PHOENIX PROGRAM UNDER HOUSE INQUIRY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80R01720R001100090041-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 15, 2004
• Sequence Number: 41
• Publication Date: October 18, 1972
• Content Type: NSPR

NATIONAL GUARDIAN
Approved For Release 2004/10120 0 `4-% 80R01720R001100090041-2
By Richard E. Ward
A congressional subcommittee has
.charged the Pentagon with failure to
investigate charges of war crimes
carried'out under the U.S.-sponsored
Phoenix program in South Vietnam.
The criticism of-the Pentagon was
made in a report by the House of
Representatives Foreign Operations
and Government Information sub-
committee, which noted that many of
the so-called "Vietcong" killed under
the Phoenix "pacification" program
were innocent civilians. The report
also expressed reservations about
U.S. support for a program that
"alleged1 enrh,dec _torture, murder
and inhumane treatment of South
.Vietnamese civilians." -
The report, not approved for public
release by the parent Government
Operations Committee, was sum-
marized in an Oct. 3 UPI dispatch.
According to the news agency, the
Department of Defense refused to
investigate the charges when they
were brought to the attention of high
officials.
Public release of the cautiously
worded subcommittee report has
apparently been delayed because
members of the full committee are
less than enthusiastic about con-
fronting the issue of U.S. war crimes.
In July 1971 at the time of hearings
that constituted the basis for the
report, two subcommittee members,
Rep. Ogden R. Reid (D-N.Y.) and Rep.
Paul McCloskey (R-Calif.) charged
outright that the Phoenix program
had been. responsible for "in-
,discriminate killings" aid the ill__egal
imprisonment cif thousands in South
Vietnam.
In Sptember of this year, during a
hearing before the Senate Refugee
subcommittee, a top Defense
Department official described the
Phoenix, program as an intelligence
operation. He was challenged by Sen.
Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) in a
surprisingly sharp interchange.
Kennedy asked how the more than
20,000 "Vietcong" were killed and the
witness insisted that the deaths oc-
curred during "military" operations.
'intelligence operation'?
During the 1971 'hearings the
House subcommittee heard testimony
from William E. Colby who headed the
"pacification" effort from mid-1968 to
mid-1971. Colby stated that under the
Phoenix program 20,587 members of
the "Vietcong" infrastructure" were
killed from 1968 through May 1971.
Colby, who had been a top CIA of-
ficial before serving in Saigon on
assignment from the White House,
insisted that the Phoenix program was
"entirely a South Vietnamese
operation," although he conceded it
had been originated by the CIA.
Colby tried to portray the U.S. role
as primarily an "advisory" one, but he
also admitted that U.S. personnel
participated in the Ram_ ingof suspects
and the capture of prisoners. Ad-
mitting "occasional" abuses-the
assassination of civilians--had oc-
curred, Colby stated that "we put a
stop to this nonsense" in collaboration
with the Saigon authorities.
With a facade of candor, Colby's
testimony actually was riddled with
lies about the Phoenix program, which
was initiated under President
Johnson and expanded by the Nixon
administration. Essentially, ' the
Phoenix, program attempted to
identify and then assassinate cadres
of the National Liberation Front, the
political leaders on a local level of the
anti-U.S. resistance in South Vietnam.
The program had access to secret
CIA funds as well as large ap-
propriations from the U.S. military and
economic assistance programs.
Assassination teams of mercenaries
and U.S. agents who compiled lists pf
persons to be assassinated were
secretly- funded.
These aspects of the Phoenix
program were revealed in testimony
before the same House subcommittee
in August 1971 by K. Barton Osborn,
who served as an Tnteffigence agent
assigned to provide information to the
Marines and who also worked for the
CIA Phoenix program. Based in
Danang, Osborn supervised agent
networks for 15 months beginning in
1967.
Osborn contradicted Colby's
disclaimers of direct U.S. respon-
sibility for the Phoenix program and
made it clear that U.S. personnel
participated in murders and tortures.
He said U.S. "advisors" were really
directing the program.
Osborn also described atrocities he
witnessed, including seeing Viet-
namese pushed from helicopters, a
practice known as "airborne in-
terrogations." He also described how
Marine intelligence officers held a
Vietnamese woman prisoner in a small
cage at their headquarters and
starved her to death, refusing to give
her either food or water.
These and other examples given by
Osborn provide only a small glimpse of
the war crimes committed by the U.S.
in South Vietnam. The atrocities were
an intrinsic part of the Phoenix
program directed by the highest U.S.
authorities on White. House orders.
Obviously the Defense Department is
not going to investigate these war
crimes.
Approved For Release 2004/10/28 : CIA-RDP80R01720R001100090041-2