Phoenix Program (48 page)

“The idea,” according to Shackley, “was that Evan Parker, and three or four others, would slowly peel back people as the military marched in.” Thereafter the role of the Phoenix director was to meet “once or twice a week with the [Vietnamese] to iron out problems. Was there a province chief not willing to cooperate with the PIC? Was he funneling people to the Military Security Service, rather than to the Special Branch? Maybe there was overcrowding in a PIC that province or region couldn't resolve. What to do? Well, the Phoenix director would go to the secretary-general and cite specific cases. There might be a knowledgeable source in a PIC who needed to be brought to Saigon. Were the line managers looking at the dossiers? Yes or no?”

Despite the fact that the Phoenix director, a senior CIA staff officer, had cognizance over the PIC program, “Phoenix,” insisted Shackley, “had nothing to do with intelligence operations. It was completely separate from Special Branch trying to penetrate the Vietcong. Any guy who could be used as a penetration agent was spun out of Phoenix.” That was the job in 1969 of special unit analysts under the management of CIA officer George Weisz. In this way, Phoenix evolved into a massive screening operation, with its parent organization, the Special Branch, having, in the words of Ralph Johnson, the “intelligence coordination mission” of “keying important VCI political leaders and activists so as not to clog up the system with volumes of low level VCI cadre or front members.”
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And so, in June 1969, the CIA receded into the dark corners of CORDS. Evan Parker, having brought the Phoenix program to fruition, was appointed deputy chief of the CIA's Special Operations Division and was replaced as Phoenix director by veteran CIA officer John Mason. Described by Shackley as “a highly decorated World War Two Army colonel who served with the agency mostly in Europe (and with George French in Turkey),” Mason was a personal friend of General Creighton Abrams. “He followed Abrams's tanks through Europe with an infantry battalion,” said Jim Ward, who, as the
CIA's Vietnam desk officer in 1969, asked Mason to take the job. At first he refused, but eventually Mason succumbed to Ward's supplications—to his eternal regret.

“Mason caught all the Phoenix flak.” Ward sighed. “The last time I spoke with him, the only thing he said to me was ‘You bastard.'”

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Drugs were also smuggled on CIA/SOG black flights, which were exempt from customs checks. Likewise, SOG personnel carried military assistance adviser “Get out of Jail Free” cards, exempting them from search and seizure by their adversaries in the Military Police and Criminal Investigation Division.

CHAPTER 19

Psyops

The fabric of South Vietnamese society, always loosely knit, began to unravel in 1969. As prospects for a clear-cut military victory for either side slipped away, psychological operations became the weapon of choice in what was an increasingly political war. Both sides played the psywar game. Its only rule: Post your own score.

The insurgents scored the first points in June 1969, when they formed the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) to represent them in South Vietnam and at the negotiating table in Paris. The PRG was immediately recognized by thirteen Communist bloc and ten nonaligned nations—mostly Arab. Support was expressed as well by Scandinavian, African, and Latin American countries. One month later COSVN issued Resolution 9 directing its officers “to prepare political cadre to insure a capability to govern in anticipation of a coalition government in South Vietnam.”
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Liberation Committees were made subordinate to the PRG and were renamed Revolutionary Committees. At the village and hamlet level the insurgency was reinvigorated.

Back at CIA headquarters in Washington, it was recognized that: “There were sufficient communist forces to keep the war going, and progress depended on the morale and determination of the communists.”
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Morale, however, is intangible, so CIA propagandists cited irrefutable statistical evidence as proof that the VCI was losing, not gaining—as was the reality
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—support in the villages. In April 1969 HES reports indicated that more than three
quarters of all Vietnamese were living in “secure” villages.

