PHOENIX: THE CIA'S BIGGEST ASSASSINATION PROGRAM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100190002-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 8, 2011
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: August 22, 1975
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST-
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Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/03/08: CIA-RDP90-01208R000100190002-1
By Michael Drosnin _ . - .
? A Vietnamese peasant woman
padded quietly across the tile floor, bring-
ino dinner to the Americans. Captain
:Sidney Towle Jr. and four other U.S.
Army officers were seated around a large
wooden table in the old French villa that
served as district headquarters in Vung
Liem, a village in the Mekong Delta..
Overhead, a ceiling fan rotated silently.
Midway through the meal, the -
'village chief, Major Vinci. barged in- He
was just back from a mission, sweaty. dir-
ty, streaked with mud. Several of his men
marched in behind him, still carrying
their weapons.
Vinn strode foward and dumped a
bag on the dinner table. Eleven bloody
cars spilled out onto the red and white
checkered tablecloth. "Show these to
Colonel Joy:' he said. "Now he has. his.
proof. Six VC. You don't need a second
ear from the last man."
"It made me -sick," says Towle. re-
calling that evening in June 1971-.
couldn't go on with the meal, and I
couldn't go on with what I was doing in..
Vietnam." Now a Boston stockbroker.
Towle was then a "triple-six," an Army
counter-intelligence officer (MOS 9666)
who directed a small part of a secret war
aimed not at the-enemy's soldiers but at
its civilian leaders.
. . "It was an assassination. cam-
paig*n, " says Towle. "My job was to iden-
tify and eliminate VCI, the Viet Cong'in-
frastructure'-the communists' shadow
2 2 AUG 11375
government. I worked directly with two
.Vietnamese units, very tough guys who
didn't wear uniforms, an informal group
that became very formal at night. In the
beginning they brought back about 10
percent alive. By the end they had
stopped taking prisoners.
"How many VC they got. I don't
Fcrget Castr o. T ie
.CAA actually
.succeededin
assassinafing
10,000 Civilians in
Sout h VJeInaM.
ere9 3th -.1 he II
story, th1d by the
Americans and
? V et a .se who
c rr ed. out the
Orders
. F?..' ew'+!-?rinr=.e,iS ~+~%if3:n.??Y_~`~:araa
:~~:zA"m'!.*~iJV7.'~iY (7`3y*?__ ' ~~ ,'!4.~--rtiiti!wia+~i
know," continues Towle. -'I saw a hell of
a lot of dead bodies.