StormWarning’s Counterterrorism

Admittedly, this post is an opinion piece and since I am not directly involved in any form of counterterrorism employment, it is perhaps a mere flight of fantasy (maybe alot "out of the box" too). But in watching the Litvinenko poisoning affair unfold and with some of the many theories surrounding it including “he was assassinated” or “he wasn’t assassinated” or “he was involved in nuclear smuggling” or “he wasn’t involved in nuclear smuggling” etc., etc., etc., the thought occurred to me that perhaps it was time to resurrect the Phoenix Program from the Vietnam era (actually was suggested to me by a close friend who comes from that background). If Litvinenko was assassinated, it stands to reason that it was a selective and purposeful hit.

So why not (selective/targeted assassinations)? I continue to ask why Osama bin Laden remains either at large or not found. Even ask the question of why certain bothersome individuals now populating the world stage remain on the stage.

The following is a brief description of the Phoenix Program according to Wikipedia.

The Phoenix Program (Vietnamese: Kế Hoạch Phụng Hoàng, a word related to fenghuang, the Chinese phoenix) or Operation Phoenix was a covert intelligence operation and assassination program undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in close collaboration with South Vietnamese intelligence during the Vietnam War. The program was designed to identify and "neutralize"—capture; induce to surrender; kill; or otherwise disrupt—the noncombatant infrastructure of Viet Cong (VCI) cadres who were engaged both in recruiting and training insurgents within South Vietnamese villages, as well as providing support to the North Vietnamese war effort. The operation was directed by the CIA’s Evan J. Parker, then by Ted Shackley and his deputies, including Thomas Clines, Donald Gregg, and Richard Secord.

Gary Leroy and Karl Sherrick were two of the most effective advisors having 23 kills in the month of March. President Thieu would later declassify the program, and announce its existence publicly on October 1, 1969, in order to gain wider acceptance and cooperation from South Vietnam citizens.

Here is an interesting article on the subject: CIA and Operation Phoenix in Vietnam

Just in case you’re interested in reading further, here is the link to a Google search on "CIA phoenix program vietnam."

Here is a compilation of articles on the subject of the Phoenix Program. The Memory Hole > Documents from the Phoenix Program (from this site):

The Phoenix Project and Its Creator, Nelson Brickham
by Douglas Valentine

Nelson Brickham joined the CIA in 1949, serving first in the sedate Directorate of Intelligence, then transferring in 1955 to the Operations Division, where he served in the high-profile Soviet-Russia Division. Brickham gained a wide range of experience, from running black propaganda and false-flag recruitments, to gathering information on Soviet missile silos. Over the years he developed his own "systems approach" to spookery that he later employed when developing the Phoenix Program.

Brickham volunteered for duty in Vietnam in 1965. In the spring of 1966 he became chief of Field Operations in the Saigon station’s Foreign Intelligence "liaison" branch. He had an office in the U.S. Embassy Annex but also spent time with his senior Vietnamese Police Special Branch counterparts in their office at the National Interrogation Center.

Brickham managed the veteran CIA liaison officers who were working with Police Special Branch officers in South Vietnam’s 44 provinces. These Vietnamese Special Branch officers functioned like detectives in the intelligence branch of a big-city police department. They also managed the CIA’s gulag archipelago of secret interrogation centers. The Special Branch mounted both positive intelligence and counterintelligence operations. In some respects the Vietnamese Police Special Branch is the model for the covert action branch of the Department of Homeland Security.

Upon assuming the job as Chief of Field operations, Brickham inherited and sharpened three existing programs:

1) The Hamlet Informant Program (HIP), in which principal agents working for the CIA and Special Branch recruited informants in the hamlets. This was dangerous work, because no one likes a snitch, and because the snitches often lied and set-up innocent people. Informants know they are unliked, and they need to be motivated. Some of them were blackmailed into becoming informants; others did it for revenge. Money was the most common motivating factor used in recruiting people for the HIP Program. (The eerie resemblance to Ashcroft’s short-lived TIPS program need not be emphasized.)

2) The Province Interrogation (PIC) Program. The CIA began building a secret torture chamber in each of South Vietnam’s 44 provinces in 1964. Try to file an FOIA for information on them and see what happens. The CIA hired Pacific Architects and Engineers to build these facilities. Information from defectors and captured documents was put into the PIC Program reporting system, to which the CIA had total access.

3) Penetrations into the Viet Cong Infrastructure (usually by blackmailing or terrorizing a member of a targetted individual’s family) were the most sought-after means of gathering information. Brickham conducted penetrations unilaterally and in liaison with the Special Branch. CIA province officers trained their counterpart Special Branch officers on how to mount penetrations, how to interrogate suspects, and how to recruit informants.

As Chief of Field Operations, Brickham established six regional offices and put a CIA liaison officer in each of South Vietnam’s 44 provinces. CIA Station Chief John Hart liked this organizational scheme so much that he decided to put a CIA Covert Action paramilitary officer in each province, too. The CIA’s Covert Action program under Tom Donohue had a $28-million budget, while Brickham’s liaison budget amounted to a paltry $1 million a year. Many Covert Action officers were refugees from the Bay of Pigs fiasco. They ran the CIA’s Armed Propaganda Teams (versions of which will soon be deployed by the Department of Homeland Security), Census Grievance Program, Montagnard program, and most importantly, the Counter-Terror (CT) Teams. According to Brickham, the purpose of the CT Teams (versions of which will also soon be deployed in America through the Homeland Security covert action apparatus) was to do to the terrorists what they were doing to us. In Vietnam that meant leaving severed heads on fence posts.

Brickham would eventually bring the liaison and covert action people together in the Phoenix Program. The process began in July 1966 with the Roles and Missions Study, which concluded that military operations alone would not win the Vietnam War, and that a second "Pacification" war was needed 1) to destroy the Viet Cong Infrastructure and 2) win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese through political propaganda and psychological warfare. The Special Branch was assigned the task of attacking the Viet Cong Infrastructure, and Brickham focused on articulating the problem.

President Johnson sent CIA officer Robert Komer to Vietnam in August 1966 to organize this second Pacification war, through the Office of Civil Operations (OCO), formed in October 1966. (OCO is an early model of the current Office of Homeland Security.) OCO "coordinated" field units from the State Department, the Information Service, and the CIA, and had branches for psyops, political action, defectors, public safety, and economic development. At this point Brickham’s boss, Howard Stone, the chief of Foreign Intelligence in the CIA’s Saigon station, transferred Brickham and his field operations people out of the CIA station and put them in the Revolutionary Development Cadre Program, which was managed by CIA officer Lou Lapham. Considered the CIA’s "second" station, the Rev Dev Cadre program taught the CIA’s Vietnamese assets how to "pacify" the Vietnamese people.

So here is a book I want to find and read.

Outrageous thinking? Maybe. Uniformed thinking? Maybe. I’d love to hear an unclassified explanation of why such operations aren’t now feasible and why they wouldn’t shorten the path to peace from jihadist terrorism.  Or has the Phoenix actually already arisen?

International Issues, National Security, Opinions