Phoenix Program (68 page)

He added that “reports on operations ran up through another channel—through Special Branch.” As for the relationship between the Special Branch and Phoenix, Coughlin observed that the directorate was “very compartmented,” that a reserve officer on staff might have worked for the CIA, and that Chester McCoid's replacement as deputy director, Colonel Herb Allen, “was not in the know” and “was selected for that reason.” Coughlin asserted that the Green Beret murder trial “changed the whole thing” and that employees of the Defense Investigative Service started arriving, running agents, and doing background investigations for Phoenix in 1972.

A different perspective on PHREEX was provided by Coughlin's deputy, Lieutenant Colonel George Hudman, a veteran intelligence officer who was also a friend of John Tilton's. “Coughlin was not an intelligence officer,” Hudman explained, “and, as a result, was not trusted by Tilton. So I briefed PHREEX to Jake [George Jacobson] and General Forrester…. Basically, it explained why Phoenix didn't work. People in the agency were looking for a way to back out, and PHREEX was it. We took all the data compiled from all Phoenix centers, put it all together, and showed that the program was failing because it was too big and because the military had no understanding of it. They had no understanding of intelligence. They would round up VCI suspects, and they resorted to body counts. But intelligence isn't predicated on body counts.”
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Despite blaming the military for the failure of Phoenix, Hudman explained that “Shackley, then Polgar to Tilton was the real chain of command” and that “Bob Wall [then senior adviser to the Special Branch] oversaw Phoenix.”

Indeed, as the U.S. military prepared to leave Vietnam, the CIA needed to find a new way of managing the attack against the VCI without appearing to do so. In other words, the concept of an attack against the VCI was still considered vital; what was sought was a new organization. The process began when General Abrams suggested in October that “responsibility for the full
anti-VCI mission should be assigned to the National Police Command on a time-phased basis commencing 1972”
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and that Phung Hoang committees and centers be deactivated as a way of “increasing the emphasis on the antiVCI responsibilities of district and province chiefs.”

These recommendations were studied in Washington by a working group composed of Josiah Bennett (State), John Arthur (AID), George Carver (CIA), John Manopoli (Public Safety), General Karhohs (ISA), the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and SACSA. After each agency had considered the proposals, Bennett shot a telegram (196060) back to Saigon indicating tentative approval, although, in deference to the CIA, “with the Special Branch collating intelligence and maintaining dossiers on the VCI, and with positive action responsibilities assigned to the PRU, NPFF and other elements as required.” A few weeks later Ambassador Bunker sent a telegram (17357) to Secretary of State William Rogers saying that Robert Thompson and the GVN had also approved of the plan. The working group then prepared to send a team, headed by the Vietnam Task Force's action officer Jack, to Saigon to determine which “key people” could be reassigned to Phoenix. When the team arrived in Saigon in mid-November, according to Jack, “Tilton got the okay from Carver to give me the Phoenix information.”

Despite its tentative approval of the plan to phase out Phoenix and turn the management of the attack against the VCI over to the National Police Command (NPC), the CIA had no such intentions. In fact, in October 1971 orders went out to all province Special Branch advisers to begin forming Special Intelligence Force Units (SIFU). Eight-man teams composed of four volunteers each from the Special Police and Field Police, the SIFU were targeted specifically at high-level VCI, as substitutes for the PRU. They were also a sign that the CIA planned to manage the attack on the VCI through the Special Branch, while keeping Phoenix intact as a way of deflecting attention and accountability.

For Phu Yen Province PIC adviser Rob Simmons—who worked under cover of the CORDS Pacification Security Coordination Division but who never even met the CORDS province senior adviser—Phoenix in 1972 was merely a library of files to cross-check information, not the CIA's partner in the attack on the VCI. “We would go to Phoenix,” Simmons told me, “and they'd show us a file, and we'd use the file to build a case. And every report we generated, we sent to the PIOCC. But Special Branch had its own files. And if at the PIC we got someone who cooperated, we would withhold his file—if he was going to be doubled—because we knew the PIOCC was penetrated.”
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Furthermore, according to Simmons, the Phu Yen Province officer in charge concentrated on unilateral operations and political reporting, because he considered (as had Rocky Stone) Special Branch liaison too exposed to be secure.