The purported success was attributed to VCI manpower shortages caused by aerial and artillery bombardment, defoliation campaigns, forced relocations, and mass arrests. The VCI was said to be collecting less tax money as a result of Phoenix and, out of desperation, to be using as cadre children who were too young to be issued IDs. But “the bulk of manpower shortages,” the Phoenix 1969 End of Year Report claimed, “were caused by deserters who rallied to the GVN.” In Vinh Long and Sa Dec provinces, it said, “manpower shortages at district, village and hamlet levels ranged from 45 to 100 percent during 1969. Unable to cope with the GVN accelerated pacification campaign, VCI members by late November 1969 had fled to areas of sparse population and even Cambodia where they could exert little influence over the population.”
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From the language of the Phoenix report, one could easily think that the few VCI members who had not defected were hiding in Cambodia. But the author of “The Truth About Phoenix,” whose area of operations included Sa Dec and Vinh Long provinces, claims that most Chieu Hois simply regurgitated the American line in order to win amnesty, make a quick visit to their families, enjoy a few home-cooked meals, then return to the fray, fat and rested. Legitimate Chieu Hois, An writes, were pariahs who were not accepted back in their villages, while other Chieu Hois were trained by the VC to infiltrate the program and become spies.
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In any event, from 1967 onwards, all “rallied” VCI members were included in Phoenix neutralization statistics, and by 1969 more than a hundred thousand defectors had been processed through fifty-one Chieu Hoi centers. The Chieu Hoi program was managed from 1966 until March 1969 by Ogden Williams, then turned over to Eugene P. Bable, a career CIA officer who had served with Ralph Johnson in the Flying Tigers.

Evan Parker stated that Chieu Hoi offered more satisfaction than Phoenix, and “Chieu Hoi,” said Jim Ward, “was a great program. Well done.” Ward explained that most Chieu Hoi advisers were from the U.S. Information Service, although some were State Department or military officers. “But they wouldn't have more than one American adviser in a province and,” Ward added, “it was usually the Vietnamese operating at district level.”
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Upon arriving at the Chieu Hoi center, the defector was “interviewed” and, if he had information on the VCI, was sent to the PIC; if he had tactical information, he was sent to military interrogators. Next came political indoctrination, lasting from forty to sixty days, depending on the individual. “They had a formal course,” said Ward. “They were shown movies and given lectures on democracy.” Upon graduation each was given an ID card, a meal, some money, and a chance to repent. Political indoctrination was handled by defectors who said they had been well treated by the Americans
and had decided it was better to live for a
free
Vietnam than to die for the totalitarian North Vietnamese. “Chieu Hoi had lots of guys who had been with the enemy before,” Ward continued, “who knew how to talk to these people and would persuade them to join the Territorial Forces or the PRU.” Others joined armed propaganda teams, which went back into VC territory to contact Vietcong families and recruit more Vietcong defectors.

“The great thing about the Chieu Hoi program,” Ward noted, “is that we didn't have to put people in jails or process them through the judicial system, which was already overcrowded. You could talk to the Chieu Hois when you brought them in—talk to them about what the government was doing for the people.

“They'd say, ‘But it's a crooked government.'

“You'd say, ‘Wait a minute. The government's providing seeds for rice. This enables us to grow three to four times as much rice in the Delta as in the past. Now that's good.'

“The guy'd say, ‘I didn't know that.' All they'd hear from the Communists were the contradictions they'd devise, if they didn't already exist. But now he was getting the picture from our side. And a lot of them would flip-flop because of it. Now some guys would come in, Chieu Hoi, spend time with their families, then go back out in the field again. That happened, but not to the extent that you might think. I'd say less than ten percent.”

