I am not sure there are enough Americans aware of the fact that Phoenix is alive and well,and it's not the V.C.who are the object of the Operation any longer,rather it's you and me.Too many wanting to assign "gun control or confiscation" to these random shootings,but motive runs much deeper then that...
snips....
.... The CIA’s Phoenix program changed how America fights its wars and how the public views this new type of political and psychological warfare, in which civilian casualties are an explicit objective. 1
The CIA created Phoenix in Saigon in 1967 to “neutralize” the leaders and supporters of the Communist-led insurgency in South Vietnam. Referred to by the CIA as the Viet Cong Infrastructure (VCI), the targets were civilians who were working at regular jobs while secretly engaged in administrative and support functions for the armed guerrillas. These people were patriots resisting foreign aggression and seeking to take back their country, but they were considered spies and terrorists. American officials wrote laws that allowed US military forces to detain, torture, and kill them by every means possible, including B-52 raids, battalion-sized “cordon and search” operations, and death squads.
Phoenix was originally called ICEX-SIDE, for Intelligence Coordination and Exploitation – Screening, Interrogation and Detention of the Enemy. But the name was quickly changed for symbolic purposes. In time, the mere mention of Phoenix, the omnipotent bird of prey with a blacklist in one claw and a snake in the other, was enough to terrorize not only targeted members of the VCI, but the entire civilian population.....
.....Towle also conducted “offensive counterintelligence operations” that consisted of disrupting antiwar demonstrations by building bonfires and inciting people to riot, so the Capital Police could be called in to bash heads and arrest demonstrators. During the period he was involved in military operations against American civilians, Towle was rated by his commander as “one of the most dedicated, professionally competent and outstanding junior officers I have had the privilege to serve with anywhere.” [These masked goons running around America are all useful idiot assets for the criminals at Langley DC]
But Towle didn’t want to go to Vietnam, and in January 1971 he requested release from active duty, citing his “complete abhorrence for the Vietnam War and the continued US presence there.” Towle filed for release under Army Regulation 635-100; but his request was denied and his “triple six” credentials withdrawn. 17 He was sent to Vietnam in March 1971 as the Phoenix “Phung Hoang” coordinator in Vung Liem District in Vinh Long Province. 18
During his stint as a Phoenix coordinator, Towle spent most of his time “sifting through the District Intelligence and Operations and Coordination Center’s target folders looking for aliases. 19 A sergeant assigned to the DIOCC managed funds obtained from the CIA for informers and the PRU team. The sergeant also acted as liaison with the Vinh Long PIC. Towle lived in a villa with six other people in the MACV Civil Operations and Rural Development Support (CORDS) district team. 20 Behind the villa were the PRU quarters. “We turned up the radio when we heard the screams of the people being interrogated,” he said.
“I didn’t know what the PRU were doing ninety percent of the time,” Towle explained. “They were directed by the CIA’s Province Officer in Charge.”
To clear operations against the VCI, Towle had to get permission from Tom Ahern, the CIA’s Province Officer in Charge. 21 Regarding operations, Towle said, “I went after an average of eight to ten VCI per week. The Special Branch people would come up with the names, which I would check. Then the PRU went out. They went out every night and always killed one or two people. But verifying whether or not they were VCI was impossible. They’d tell you who they had killed, and it was always a name on the list, but how could I know? We had charts on the wall, and we’d cross off the name, and that was it.”
Towle kept score, until the day the district chief took him for a ride in a helicopter. As they were flying over a village, they saw an old man and a girl walking hand in hand down the main street. The district chief said to the door gunner, “Kill them.”
The gunner asked Towle, “Should I?”
Towle said no.
“That was the beginning of the end,” Towle said. “Ahern called me on the carpet. He told me the province chief was angry because I had caused the district chief to lose face.”
There was another reason why Towle didn’t enjoy working in Phoenix. Ahern started a bounty program in which cash prizes were offered as an incentive to inform on VCI. Ahern even arranged a contest between the Phoenix district advisors to see who could rack up the biggest body count. Disgusted, the advisors got together and decided not to participate.
A few days later John Vann, who ran all CORDS operations in IV Corps, arrived in his private helicopter. 22 “He flew right into the DIOCC,” Towle recalled. “He was very critical. He asked where all the bodies and weapons were, then sent me into a funeral in progress. He had me open the casket to identify the body.
“I hated Vann,” Towle said. “He was really into body counts.”
On another occasion, while Towle was eating dinner in the CORDS villa, the district chief stormed into the room with the PRU team and dumped a dirty bag on the table. Eleven bloody ears spilled out. The district chief told Towle to give the ears to Ahern as proof of six VCI neutralized.
“It made me sick,” Towle said. “I couldn’t go on with the meal.
"After the ear thing,” Towle continued, “I joined up with the air rescue team on one of its missions. I was promoted to captain while I was there, and received a message from the district senior advisor saying, ‘Don’t come back.’ So I went to see a friend in the Judge Advocate General’s office in Can Tho, and he reported the ear incident to General Cushman. The general came down in a chopper and handed the province senior advisor a letter of reprimand. After that, I knew I could never go back, so I had one of my friends in Vung Liem bring my bags up to Can Tho.”
Towle was removed as the Vung Liem Phoenix coordinator on 20 July 1971. Ten days later he received orders reassigning him to Kien Phong Province. “It was the proverbial One-Way Ticket to Cambodia,” he sighed. “The last two guys sent out there as Phoenix coordinators were killed by their own PRU. So I went back to see the major running Phoenix administration in Can Tho, Major James Damron, but he refused to reassign me. So from there I went back to the JAG office, where my friend and I drafted a letter to the Phoenix Directorate in Saigon.”
In his letter to Phoenix Director John Tilton, Towle said that “War crimes as designated by the Geneva Conventions were not uncommon” in the Phoenix program. He requested “immediate release” from the program under MACV 525-36.
The next day Major Damron reassigned Towle to the Tuyen Binh DIOCC – the same DIOCC where the two previous “triple sixers” had been killed. To avoid certain death, Towle hid at a friend’s house in Can Tho until 10 August, when the new CORDS chief of staff, General Frank Smith, approved his release.
Referring to “the case that appalled us all,” a senior CORDS official suggested that a records check be made in Saigon “before an officer or enlisted man is assigned to a Phung Hoang position in Vietnam” as a way to “reduce chances of assignment of unsuitable personnel.” [Yeah heaven forbid we put a human being in a position that requires a yes man zombie killer DC]
At the same time “unsuitable” Sid Towle was quitting Phoenix, CORDS Director William Colby was assuring Congress that no Phoenix advisor had resigned on moral grounds through MACV 525-36.
Colby also told Congress that incentive programs (like the one Ahern organized in Vinh Long Province) were not policy. At the exact same time, however, Phoenix Director Tilton was organizing a High Value Rewards Program. In explaining the program to his wife, Tilton’s deputy Colonel Chester McCoid wrote, “A very substantial reward is placed on highly placed VC political leaders, as much as $8,000 at the rate on the black market or twice that amount on the official rate of exchange. Our idea is to induce the lower-grade VCI to turn their bosses in for the bounty money.”
Said McCoid with dismay, “our original proposal was watered down by the bleeding hearts, who think placing a price on your enemy’s head is excessively cruel! This despite Colby’s support.” [A perfect example of said zombie killer DC]
full text
https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2019/09/part-2-cia-as-organized-crimevietnam.html
