The Phoenix Program and Contemporary Counterinsurgency

The Phoenix Program and Contemporary Counterinsurgency

Author: William Rosenau

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 48

ISBN-13:

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Modern-day advocates of the Phoenix Program argue that it was devastatingly effective against the Viet Cong infrastructure during the Vietnam War, but detractors condemn it as a merciless assassination campaign. The authors provide a fresh assessment of the program and identify aspects that are relevant for contemporary counterinsurgency.


From the Ashes of the Phoenix: Lessons for Contemporary Counterinsurgency Operations

From the Ashes of the Phoenix: Lessons for Contemporary Counterinsurgency Operations

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 35

ISBN-13:

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For five years during the Vietnam War, as part of its counterinsurgency strategy, the United States executed an attack, code named the Phoenix Program, against the Viet Cong Infrastructure (VCI). The VCI were the estimated 100,000 clandestine operatives living within South Vietnamese society that supported the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese units in the field. They performed recruiting, financing, political indoctrination, intelligence collection, and logistical support tasks. It was not until 1967 that a concerted effort was made to neutralize this component of the insurgency. As the program developed over time, it was extremely effective and severely hindered the insurgency's ability to support operations against the regime. Today, the United States is faced with another insurgency, conducted by militant Islamic fundamentalist organizations that seek the overthrow of friendly regimes, the reestablishment of an Islamic caliphate, and the eventual overthrow of Western civilization. This paper argues that as part of its counterinsurgency effort against this threat, the United States must neutralize the militant Islamic infrastructure (MI2) that enables the insurgency's global attacks. The paper provides an overview of the Phoenix Program, outlines the nature of the current insurgent threat, and identifies critical strategic lessons from the Vietnam experience that should be applied to a modern day Phoenix Program.


The Phoenix Program: from Vietnam to Black Sites-A Legacy of Torture

The Phoenix Program: from Vietnam to Black Sites-A Legacy of Torture

Author: Mike Maxey

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13:

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"During the Vietnam War, the United States attempted to defeat the North Vietnamese through assorted endeavors. One such effort was developed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1967 and referred to as the Phoenix Program. This covert operation combined existing counterinsurgency programs in a concerted effort to 'neutralize' the Vietcong infrastructure (VCI). Even though the program terminated at the war's end, Phoenix rose from the ashes to assist the United States across the globe. This research will explore Phoenix, its objectives, methods, and impacts, along with its application to contemporary practices utilized by the U.S. government against various adversaries. This analysis involves an examination of both primary and secondary sources related to Phoenix. Government documents from U.S. military and CIA archives, along with congressional hearings, explain the operation, its goals and effects. More recent secondary sources disclose aspects of the operation utilized as a mainstay of America's military and intelligence agency efforts to fight terrorism."--Abstract.


The Phoenix Program

The Phoenix Program

Author: Douglas Valentine

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2014-06-10

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 1497620201

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“This shocking expose of the CIA operation aimed at destroying the Vietcong infrastructure thoroughly conveys the hideousness of the Vietnam War” (Publishers Weekly). In the darkest days of the Vietnam War, America’s Central Intelligence Agency secretly initiated a sweeping program of kidnap, torture, and assassination devised to destabilize the infrastructure of the National Liberation Front (NLF) of South Vietnam, commonly known as the “Viet Cong.” The victims of the Phoenix Program were Vietnamese civilians, male and female, suspected of harboring information about the enemy—though many on the blacklist were targeted by corrupt South Vietnamese security personnel looking to extort money or remove a rival. Between 1965 and 1972, more than eighty thousand noncombatants were “neutralized,” as men and women alike were subjected to extended imprisonment without trial, horrific torture, brutal rape, and in many cases execution, all under the watchful eyes of US government agencies. Based on extensive research and in-depth interviews with former participants and observers, Douglas Valentine’s startling exposé blows the lid off of what was possibly the bloodiest and most inhumane covert operation in the CIA’s history. The ebook edition includes “The Phoenix Has Landed,” a new introduction that addresses the “Phoenix-style network” that constitutes America’s internal security apparatus today. Residents on American soil are routinely targeted under the guise of protecting us from terrorism—which is why, more than ever, people need to understand what Phoenix is all about.


