Phoenix Program (52 page)

There were rare instances when a CIA province officer would send the PRU down to a DIOCC to assist the Phoenix adviser. Other times the PRU fed “washed-out” bodies into the PICs. On the other side of the coin, the Special Branch was usually chasing dissidents, not the VCI. A study by Robert Thompson on behalf of the National Security Council revealed the Special Branch to be undertrained, understaffed, suffering from bad morale, and racked by corruption. Jack put it this way: “Whereas the average cop on the street would take fifty piasters as a bribe, when the Special Branch got involved, the price went up.” He added, “There was good reason to believe that the VC had penetrated the inner circle of the Special Branch. This is why Colby requested that two FBI agents be sent to Saigon to set up a counterintelligence operation.”

Knowing that the PRU and Special Branch were fractured beyond repair but that problems within them would remain hidden under layers of CIA security and that CIA officers would continue to mount their own operations apart from Phoenix, the State and Defense departments were compelled to seek other solutions. The question became whether—in the absence of intelligence officers—soldiers or policemen were better suited to mount anti-infrastructure operations.

“What you needed,” Jack suggested, “was to be flexible in order to conform to Hamlet Evaluation System ratings; you needed police forces in secure areas, and the military in areas controlled by the enemy. But generally, in guerrilla warfare it's more military than police, and so that's where the emphasis should fall.” Nevertheless, Jack explained, this flexible approach, applied to Phoenix after 1969, was slow to develop and basically ineffective. “In the beginning of the Phoenix program,” he said, “the Army and Marines had a surplus of armor and artillery officers, who were assigned to the program but had no knowledge of running intelligence operations. We were sending out the third team against the first team. Then, when they began staffing the DIOCCs and PIOCCs with military intelligence officers, it became clear that their training was inadequate for the job. Six weeks is not enough time to train a Special Branch officer.

“So it became clear that what they needed was experienced police officers, and in 1970 the police through USAID began playing a larger role. But there were defects on this side, too. They should have had seasoned civilians coming into AID, but instead they got all the losers in that one. The civilians coming to AID were running away from bad marriages and
bad careers. Many were alcoholics; they'd get a Vietnamese girl and enjoy the cheap living. These people had a good war.” But they had little success against the infrastructure.

Jack said he believed that military policemen were the answer, and on his advice, on a trial basis, Colonel Albert Escola was appointed the Phoenix region coordinator in IV Corps. Now corporate secretary of Bechtel, Escola had received a degree in police administration from Michigan State in 1957 and was known as a protege of General Abrams's. For “improving procedures against the VCI,” Escola was awarded the Legion of Merit in 1970 and a few years later was promoted to major general—rewards never bestowed upon Doug Dillard.

In any event, Phoenix as an organization proved far less than the sum of its parts. Moreover, by 1969 concerns about its concept had moved from the boardroom into the courtroom, where Phoenix was coming under attack as an assassination program. Suddenly its problems were legal and moral, not organizational and procedural.

Jack said, “Colby pushed Khiem to get Phoenix legitimized so it would have a constitutional basis in Vietnamese law, similar to the FBI or the CIA. Colby tried to make Phoenix legitimate internal security—that to be a member of the Communist party is illegal. This is the nail upon which Phoenix is hung: If you're a Communist, you're breaking the law. Then Phoenix goes out and gets these guys.”

Of course, Phoenix had been going out and getting those guys for fifteen years by the time 1970 rolled around. The effect of those fifteen years of illicit covert action, on both Vietnamese and Americans, is the next subject.

*
Jack suggested that a point system—ten points for a COSVN cadre down to one point for a messenger boy—with a monetary equivalent would have resulted in a truly qualitative attack.

