Shadow Warrior (53 page)

Prior to taking office in January 1969, Nixon, along with Kissinger, who would become Nixon's national security adviser, vigorously defended the American commitment in Vietnam. Indeed, during the campaign, the Republican candidate had criticized the Johnson administration for not putting more military pressure on North Vietnam. The presence of American troops in Southeast Asia, he declared, was necessary to contain Communist China. Kissinger admitted privately that the strategic assumptions that had led to escalation might have been flawed, but he believed that America's prestige was now on the line, and it must persevere. In truth, Vietnam was but a pawn in the larger game that the two men had in mind. They envisioned a US-led new world order that would be based on great-power negotiation and accommodation of strategic and economic interests. At the heart of this plan were openings to Communist China and the Soviet Union. For these things to occur, there would have to be peace in Vietnam. But it would have to be “peace with honor,” as Nixon put it, that is, there would have to be no hint of defeat.

The president and his national security adviser decided to gamble. They would intensify the bombing campaign against North Vietnam and communist positions in the south, and authorize a joint MACV-ARVN incursion to wipe out the communist sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos. At the same time, to undercut the antiwar movement at home, the administration would order a gradual US stand-down in South Vietnam. Perhaps North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front would feel pressured enough to negotiate with the Thieu regime, and the United States could quietly repair to the sidelines. “We were clearly on our way out of Vietnam by negotiation if possible, by unilateral withdrawal if necessary,” Kissinger declared in his memoirs.
¹

The White House was playing a dangerous game, however. What if none of the parties involved—Hanoi, the NLF, Saigon—cooperated? The CIA warned the White House that the ARVN could not hold out against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army without US help. Even after plans for modernization of the South Vietnamese military were completed in 1972, government forces were “simply . . . not capable of attaining the level of self-sufficiency and overwhelming force superiority that would be required to counter combined Viet Cong insurgency and North Vietnamese Army main force offensives,” said Abrams.
²

In March 1969, Nixon dispatched Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird to Saigon to notify Abrams that a gradual drawdown of American combat forces was at hand. MACV, backed by the CIA, expressed strong reservations. Laird subsequently reported that in his opinion, the US military mission was being too pessimistic. Once freed from the stifling presence of the huge American expeditionary force, the ARVN would be able to hold its own against all comers. The secretary of defense, a former power in the House of Representatives and still a force in the Republican Party, would become a relentless advocate for military withdrawal.

The following month, Vice President Ky came to Washington to prowl the corridors of power. During one meeting, Laird made it clear that the role of the United States henceforward would be to enable the South Vietnamese to choose their own form of government, whatever that might be. How did the South Vietnamese government like the term “Vietnamization”? Just fine, Ky replied gloomily. On June 8, Presidents Nixon and Thieu met at Midway Island, where Nixon announced that 25,000 US combat
troops (out of a total of 542,000) would be out of Vietnam by August. On November 3, in a major address to the American people, he outlined his plan for turning the war over to the South Vietnamese. After seeming to appease opponents of the conflict, he lashed out at them in the same speech. Antiwar protesters were irrational and irresponsible. He openly appealed for the support of “the great silent majority” and then concluded with a melodramatic warning: “North Vietnam cannot humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.”
³
Lest the communists think that he was throwing in the towel, Nixon ordered the air force and the navy to conduct top-secret saturation bombing raids against communist sanctuaries in Cambodia.

