Phoenix Program (51 page)

Brady gave an example of how the Washington bureaucrats shamed “old Vietnam hand” Potter into submission. “Potter lived with a Vietnamese woman whom he wanted to marry,” Brady recalled. “He was near retirement, but the agency, citing operational security, said, ‘No. If you marry her, you're through. But it's okay if you live with her.' It was the height of hypocrisy.”

Perhaps the “old Vietnam hands” do symbolize the proprietary, but essentially moribund, American policy in Vietnam after 1969; those who had understanding were subordinated to the ideologues and functionaries. Living in splendid sand castles, they alternately cursed and ignored the rising tide
of corruption and deception that was engulfing South Vietnam. For example, Landreth's main job was chairing the interagency committee charged with investigating the black market, an inquiry he deflected away from the CIA. Likewise, the interagency narcotics committee chaired by Landreth focused entirely on the North Vietnamese, studiously avoiding General Dang Van Quang, who Stanley Karnow notes was “accorded the rice and opium franchise in his region” while commander in the Delta. Writes Karnow: “Among those allegedly involved in the trade were Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky and his successor, General Tran Thien Khiem, said to have funneled the proceeds from the business into their political machines.”
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Although Rod Landreth was the agency's liaison to General Quang, who on behalf of President Thieu set PRU policy, the day-to-day business of the PRU was handled by CIA officers Ben Mandich and William Buckley, both of whom are deceased, as are Potter, Landreth, Gougleman, and Johnson. Of those who were involved in PRU matters, only Ralph Johnson has left behind statements for the record. “The impact of the GVN on the PRU was negative,” Johnson writes, because of “the failure of PRU commanders to work closely with the PIOCCs. The PRU commanders, supported by the Province chiefs, excused this failure by citing poor security in the PIOCCs, as a result of which the PRU were failing to report intelligence to the Coordinating Centers.” Furthermore, says Johnson, “when the ARVN and the RF/PF absorbed the tactics of the PRU during 1968-1969, then the PRU probably should have been disbanded and their members integrated into one of the nation-building programs which constituted the major portion of the Pacification Program. Or, the PRU should have been returned to their native villages as part of the Refugee Program, to bolster the People's Self-Defense Forces.”
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Veteran CIA paramilitary officer Rudy Enders disagreed when we met and insisted that the PRU operated effectively at least until the cease-fire, when they were put under control of the Special Branch.
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In any case, the March 1969 decree putting the PRU under the National Police facilitated plausible denial. It enabled William Colby to swear on a stack of Bibles that the CIA was not operationally involved. The GVN became accountable as the CIA maneuvered to scapegoat its oblivious client. But the GVN could not afford (even with CIA-sanctioned corruption and drug trafficking) to support the PRU on its own, nor was the CIA willing to abandon the rifle shot approach at the moment it said it had the VCI on the ropes. But resources channeled through the Phoenix program could not compensate for the reduction in CIA support and supervision, so the PRU turned to shakedowns of lucrative targets in the private sector to keep their organization intact. Phoenix and the PRU became captive to criminal enterprises and the subject of increasing controversy.

Always inextricably linked, the Phoenix and PRU programs were simultaneously brought under military review in 1969. On October 20, 1969, in a secret memo to Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, Army Secretary Stanley Resor referred to “the social and moral costs and the desirability of a selective attack” and expressed “concern over these programs.”
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Later that day Laird conveyed his concern over “lack of progress in the Phoenix/Phung Hoang Program” to General Earle Weaver, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
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One month later Laird, referring to the My Lai massacre and the Green Beret murder case, informed Wheeler of his “growing anxiety over the PRU [sic] program in view of recent events concerning U.S. military conduct in South Vietnam.”
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In response to Defense Secretary Laird's concerns about the Phoenix program, MACV Commander Abrams assured Washington that “Statistically [sic] the program has made significant progress in recent months.” Abrams recounted the “reforms” cited on the preceding pages but then offered a candid and somewhat ominous appraisal, saying, “[I]t is clear to me and to the commanders in the field that the program does not yet have the degree of sophistication and depth necessary to combat the highly developed and long experienced VC infrastructure (VCI) in South Vietnam.” Abrams noted that Ambassador Bunker had agreed to talk to President Thieu about Phoenix, “especially with respect to improving GVN local official attitudes.” Abrams closed by promising “a separate report … on the PRU.”
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At this point the Pentagon had three elements interested in Phoenix: The Joint Chiefs were involved through SACSA, the Defense Department was involved through its office of International Security Assistance (ISA), and MACV was involved through CORDS.