*
According to Michael McCann, Saigon Public Safety director from July 1969 until April 1972, his biggest Phoenix problem was that the CIA used the Public Safety program as a cover for its case officers, bringing all Public Safety advisers under suspicions.
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Likewise, said Fred Dick, chief of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in Vietnam, “Everyone had his rock to hide under, but CIA kept using our rocks, listing its officers as narcotics advisors to the embassy.”
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CHAPTER 21

Decay

After August 1969, writes Professor Huy, “Power in Saigon belonged to three generals: Nguyen Van Thieu as President; Tran Thien Khiem as Prime Minister; and Cao Van Vien as Chief of the Joint Staff. They kept their positions until the eve of South Vietnam's collapse.”
¹

As was customary in Vietnam, according to Huy, power was administered by each man's wife. “Mrs. Thieu dealt with the businessmen, especially those of Chinese origin, and had her shares in profits obtained from import, export and international trade.” Mrs. Khiem “fixed a price for new appointments for the posts of chief of province, chief of district, and chief of police services at the provincial and district levels. Mrs. Vien's domain was the army: contractors working with the army could pass through her intermediary, and she had her tariff for a quick promotion in the army.”
²

With the consolidation of power by these three men came a resurgence of what CIA Summary 0387/69, dated September 12, 1969, called “influence by the widely hated Can Lao group of the Diem era.” The CIA memo named as members of the neo-Can Lao cabal “Foreign Minister Lam, as well as the ministers of information, economy, finance and legislative liaison.” The memo noted that Duong Van “Big” Minh had predicted “that renewed Can Lao influence could lead to a tragic clash between Catholics and Buddhists.” And, the memo noted, “apprehension is likely to increase over reports that
the new information minister [Thieu's cousin, Hoang Duc Nha] has appointed some 20 cadre from the Nhan Xa Party—a neo-Can Lao group—to key subordinate positions.”

Indeed, political developments in 1969 mirrored those of 1955, when Ed Lansdale was told that Diem “needed to have his own political party.”
³
Likewise, to strengthen Thieu's position, the CIA in 1969 financed the creation of the National Social Democratic Front, described by former CIA officer Frank Snepp as “a pro-government coalition of political parties.” And, just as in Diem's day, Snepp writes, “the CIA lavished large sums of money on the Thieu government to be used in cowing and ‘neutralizing' its opposition,”
⁴
the opposition being those nationalist parties, like the Dai Viets, that had relations with the Buddhists. With the Americans chasing the VCI, these domestic groups became primary targets of the Special Branch and its stepchild, Phung Hoang.

In particular, Thieu felt threatened by Tran Ngoc Chau, the popular nationalist whose persecution was said to symbolize the “fratricidal” nature of the Vietnam War. But in fact, Chau's persecution had less to do with regional differences than with rampant corruption, itself fueled by the CIA's bottomless black bag and irrational obsession with internal security at any cost.

Chau's problems began in 1969, when he launched an anti-corruption campaign against Thieu, his old classmate from Fort Bragg. The gist of Chau's claim was that Nguyen Cao Thang—a wealthy pharmacist and former Can Lao from Hue—was using CIA funds to undermine the National Assembly. Chau's crusade was seen as a threat to GVN stability, and as a result, the CIA sent two case officers to offer him enough money to start his own political party in exchange for backing off. When Chau declined, Rod Landreth informed General Dang Van Quang that Chau was secretly in contact with his brother, Tran Ngoc Hien, a senior Cuc Nghien Cuu officer in North Vietnam. Quang issued an arrest warrant for Chau, charging him with the capital crime of espionage.

Hien was arrested, Chau went into hiding, and on orders from Washington, Ambassador Bunker ordered Chau's case officer, John Vann, to break off contact. At that point Vann, in June 1969, summoned Frank Scotton from Taiwan and arranged for him and Chau to meet in a safe house in Gia Dinh. The conversation, according to Scotton, went like this: “I said to Chau, ‘Sergeant Johnson is standing by near the Cambodian border with some of his Special Forces friends. They're dependable, and they'll help you get out. But it's now or never.'
⁵

“Chau was very emotional that night in Gia Dinh,” Scotton continued. “He said, ‘To run now would be the same as admitting I'm a Communist.
And I'm not. So I will not run.' ” And so Chau remained in hiding until captured in late 1969.