Meanwhile, in Hanoi, representatives of the NLF and other front organizations announced the formation of a Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) for South Vietnam. This would be the capstone for the village and hamlet liberation committees and give form and structure to the communists' subsequent claims to be the legitimate government of South Vietnam. At the same time, the Central Committee of the Lao Dong, the Communist Party of Vietnam, instructed communist operatives in the south to focus once again on political organization and small-scale guerrilla warfare. In effect, Colby, Abrams, and Bunker had been put on notice by Washington and indirectly by Hanoi. The other war had become the only war, and they had a very limited amount of time to win it.
⁴

Colby and Abrams decided that the quickest and most effective way to secure victory was to break the back of the Viet Cong. “That infrastructure is just vital,” Abrams proclaimed to his staff, “absolutely critical to the success of either the VC military or . . . political [effort].You wipe that part out and goddamn it, if he's got 50 divisions it's not going to do him any good.” Colby could not have agreed more. The CORDS chief now believed that Phoenix, the war against the Viet Cong Infrastructure, must receive top priority. “You'd have a village election, and the VC would come in and chop off the village chief's head in front of his family and the villagers and then shoot his family. You are not going to have much community development in that environment.” Colby continued to insist that the communist cadres were imposing their will on the rural population rather than winning their support through appeals to nationalist sentiment and promises of social and economic justice. The enemy had “a wonderful cadre machine,
absolutely magnificent cadre machine,” Colby observed at a MACV commanders' meeting, “but it hasn't turned into mass political support.” The CORDS chief was probably correct, but his observation was largely irrelevant. Vietnamization was in full swing, but for the villager it was all about not burning bridges with the winning side. One did not have to show political support for the communists, merely to stay out of the way, turning a blind eye when they beheaded the district chief.
⁵

The Provincial Reconnaissance Units continued to be the heart of Phoenix. This collection of ARVN deserters, Viet Cong turncoats, common criminals, and Nung tribesmen was funded and supervised by the CIA through early 1970. The Agency provided weapons and training and paid the salaries of the strike team members, salaries that averaged three times what was paid to regular ARVN soldiers. Bounties were available for information, captured weapons, prisoners, and, in some cases, dead bodies. Because the Agency's funds were hidden within the regular budgets of other government entities, an accurate accounting is impossible; estimates of the amount the United States spent on Phoenix ranged from $7 million to $15 million a year. The CIA vastly improved its purchasing power by buying South Vietnamese piasters on the black market, which was illegal under both Vietnamese and US law.
⁶

Colby would insist throughout the life of the Phoenix program that the primary objective of the operation was capture and interrogation, not assassination. Indeed, he deeply resented the term “assassination.” What the PRUs and US Navy SEALs were doing was both legal and justified. The South Vietnamese National Assembly had passed legislation in 1967 that forbade “any activity designed to publicize or carry out Communism.” Those convicted under the law were guilty of treason. Moreover, according to historian Guenter Lewy, between 1957 and 1972 the Banh-anh-ninh—the terror, security, and espionage branch of the Viet Cong—carried out 36,725 targeted killings and abducted another 58,499 South Vietnamese. If there were deaths associated with Phoenix, Colby insisted, they came about as part of a normal and appropriate reaction by the PRUs when Viet Cong cadres fought back or tried to run. A US Information Service officer working with CORDS developed a set of posters with the names and photos of suspected members of the local Viet Cong Infrastructure emblazoned
on them. “In a significant contrast to the old Western posters offering a reward for the subject ‘dead or alive,'” Colby recalled with pride, “a statement at the bottom of the poster conveyed the word to those described that the amnesty program would receive them without punishment for whatever they had done.”
⁷

