Trong Song assumed command of the Phung Hoang bloc, and the program began going downhill. Always late, often not appearing at work at all, Song busied himself picking up order blanks for Sears or Montgomery Ward, snatching pens and pencils from people’s desks, and asking Colonel McCoid to buy him booze at the PX. A political appointee, Song had the job of preventing Phung Hoang personnel from disrupting Thieu’s influence in the provinces.
Morale problems began to affect the directorate. In a June 2 letter McCoid writes that more and more Phoenix advisers were requesting early releases, which were being granted as a means of scaling down U.S. involvement. Otherwise, CORDS was not filling vacancies. McCoid mentions how one captain assigned to the directorate asked for release after five weeks and how most of the others were badly disaffected. McCoid notes that more and more enlisted men were turning to drugs and that more and more NCOs were finding solace in the bottle. “Our strength here in the Directorate is scheduled to fall steadily while our work load sky-rockets,” he says, adding that he spent one third of his time responding to flag notes from William Colby, whom he called “a monumental figure.”
In a July 3 letter, McCoid notes that Colby had gone home to testify once again before Congress about Phoenix. Colby was to remain in Washington as executive director-comptroller of the CIA until his appointment as director in August 1973. Colby’s job at CORDS was taken over by George Jacobson, and CORDS, too, began its descent into oblivion. “Our supply and funding officer,” McCoid once wrote, “theorizes that only the Americans feel strongly about the necessity of rounding up the political cadre of the VC.” Indeed, with the ineluctable withdrawal of American “advisers,” Vietnamese determination steadily deteriorated, and the war effort staggered to its dishonorable conclusion.
* In December 1970 Hai was reassigned as commander of the XXXXIV Corps Tactical Zone, and as Komer suggested, Major General Tran Thanh Phong became National Police chief.
* Few members of the directorate held Mason in high esteem. Walter Kolon described him as “duplistic in all of his dealings. He would be honey smooth to a man’s face, then vitriolic as soon as he left the room.”16 James Hunt said, “I was never quite sure if he was being clever or straightforward.”17 Everyone agrees that his loyalty was to Ted Shackley and the CIA station.
* When I interviewed Tilton in 1986, he was forthcoming and helpful. After I presented him with a magazine article that was critical of Phoenix (and which had been mailed to me by Nelson Brickham), Tilton asked not to be quoted.
†In 1971 George French replaced Bob Dunwoodie as CIA liaison to SOG, Bob Wall was back as senior adviser to the Special Branch, and Tully Acampora had returned as adviser to Tran Si Tan, chief of the metropolitan police and, according to Acampora, “to Thieu what Loan had been to Ky.”26
CHAPTER 27
Legalities
In his aptly titled master’s thesis for American University, Ralph Johnson poses the question: “The Phoenix Program: Planned Assassination or Legitimate Conflict Management?”1
The answer is that Phoenix was both. Insofar as the rifle shot concept was the essence of the attack against the VCI, Phoenix was “planned assassination.” At the same time, in the sense that the key to the Vietnam War was the political control of people, Phoenix was also conflict management. The question is if, under the aegis of conflict management, everything from ambush and assassination to extortion, massacre, tiger cages, terror, and torture was legitimate and justifiable? Indeed, by 1971 the legality of Phoenix was being questioned not just by antiwar activists but by the House Subcommittee on Foreign Operations and Government Information, cochaired by William Moorehead and Ogden Reid.
As usual, it was a whistle-blower who provided Congress with its ammunition. In late 1970 Bart Osborn approached an aide on Congressman Moorehead’s staff with a copy of the training manual he had been issued at Fort Holabird. Said the aide, William Phillips: “It showed that Phoenix policy was not something manufactured out in field but was sanctioned by the U.S. government. This was the issue: that it is policy. So we requested, through the Army’s congressional liaison officer, a copy of the Holabird training manual, and they sent us a sanitized copy. They had renumbered the pages.”2
This stab at disguising policy prompted Congressman Pete McCloskey to visit the Phoenix Directorate in April 1971, in preparation for hearings on Phoenix to be held that summer. His visit was recalled by Phoenix training chief James Hunt: “Colby was out of town, Jake [George Jacobson] was in charge, and Mason was there. And just as I was getting up to go to the platform to give my briefing, Mason whispered into my ear, ‘We gotta talk to them, but the less we say, the bette
r.’ Well, the first question McCloskey asked was if anyone in the program worked for the CIA. And Mason denied it. He denied any CIA involvement. Jake, too.”
Hunt recalled that McCloskey, Mason, and Jacobson immediately went into executive session. He did not know what happened there. But it bothered him that Mason “blatantly lied.” Hunt added parenthetically, “Phoenix had been under the CIA; then MACV supposedly took it over. But we didn’t really understand it, and that bothered us. There was always a suspicion. My impression was that John Mason worked for Colby through Jake, but he also had a close relationship with the chief of station—a professional relationship, back-channeling messages.”
Also bothered by the lies, McCloskey returned to Washington and charged that planned assassinations under Phoenix denied due process and that Phoenix “violated several treaties and laws.”3 The legal basis for McCloskey’s charge was Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits “the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.” It also prohibits mutilation, cruel treatment, and torture.
Having agreed to the conventions, the United States government was well aware of the substance of Article 3. The problem was a letter written on December 7, 1970, by Imer Rimestead, the American ambassador to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). In his letter Rimestead says, “With respect to South Vietnamese civilians captured by U.S. forces and transferred by them to the authorities of the RVN, the U.S. Government recognizes that it has a residual responsibility to work with the GVN to see that all such civilians are treated in accordance with the requirements of Article 3 of the Conventions.”
To the consternation of the war managers, Rimestead’s letter meant that the U.S. government could no longer dismiss the problem of civilian detainees—corralled in droves by the Phoenix dragnet—as an internal matter of the GVN. Rimestead reasoned that the U.S. government, by funding Phoenix and the GVN Directorate of Corrections, automatically assumed “residual responsibility.” And the truth of the matter was, without U.S. aid there never would have been a Phung Hoang bloc or Directorate of Corrections.
Phoenix Program Page 49