As William Colby explained it, “CORDS people were kept out of the station. And even though Special Branch coordinated through the province senior adviser, the station had a clear chain of command in intelligence matters.”
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Indeed, Phoenix was a valuable resource, and it allowed the CIA to say that it had no officers in the districts. But the CIA was not about to turn over its Special Branch files to the National Police Command (NPC) or submit its agents to NPC authority. And when those proposals returned to Carver's desk for final approval, there they died. In December 1971 Carver wrote a working paper entitled “Future U.S. Role in the Phung Hoang Program.” Its stated purpose was “to ensure that the GVN Phung Hoang Program continues to receive effective U.S. advisory support during up-coming 18-24 month period with an option for continuance if required.”

Using familiar terms, Carver defines Phoenix as: a) “the intelligence effort against the higher levels of the VCI who possess information … on enemy plans and intentions; b) the intelligence effort directed against the lowest level of the VCI [who] perform an essentially political function of relating the Communist party mechanism to the population; and c) an action effort to neutralize the targets in (a) and (b).” He also notes that, on November 27, 1971, General Khiem changed his mind and said that “Phung Hoang Centers and Committees will be retained,” that the Central Phung Hoang Committee would be upgraded and chaired by Khiem himself, that the Phoenix program “will be continued indefinitely,” and that “included … will be a rewards program funded by the GVN.” One month after Bunker had killed the High Value Rewards Program, it was born anew as a GVN program, as part of Phung Hoang.

The main reason for not scrapping Phoenix, Carver writes, was the “crucial” need to destroy the VCI. However, he suggests that the titles Phoenix and Phung Hoang adviser be dropped, and he warns against withdrawing advisers in provinces where the VCI presence was heavy. “The minimum staffing level appears to be about thirty positions which would provide coverage of the program at national, regional and a few key provincial echelons,” Carver writes, adding, “Plans should be drawn up to have the normal U.S. advisory structure absorb anti-VCI advisory duties beyond the transitional period of the drawdown.” He envisioned the complete withdrawal of Phoenix advisers by the end of 1972, but only in a way that would provide the United States with “a capability to monitor not only the GVN program but also to develop some semblance of an independent estimative capability.” That job would fall, after 1973, to the 500th Military Intelligence Group as well as the CIA.

As ever, the CIA got its way. On December 28, 1971, State Department officer Lars Hydle, in response to Carver's paper, wrote “that Phung Hoang
should be handled by the Special Branch within the National Police Command … that Phung Hoang Committees should continue in existence,” and that province and district chiefs should assume responsibility “beginning with the most secure areas where there are few RVNAF main forces. Perhaps U.S. military advisors will continue to be needed as long as RVNAF retains action responsibilities for Phung Hoang, but as
action is transferred to the Special Branch, the advisory role should be taken over by the Special Branch advisor, the CIA man”
(author's emphasis).

This is the “reprise” John Tilton imagined: the return of the Special Branch to prominence in anti-VCI operations. By 1972 it was policy, as articulated by Bob Wall: “I was really pushing Special Branch to support Phoenix during the Easter offensive, while the VC were overrunning Hue. [The National Police commander Major General] Phong had the chief of police in Hue on the phone. I told him what to do, and he relayed the message … Where the Special Branch contributed,” Wall said, “was in Hue in April 1972; there was success.”
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As soon as the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) attacked, the VCI in Hue were to begin sabotage and terror attacks within the city, direct NVA artillery fire, and guide assault columns. However, reports Robert Condon, the Phoenix coordinator on the scene, “Before the enemy agents could be activated, about 1000 of them who had been long identified by the PIOCC were arrested. Our intelligence indicated that the NVA commanders were blind in Hue, due to this timely Phung Hoang operation.”
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“Phoenix,” Bob Wall insisted, “represented the strategy that could have won the war.” But, he lamented, “Ted Shackley stuck to the traditional route of only collecting intelligence and gave Phoenix away.” Removing the Special Branch in 1969, Wall contended, “kicked the teeth out of the program.

“The Special Branch was up to the job,” Wall added. “Mau had instituted a training program in 1970, but Khiem prevented them from getting good-quality people because Mau had demonstrated the operational capabilities necessary to pull off a coup. Not that he was close to trying it, but when Thieu listed the possibilities, Mau was at the top: He was smart, charismatic, courageous, cold-blooded, politically minded, and he had access to the agency and troops who could pull it off.”

