The Phoenix Program

A terrible book, no objectivity at all but plenty of half truths, assumptions and out right fabrications. In the intro he says the SF operators watched the VC suspect go to the machine gun 2 days in a row then went to his "hooch" (sounding very knowledgeable) and by regrettable mistake stabbed his 2 daughters to death. They must have been highly trained if they couldn't tell the difference between a grown man and 2 little girls. Why didn't those highly trained operatives shoot him at the machine gun with one of their silenced 22 Cal. Colt Woodsman pistols (their trademark weapon) then get rid of the body to create terror and doubt? Total BS.

I looked forward to reading this definitive classic on Operation Phoenix by a man whose essays I greatly enjoy reading but was unable to finish it. Valentine's editor did him a great service by telling him to begin the book with a a compelling first-person account of a Phoenix operative emotionally gutted by an assignment that had him murder two innocent Vietnamese girls: this hooked me. Everything after that was strictly downhill. Valentines writes as an extremely dry and tedious military historian for military readers already familiar with the ten (10!) pages of acronyms in his glossary without which, and even with which, most readers will be at sea. Instead of a narrative of a political and military horror, Valentine gives us a tale of how the military-intelligence bureaucracy competed among itself and bungled and barged its way into being a well-organized Murder Incorporated against civilian Vietnamese who supported the Vietminh and wanted to run their own country instead of being puppets of US imperialism.

It is worth skipping to Chapter 27, "Legalities" to read William Colby's tortured rationalizations for and lies to Congress about the abuses that Phoenix inflicted. Whatever one thinks of Colby, he was probably the last of the CIA director with a moral compass. Colby was fired by Ford and Kissinger for revealing to Congress the CIA's "family jewels," and they were hardly the worst of the CIA's black ops, and he was murdered for working with John De Camp to investigate who killed Gary Caradori (who had obtained key evidence for De Camp) and his nine-year-old son, and to put an end to the routine pedophilia and mind-control abuse of innocent children that De Camp exposed in "The Franklin Cover-up." Valentine links the Phoenix Project to the degeneration of American values and democracy, and it is a measure of our times that after the Yorkshire Television documentary "Conspiracy of Silence" was destroyed, Colby was murdered because he used his residual influence within Washington to urge Janet Reno to refer the matter to the DOJ. It is not difficult to understand the results.

It is vital that serious students of history must study, CIA AS ORGANIZED CRIME and THE PHOENIX PROGRAM.

The information in this book would give the reader a glimpse from where the present state of Humanity derive. Our humanity can be tapped into when we witness these examples of the worse-case-human-rights-violation. Know that those who perpetrate these violations anywhere are most likely to duplicate these violations everywhere.

Disappointed in this author's blatant, left-winged, communist sympathies and bias. Right from the introduction, it was clear where he was going --USA, CIA all wrong, VCI and Vietnamese nationalists all right. Like the SOG, the Phoenix Program was, in fact, a very successful program and incredibly effective at the local level utilizing tightly knit,cohesive units, managed by US Special Forces and CIA operatives, that could effectively identify, apprehend, or kill communist insurgents whose aims and methods were anything but peaceful and non-violent, as Valentine would have the reader believe. In war, in or out of uniform, combatants must be identified and neutralized. It was morally appropriate, necessary, and imperative for these VCI cadre, regardless of civilian status, to be considered a fair target. The author continues to perpetuate the common misunderstandings of the program and adds to them. This book is best left on the shelf. A much, much better - more well-balanced, informative and unbiased - read is "Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix Program and the Vietnam War," by Dale Andrade. Save your money on this book and buy Andrade's.

I bought this book in the 90's and I read it and then trashed it. This guy is just regurgitating the Walt Rostow/Chomsky version of history I was taught in the 70's. It's the Winter Soldier story drawn out in an endless steam of boring details. Of course we know now that the plan was chaos throughout SE Asia, and the story of international nuclear chess was just a game to keep us reading newspapers. Problem, Crisis, Solution.

Wild Bill parachuted into North Vietnam to create the problem that would be later solved by US troops. The CIA invented the VC, wrote some manifestos and created the legend of a people's war. In the South, the State Dept created the other side of the Problem by investing in the most corrupt, inept politicians and generals they could find. The Crisis began and ended with staged battles for news crews. The solution, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, was US troops and experimental weaponry. The Phoenix Program kept things lively by arresting well known people and shooting Americans. All the while, the US Air Force was bombing and napalming everything in South Vietnam into the stone age, including US ground forces.

Quagmire they called it, but what it was is better called Chaos. Order Through Chaos, the slogan of the NWO.

This is a very valuable book. It is dense and difficult because the subject itself is so layered. It will attract a lot of negativity from people who have something to hide or who wish to construct Phoenix as some kind of noble enterprise. Phoenix is a horrible shame an embarrassment to the US and left massive amounts of human damage in Vietnam. Valentine's book gives us an opportunity to remember it properly. Unfortunately the armed services, the CIA and the US government -- under Bush especially -- apparently have no ability to learn from history.

The references were excellent and the purpose of military force is not what it appears to be as the golden triangle was a terror based (not unlike the School of the Americas or Operation Gladio) drug smuggling operation which is not any different than what is going on in Afghanistan. Other books of US history show that the US was heavily involved in the Opium Trade (Wars) with people such as Perkins, Russel, Forbes, Delano and several others that used their wealth to buy up assets when the banks tightened up credit after over production when credit was easy. War would not be possible without the central banking cartel.

I have read about 1/4 of the book so far. A very interesting perspective on the early history of the Vietnam War (1955-1968) behind the scenes with the CIA, U.S. Military and South Vietnam forces trying to disrupt both the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces through the use of enhanced interrogation, torture and murder!!

Discusses covert operations in Vietnam and set the stage for current dark operations conducted today.