Ironically, while Thieu was using Phoenix to repress his domestic opponents, his own cabinet was crawling with Communist agents. But in order to perpetuate the myth of GVN stability, the CIA was reluctant to publicize this fact. Consequently, says renegade CIA officer Sam Adams, in May 1969 station chief Ted Shackley “indicated on a visit to Washington his belief that the Vietcong had only 200 agents in the South Vietnamese Government. He spoke from ignorance. An in-depth research study going on at that time suggested the real number of such agents was more like 30,000.”
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Although thirty thousand sounds improbably high, the extent to which the GVN was infiltrated was revealed in a counterintelligence operation mounted by CIA officer Ralph McGehee in 1969. Begun in 1962, Operation Projectile relied on a penetration agent inside what the 1969 Phoenix End of Year Report called “a COSVN level intelligence net directed against the office of the President of South Vietnam and other ministries of the GVN.” The leader of the spy ring was Vu Nhoc Nha, President Thieu's friend and chief adviser on Catholic affairs. Nha, a Catholic, had resettled in South Vietnam during the 1954 Lansdale-inspired exodus from North Vietnam. The spy ring's highest-ranking member was Huynh Van Trong, Thieu's special assistant for political affairs and director of the Central Intelligence School, a position that placed him at the top of the CIO.

McGehee inherited Projectile in 1969, when, after six weeks as Gia Dinh province officer in charge, he became the CIA's liaison to the Special Branch in Region V. “In this capacity,” he explained, “I supervised [six] other agency case officers working with specific elements of the Special Police in and around Saigon.”
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The principal Vietnamese player in the drive against the Cuc Nghien Cuu's strategic intelligence networks was Special Branch chief Nguyen Mau. Born in Ninh Thuan Province (where Thieu was born and reared), Mau was graduated from the Da Lat Military Academy in 1954. In 1963 Diem appointed him sector commander and province chief of Thua Thien Province and mayor of Hue, in which capacity he put down the Buddhist crisis leading up to the coup. In the reorganization after the coup, Mau was made a Montagnard task force commander with the ARVN Twenty-second Division, a job he held until 1967, when he was put in charge of Cong Tac IV. The following year he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and made director of the Special Branch of the National Police.

Soft-spoken and smart, Mau wanted nothing to do with Phoenix. In a letter to the author, he says his “great concern in taking command of the
Special Branch was the unjustified arrest, false accusation and arbitrary detention. Those bad manipulations couldn't be stopped since the province chiefs, police chiefs and other officials would do anything to make Phoenix score, which assured them job security and higher regard. They knew that Phoenix was under the supervision of an American Ambassador, and that President Nguyen Van Thieu always listened to this powerful personage. They kept the Special Branch in the provinces too busy with arrest in village, confession worksheet and charge procedure at the Provincial Security Committee, while I wanted to direct the Special Branch into professional activities: organizational penetration gathering information relating to policies and campaign plans, spotting the key leaders for neutralization. But I did not argue with them. I felt so alone I kept my mouth shut.”

Mouth shut, Mau concentrated on smashing the Cuc Nghien Cuu's strategic intelligence networks within the GVN. When McGehee gathered enough evidence to convince Shackley to let him roll up Nha's net, Mau galvanized his forces, and the Special Branch sprang into action. Mau's “small
secret police cadre
prepared individual files on each person to be arrested,” McGehee writes. “Late one afternoon he called a task force in to his office, then cut them off from outside contact: He briefed each three-man arrest team separately then passed them copies of the file on their target individual. At midnight the police fanned out through Saigon and pulled in the net.”
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The operation was a smashing success. House searches turned up “microfilm of secret documents, document copying cameras, one-time radiop encoding and decoding pads, radios, secret ink”
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and other tools of the trade. The Special Branch also had the good fortune of arresting a visitor of one of the targets, who “turned out to be the head of a military intelligence net”
¹⁰
in the MSS. All in all, fifty people were arrested and forty-one spies were tried and convicted. The group included businessmen, military officers, teachers, students, and two top-ranking Chieu Hoi officials.

However, showing that the GVN was “so riddled by enemy spies that they were able to operate under the nose of the President,” McGehee laments, was “not the kind of success that the CIA's top officials wanted to see.” That reinforced his suspicion that the CIA was unwilling to admit either the strength of the enemy or the weakness of its ally. To McGehee “it was obvious that we were bolstering a hopelessly corrupt government that had neither the support nor respect of the Vietnamese people.”
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