Despite his praise for the Chieu Hoi program, Jim Ward said that “Americans should have been targeted only against the North Vietnamese and left the South Vietnamese forces to handle the insurgency,” even though such a strategy would have precluded Phoenix. However, having made the mistake of military intervention, Americans looked for psychological ploys, other than an appeal to nationalism, to win people over to the GVN. High on the list were bounty programs. The Phoenix 1969 End of Year Report cites as an example Kien Phong Province, where the Phung Hoang Committee printed and had distributed a wanted poster featuring photographs of eight members of the Cao Lanh City sapper unit. “While a RD Cadreman was tacking up a poster he saw one of the members passing by,” the report says. “He called the police who arrested the suspect. Two other members were later arrested. Three were induced to rally claiming they were rendered ineffective having their names and faces known.”
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In Phong Dinh Province the Vietnam Information Service (VIS) broadcast the names of VCI through loudspeakers mounted on sampans while traveling through the canals of Phung Hiep District. “While the team was conducting the operation, a village level VCI cadre walked into the Phung Thuan DIOCC,” saying he had to rally, “because
Phung Hoang
must know about him if the members of the District Revolutionary Committee were known to Phung Hoang, as broadcast by VIS.”
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No one wanted to find his name on a Phoenix blacklist; it meant the PRU would creep into his hooch some night, or black helicopters would swoop down on his village. And because fear of Phoenix was an effective means of creating informers and defectors, an intensive publicity campaign called the Popular Information Program began in October 1969. Under the banner of “Protecting the People from Terrorism,” U.S. and GVN psywar teams crisscrossed the countryside, using Phoenix-supplied radios, leaflets, posters, TV shows, movies, banners, and loudspeakers mounted on trucks and sampans to spread the word. Using the eye of God technique, taped broadcasts were pitched at specific VCI members. A typical broadcast would say, “We know you, Nguyen Van Nguyen; we know where you live! We know you are a communist traitor, a lackey of Hanoi, who illegally collects taxes in Vinh Thanh Hamlet. Soon the soldiers and police are coming for you. Rally now, Nguyen Van Nguyen; rally now while there is still time!”
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So important were psyops that the Phoenix Directorate produced a thirty-minute movie explaining how Phoenix “Helps Protect the People from Terrorism.” A copy of the film was sent to each province for use on local TV stations and in movie theaters. Writes Phoenix Coordinator John Cook: “[T]he concept was simple; in practice it was suicidal.”
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Suicidal, he explains, because the VC found the lightly armed psyops teams easy targets. Cook therefore used the psyops team as bait to flush out the VC, whom he then ambushed with his Phoenix task force. In this way psyops were transposed into combat operations, turning psychological defeat into military victory, with a body count to boot.

In addition to the Phoenix movie, hundreds of thousands of copies of “an illustrated booklet describing the Phung Hoang Program in cartoon
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format” were also distributed throughout Vietnam (in Montagnard and Cambodian dialects as well), “with the goal of placing ten to fifteen in each hamlet. Culture-drama teams used the booklet as a scenario for skits.”
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On January 22, 1970, thirty-eight thousand of these leaflets were dropped over three villages in Go Vap District. Addressed to specific VCI members, they read: “Since you have joined the NLF, what have you done for your family or your village and hamlet? Or have you just broken up the happiness of many families and destroyed houses and land? Some people among you have been awakened recently, they have deserted the Communist ranks and were received by the GVN and the people with open arms and family affection. You should be ready for the end if you remain in the Communist ranks. You will be dealing with difficulties bigger from day to day and will suffer serious failure when the ARVN expand strongly. You had better return to
your family where you will be guaranteed safety and helped to establish a new life.”
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Psyops leaflets stressed traditional Confucian values of obedience to authority and family and portrayed the Communists as a socially disruptive force that could be stopped only by Phoenix. But the fact that the GVN could reach the “people” only through “media” like leaflets and loudspeakers indicates how far removed it was from the reality of life in rural villages. As An notes in “Truth About Phoenix” while the GVN relied upon cartoon books to sell itself to a largely illiterate people, “The VC goes from person to person talking to ears,” proving that technology was no substitute for human contact.
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Consequently, in 1969, the Phoenix Directorate directed Phung Hoang Province committees to expand the Hamlet Informant program (HIP) drastically. District chiefs were instructed to conduct classes “on GVN programs, progress, potential and ideology for residents who had VC/VCI relatives or leanings.” There was a one-week course “with extensions for problem individuals.” Day care and lunch were made available in “vacated” homes. Chieu Hoi was emphasized, “counseling” was provided, and insofar as the goal was the neutralization of VCI, “the populace was encouraged to report the activities of the VCI by dropping a note addressed to the police in local mailboxes.” This method “was credited with approximately 40% of the information used in Phung Hoang operations” in Dinh Tuong Province.
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