A Catholic and central Vietnamese with Can Lao connections, Mau was good at his job. But he was a consultant to PA&E, and he had given the CIA access to the accounting records of the Special Branch, and he had organized his own political party, the Nationalist Students, all of which combined to make him a liability. So after Thieu had won reelection in October 1971, Mau was replaced as chief of the Special Branch by Brigadier General Huynh Thoi Tay; Colonel Song was replaced as the chief of Phoenix by Nguyen
Van Giau; and General Phong
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was replaced as the director general of the National Police by CIO chief Nguyen Khac Binh, even though, according to Tom Polgar, it was a mistake to have one man in both positions. Polgar added that Rod Landreth and Phil Potter negotiated the transfer of Phoenix and the PRU to the GVN with Generals Binh and Dang Van Quang.
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Meanwhile, the CIA was distancing itself from the PRU. III Corps adviser Rudy Enders noted that PRU national commander Major Nguyen Van Lang was fired for selling positions and shaking down his region commanders and that “by the time 1972 rolls around, Ho Chau Tuan [former commander of the Eighth Airborne Battalion at Tan Son Nhut] had taken over in Saigon.”
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Michael Drosnin quotes Ho Chau Tuan as saying, “The main mission of PRU was assassination. I received orders from the Phoenix office, the Vietnamese and Americans there, to assassinate high-level VCI. We worked closely with Saigon with the CIA from the Embassy, and in the provinces with the CIA at the consulates, to decide who to kill.” Writes Drosnin: “Tuan offered to name names of high-level Americans who directly ordered assassination strikes, but then he backed off. ‘I have enough experience in this profession to be afraid,' he explained. ‘I know the CIA. I might be killed' ” (
New Times
, 1975).
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In 1972 the PRU were advised in I Corps by Patry Loomis, in II Corps by Jack Harrell and Bob Gilardo, in III Corps by Rudy Enders and Felix Rodriguez, and in IV Corps by John Morrison and Gary Maddox.

Phoenix operations in the field in 1972 varied from region to region. Rudy Enders told me he had the VCI on the run in III Corps. And in IV Corps, where the PRU were most active, success was reported against the VCI. But in I Corps and II Corps, where the NVA concentrated its attacks in 1972, the situation was much harder to handle. Quang Tri fell in April, and in early May the NVA captured Quang Ngai City, which it held until September. In Binh Dinh Province, forty thousand Koreans refused to fight, several thousand unpaid ARVN soldiers threw down their rifles and ran away, and the NVA seized three district capitals. With the ARVN and Territorial Forces in retreat, Thieu turned to Phoenix.

In May 1972, writes Michael Klare, “Thieu declared martial law and
launched a savage attack on the remaining pockets of neutralism in the big cities. Government forces reportedly cordoned off entire districts in Hue, Danang and Saigon and arrested everyone on the police blacklists. The reputable
Far Eastern Economic Review
reported on July 8, 1972, that 50,000 people had been arrested throughout Vietnam during the first two months of the offensive, and
Time
magazine reported on 10 July that arrests were continuing at a rate of 14,000 per month.”
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For an eyewitness account of Phoenix operations in II Corps in 1972, we turn first to Lieutenant Colonel Connie O'Shea, who in January 1972 was transferred from Saigon to Phoenix headquarters in Nha Trang, as deputy to II Corps Phoenix Coordinator Colonel Lew Millett.

“The problem with the program,” according to O'Shea, “was that people were being rotated out, but replacements were not being made. And as the intelligence officers went home, the Phoenix guy took over that job, but not the reverse. It was a one-way street, and Phoenix fell to the wayside.

“Millett was trying to keep Phoenix people doing their Phoenix job,” O'Shea continued, “and he spent a lot of time going around to the province chiefs, trying to keep them focused on the VCI. But it was hard during the spring offensive. So Millett and [Region II Phung Hoang chief] Dam went around trying to keep the organization in place, telling the Phoenix coordinators that if they had to do S-two work, not to forget their anti-VCI job. That was number one. Our other job was making ourselves visible with Colonel Dam, so the Vietnamese would not get the sense that we were pulling out. We kept a high profile. We were missing a couple of province guys, and an awful lot of DIOCCs were missing advisers. The district senior advisers were not taking over but were trying to get the Vietnamese to take over. So we spent a lot of time touring and helping the Phung Hoang Committees and DIOCCs collect intelligence and prepare operational plans.