For its part, SACSA was not in any chain of command but served the Joint Chiefs by bringing together representatives from the State Department, CIA, U.S. Information Agency, Agency for International Development, and the Department of Defense. Broad policies came down to SACSA from the White House through the National Security Council, while specific ideas regarding psywar and counterinsurgency came up from MACV or the individual services. SACSA assigned staff members to present recommendations for consideration by the Joint Chiefs. When the chiefs reached a decision on how a policy was to be implemented, the service responsible for implementing that policy was directed to provide manpower, materiel, and money. The Army Intelligence Corps had responsibility for over Phoenix.

SACSA itself was divided into three parts: for special operations in South Vietnam; for special operations elsewhere; and for Revolutionary Development programs in Vietnam, including Phoenix. MACV reported data on Phoenix to SACSA only when solicited. SACSA's Revolutionary Develop
ment component did studies and drafted papers on Phoenix for the Joint Chiefs' signature.

From the inception of Phoenix until January 1969, Major General William DuPuy served as SACSA. A former CIA deputy division chief, DuPuy met regularly with State Department officer Phil Habib and CIA Far East Division chief William Colby to coordinate unconventional warfare policy in South Vietnam. DuPuy was replaced by Major General John Freund, commander of the 199th Infantry Brigade while it supported Cong Tac IV. Freund had little clout with the Joint Chiefs and was fired after six months. Replacing him was the former SOG commander Brigadier General Donald Blackburn, under whose management SACSA had little involvement in Phoenix.

The Defense Department's office of International Security Affairs (ISA) was, by comparison, more deeply involved with setting Phoenix policy. According to its charter, ISA “provides supervision in areas of security assistance, Military Assistance Advisory Groups and Missions, and the negotiating and monitoring of agreements with foreign governments.” Insofar as Phoenix was a security assistance program funded by the military through CORDS—which ISA authorized in May 1967—ISA had overall supervision of the program.

Called the Pentagon's State Department by Robert Komer, ISA coordinated State and Defense department policy on Vietnam. ISA representatives sat on the State Department's Ad Hoc Psyops Committee, and ISA representatives, along with CIA officers Jack Horgan and Tom Donohue, sat on the State Department's Vietnamization Task Force, which, through the National Security Council, determined how to turn the war, including Phoenix, over to the Vietnamese.

Within ISA, policy regarding Vietnamization was coordinated by the Vietnam Task Force (VNTF). Created in mid-1969, the VNTF was headed by Major General George Blanchard until October 1970, by Major General Fred Karhohs till May 1972, and by Brigadier General David Ott till the cease-fire. Each VNTF chief in turn reported to ISA chief Warren Nutter's deputy for East Asian and Pacific affairs, Dennis Doolin, and Doolin's assistant, Tom Constant. It was at the VNTF that Phoenix policies were coordinated between Saigon and the concerned parties in Washington.

So it came to pass that in November 1969 the VNTF was saddled with the task of bringing into line with “USAID budgets and the law,” as one VNTF coordinator put it, a program that had been conceived by the CIA without any regard for legalities, and to do it without treading on the CIA's ability to conduct covert operations. It was a ticklish job that required squaring the hard reality of political warfare in Vietnam with the fluctuating political situation in Washington. The major effects were to bring the military into an adulterous relationship with the Special Branch and to set the State
Department on a collision course with international law.

The Vietnam Task Force's assistant for concepts and strategies became the staff officer responsible for Phoenix. A Marine lieutenant colonel standing over six feet tall and weighing over two hundred pounds, he was a tough Korean War veteran with a resume that included employment with the CIA and the State Department as well as with the military. From 1964 to 1967 he prepared military officers for civil operations service in Vietnam, and from late 1967 to early 1969 he was a member of CORDS, serving as John Vann's deputy for plans and programs in III Corps. Jack, as he has been dubbed, preferred to remain anonymous when we met at his home in 1987.