Stalking the Vietcong

Stalking the Vietcong

Author: Stuart Herrington

Publisher: Presidio Press

Published: 2012-08-22

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0307823806

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In a gripping memoir that reads like a spy novel, one man recounts his personal experience with Operation Phoenix, the program created to destroy the Vietcong’s shadow government, which thrived in the rural communities of South Vietnam. Stuart A. Herrington was an American intelligence advisor assigned to root out the enemy in the Hau Nghia province. His two-year mission to capture or kill Communist agents operating there was made all the more difficult by local officials who were reluctant to cooperate, villagers who were too scared to talk, and VC who would not go down without a fight. Herrington developed an unexpected but intense identification with the villagers in his jurisdiction–and learned the hard way that experiencing war was profoundly different from philosophizing about it in a seminar room.


Learning to Forget

Learning to Forget

Author: David Fitzgerald

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2013-06-26

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 0804786429

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Learning to Forget analyzes the evolution of US counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine over the last five decades. Beginning with an extensive section on the lessons of Vietnam, it traces the decline of COIN in the 1970s, then the rebirth of low intensity conflict through the Reagan years, in the conflict in Bosnia, and finally in the campaigns of Iraq and Afghanistan. Ultimately it closes the loop by explaining how, by confronting the lessons of Vietnam, the US Army found a way out of those most recent wars. In the process it provides an illustration of how military leaders make use of history and demonstrates the difficulties of drawing lessons from the past that can usefully be applied to contemporary circumstances. The book outlines how the construction of lessons is tied to the construction of historical memory and demonstrates how histories are constructed to serve the needs of the present. In so doing, it creates a new theory of doctrinal development.


Counterinsurgency

Counterinsurgency

Author: Douglas Porch

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-07-11

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 1107027381

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Controversial new history of counterinsurgency which challenges its claims as an effective strategy of waging war.


Facing the Phoenix

Facing the Phoenix

Author: Zalin Grant

Publisher: W. W. Norton

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9780393029253

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Journalist/author Grant writes about the defeat of the US in Vietnam, focusing on Tran Ngoc Chau, a Vietnamese soldier and statesman who advocated a subtle application of political and military programs instead of the heavy-handed military approach that was adopted by the US. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR


Phoenix and the Birds of Prey

Phoenix and the Birds of Prey

Author: Mark Moyar

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2022-01-18

Total Pages: 673

ISBN-13: 1496203895

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This study explodes prevailing myths about the Phoenix Program, the CIA's top-secret effort to destroy the Viet Cong by neutralizing its "civilian" leaders. Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with American, South Vietnamese, and North Vietnamese sources, Mark Moyar examines the attempts to eradicate the Viet Cong infrastructure and analyzes their effectiveness. He addresses misconceptions about these efforts and provides an accurate, complete picture of the allies' decapitation of the Viet Cong shadow government. Combining social and political history with a study of military operations, Moyar offers a fresh interpretation of the crucial role the shadow government played in the Viet Cong's ascent. Detailed accounts of intelligence operations provide an insider's view of their development and reveal what really happened in the safe havens of the Viet Cong. Filled with new information, Moyar's study sets the record straight about one of the last secrets of the Vietnam War and offers poignant lessons for dealing with future Third World insurgencies. This Bison Books edition includes a new preface and chapter by the author.


Misalliance

Misalliance

Author: Edward Miller

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2013-04-01

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 0674075323

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Diem’s alliance with Washington has long been seen as a Cold War relationship gone bad, undone by either American arrogance or Diem’s stubbornness. Edward Miller argues that this misalliance was more than just a joint effort to contain communism. It was also a means for each side to shrewdly pursue its plans for nation building in South Vietnam.