55 years ago on July 15, 1971, the curtain of secrecy that had prevented public scrutiny of the CIA’s “Operation Phoenix” in South Vietnam began to open, and the revelations of the program’s illegality and brutality caused widespread outrage.
Operation Phoenix, which the CIA had started in 1968, was widely known to be what the CIA called a non-military pacification program aiming “to destroy the enemy [civilian] infrastructure, root out the shadow government, and identify and arrest the infrastructure agents where they exist,” and install a Saigon-sponsored civilian administration throughout South Vietnam. Even though critics of Operation Phoenix claimed that one of its main methods of rooting out the shadow government was to assassinate anyone associated with it, the CIA and the Saigon government denied it. When questioned about such killings by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February 1970, the head of Operation Phoenix called such deaths “aberrations,” saying that the program’s "policy is to assure that they are captured and held." Then in the summer of 1971, under the pressure for disclosure that had been created by the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the House Subcommittee on Government Operations disclosed that during 1970 and early 1971, Operation Phoenix had been responsible for the summary execution of nearly ten thousand anti-Saigon civilians and the imprisonment of more than seven thousand after secret non-judicial proceedings, during which the accused had no right to present a defense or be represented by an attorney. Put another way, Operation Phoenix officially admitted responsibility for murdering or imprisoning more than 285 South Vietnamese civilians every week because they were supposedly “guilty“ of actively opposing the U.S. refusal to allow the Vietnamese people to govern themselves. As one House member said, “I am shocked and dismayed” by the new information. “Assassination and terror by the Vietcong or Hanoi should not, and must not, call forth the same methods by Saigon, let alone the United States, directly or indirectly.” “The Administration,” he continued, “must totally disassociate itself from this Phoenix program and insist unequivocally that Saigon stop dead in its track this mechanism for civilian murder or stand criminally condemned before the world.” *https://portside.org/2026-07-13/week-peoples-history-jul-15-21-2026 <https://portside.org/2026-07-13/week-peoples-history-jul-15-21-2026>* *https://unredacted.com/2010/11/23/no-foia-request-needed-the-douglas-valentine-vietnam-collection/ <https://unredacted.com/2010/11/23/no-foia-request-needed-the-douglas-valentine-vietnam-collection/>* -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#42464): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42464 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/120269160/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