Jack was at the center of the Phoenix drama as it was acted out in Saigon and Washington, and according to him, the VNTF was “Laird's baby; it was his locus.”
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Jack often briefed the defense secretary and prepared “hundreds” of memos for his signature; he wrote papers for and briefed the ISA director Warren Nutter; he coordinated on a daily basis with members of the National Security Council, the Vietnam Working Group, the Special Studies Group, the Vietnamization Task Group (over which the VNTF “had cognizance”), and Tom Donohue at SAVA. On matters affecting the Joint Chiefs, Jack coordinated with its representative, Colonel Paul Kelly—later commandant of the Marine Corps. Jack's contact at SACSA was Colonel Ray Singer, and he worked with members of Congress investigating various facets of the Vietnam War. All in all, Jack was the man in the middle. He is an experienced military theorist, and his recollections and assessment of the Phoenix program are especially incisive and well worth noting.

Jack adhered to Robert Thompson's theory that in order to succeed, a counterinsurgency requires a coordinated military-police-intelligence attack against the insurgent's political leadership. But, Jack contended, although the theory is valid, Thompson's extrapolation from Malaya to Vietnam was doomed to fail, for whereas the ethnic Chinese leading the insurgency in Malaya were visibly different from the Malayan people, those in the VCI were indistinguishable from other Vietnamese and impossible to track by foreigner advisers. What's more, said Jack, “the Brits were shrewd enough to offer large rewards … to informers. But no Vietnamese was going to turn in Uncle Ho for fifty bucks.”
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Jack cited this misuse of resources as a major flaw in America's counterinsurgency policy in Vietnam. “Komer was trying to solve problems through Aid-in-Kind,” he explained. “Komer would evaluate people on how
many piasters they gave away. He did what corporate managers do; he set goals … which were higher than people could achieve. But these were managerial-type solutions, a repeat of World War Two, and this was a political war. And the way to win hearts and minds was through security.”

In order to establish security, Jack said, “You don't need to get each individual VCI; you just need to
neutralize
their organization. For example, the presence of a terrorist unit confers influence, so the idea is to prevent any accommodation. As John Vann explained, it's not enough to agree
not
to fight. That means you can still sell guns and medicine to enemy, like the Filipino group did in Tay Ninh. That is an active accommodation. The people had to have a dual commitment. They had to reject the VC
and
support the GVN. Many would support GVN, but not betray VC, and that was the problem.”

Even if the Vietnamese had not identified with the VCI, and even if American resources had been properly used, Thompson's three-pronged attack on the VCI was doomed to fail, explained Jack, because the CIA did not report to CORDS on highly sensitive matters, like tracking high-level penetrations. Phoenix could have been effective only if the CIA had brought its CIO, PRU, and Special Branch assets to bear. But when the CIA relinquished control of the program in 1969, it took those assets—which were the only effective tools against the VCI—with it. In order to protect its political intelligence operations, the CIA never shared its sources with the military officers or Public Safety advisers assigned to Phoenix—unless, of course, those people had been suborned.
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In this way the CIA kicked out from under Phoenix one of the three legs it stood upon. After June 1969 the agency conducted its own unilateral operations against the VCI, apart from Phoenix, through the PRU in rural areas and through the Special Branch in the cities. MACV and the Office of Public Safety in Saigon complained to their headquarters in Washington, making reform of the Special Branch and the PRU the central Phoenix-related issues, but these were areas over which the Defense and State departments had no influence.

After mid-1969 MACV tried desperately to obtain access to Special Branch intelligence in the DIOCCs. But, as Jack explained, Special Branch worked at the province level and above, primarily in urban areas, and avoided the rural areas where most DIOCCs were located. Nor did the Special Branch
desire to share sources with its rival, the MSS, forcing the CIA into greater dependency on the PRU for its rural operations. Having been excluded by the CIA, military advisers to Phoenix relied totally on their ARVN counterparts, with a corresponding emphasis on tactical military rather than political operations.