Phoenix Program

Phoenix Program was a joint CIA / MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observation Group) operation during the Vietnam War. Its purpose was to destroy the Viet-Cong infrastructure within the Republic of South Vietnam by targeting its covert operations and operational support assets via assassination, torture, sabotage and counter-intelligence.

This is Douglas Valentine's summary of this program:

Created by the CIA in Saigon in 1967, Phoenix was a computer-driven program aimed at "neutralizing", through assassination, kidnapping, and systematic torture, the civilian infrastructure that supported the insurgency in South Vietnam. It was a terrifying "final solution" that violated the Geneva Conventions and traditional American ideas of human morality.[1]

SourceWatch Resources

• John Negroponte

External Resources

• Douglas Valentine, "Bob Kerrey, CIA War Crimes, And The Need For A War Crimes Trial", CounterPunch, May 17, 2001.
• Douglas Valentine, The Phoenix Program, originally published by The William Morrow Company in 1990, and by Avon Books in 1992. And this is what Alfred W. McCoy, Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, had to say about it:

This definitive account of the Phoenix program… remains sobering reading for all those trying to understand the Vietnam War and the moral ambiguities of America's Cold War victory.