Frank Snepp, a CIA operative who came to Vietnam in 1969 and who spent a lot of time with the PRUs and at the Provincial Interrogation Centers that housed the people they apprehended, identified a continuing problem, however, one that eventually placed a premium on killing rather than capture. The Phoenix operatives would conduct a successful “snatch” operation and deliver their captives to the PICs. Following interrogation, they were jailed. The more incorrigible were housed in Chi Hoa prison in Saigon—a facility that CORDS officer Gage McAfee described as looking like something out of
Midnight Express
—
and on Con Son Island on the southern coast of South Vietnam, soon to be notorious for its “tiger cages.” (The “tiger cages” were tiny bamboo cells used to house Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army prisoners.) But most were released within six months. The strike team members were not going to risk life and limb to capture the same person over and over. “Let's say you're a Tucker Gougleman [the CIA man in charge of overseeing Phoenix] or a SEAL guy running a PRU team,” McAfee said. “You go out and you're targeting some fairly highlevel VC infrastructure guy. You pick him up. It's harder to capture a guy than kill him. You run the snatch operation correctly. You bring him in with some evidence against him. Six months later the guy is out. He knows the province chief's brother. So the PRU team is not going to risk its collective life. Next time they are going to shoot him.” Frank Snepp recalled: “Several times, I said, ‘I'm going with you [the PRU] to make sure you capture this guy.' . . . What they would do was to take me to the edge of the hamlet, and I would lie low. They would go zipping in and come back empty-handed. What happened to our guy? I would inquire. ‘Oh, he tried to escape.'”
⁸

Corruption was also an ongoing problem for Phoenix. It was not unusual, especially in the northern part of South Vietnam, for the provincial or district power structure to treat the PRUs as their private armies, extorting protection money, intimidating rivals, and suppressing dissent. Sometimes one reconnaissance unit would be pitted against another in local vendettas. It was relatively easy for the well-to-do to buy their way out of a PIC, and some people were imprisoned there just so they would.
“The VCI blacklist eventually became corrupted,” said PRU adviser Mike Walsh. “It became a place to put the names of these corrupt senior officers' enemies, to avoid repayment of debt or even to settle a score.” Underpaid provincial and district province chiefs would frequently rake money off the top of funds that were given to them to provide for their prisoners' care.
⁹

Finally, there were rumors of atrocities by the PRUs and even by the Americans. On the night of February 25, 1969, Team One of SEAL Platoon Delta, under the command of Lieutenant Robert Kerry (the future senator from Nebraska), infiltrated the village of Thanh Phong. Its mission was to capture the National Liberation Front district committee chief, who, according to intelligence, was supposed to be sleeping there. To conceal their presence, “Kerry's Raiders,” as they called themselves, murdered villagers on their way in. Thinking they were under fire from the Viet Cong, they then killed more villagers as they retreated. When the smoke cleared, Kerry's Raiders had twenty-one dead civilians to their credit, with not a Viet Cong cadre among them. Word of these and other misdeeds inevitably percolated up to headquarters. In August 1969, Colby asked MACV to require that all American Phoenix advisers attend lectures at Vung Tau on South Vietnamese police procedures.
¹⁰

In the fall of 1969, Colby hired a young lawyer named Gage McAfee as MACV-CORDS legal adviser. McAfee, who spoke both French and Vietnamese, was to put together a team that would bring accepted police practices and the rule of law to the Phoenix program. In 1968, the Vietnamese officials working with Phung Hoang (the Vietnamese name for Phoenix) had three categories in which detainees were to be placed: there were class “A” offenders, who were communist cadres working at the district level and up; class “B” offenders, who were active in the communist infrastructure as tax collectors, terrorists, or propagandists, or performing any other function on behalf of the NLF; and class “C” offenders, individuals who had not done anything concrete to benefit the Viet Cong but were suspected sympathizers. Those arrested were tried by a Province Security Committee, but the proceeding was considered extrajudicial, and there was no appeal. The suspect had no right to counsel, no right to see his dossier, and no right to testify, confront accusers, or question the prosecution. Security forces could hold a detainee for a total of forty-six days while they gathered evidence. At trial, three pieces of evidence were sufficient for conviction, and acceptable evidence ranged from allegations to confessions under duress to actual
captured documents.
¹¹
McAfee and his team preached Western legal methods to the South Vietnamese—consistent procedures, rules of evidence, a detainee's right to legal defense, the requirement that there be a new piece of hard evidence every year to keep a dossier alive—but much of this fell on deaf ears. Characteristically, the Thieu regime saw the anti-VCI campaign not only as an instrument with which to combat the communists but also as one to stifle noncommunist dissent.