during the Vietnam conflict, was responsible for the
* arrest, incarceration, torture and murder of over 50,000 innocent civilians.
*
* The CIA and U.S. Army acclaimed it a success and a model for future "human
* pacification" programs.


* http://ursula.blythe.org/NameBase
*
* Valentine, Douglas. The Phoenix Program. New York: William Morrow, 1990.
* 479 pages.
*
* Operation Phoenix
*
* Along with saturation bombing of civilian populations, Operation Phoenix
* has to rate as America's most atrocious chapter in the Vietnam War.
*
* Between 1967 to 1973 an estimated 40,000 Vietnamese were killed by CIA-
* sponsored "counterterror" and "hunter-killer" teams, and hundreds of
* thousands were sent to secret interrogation centers.
*
* William Colby's records show 20,587 dead between 1968 and 1971, though he
* likes to believe that most were killed in military combat and afterwards
* identified as part of the VC infrastructure.
*
* Other testimony suggests that Colby was a bit disingenuous in these 1971
* hearings. At one point Congressman Ogden Reid pulled out a list signed by
* a CIA officer that named VC cadre rounded up in a particular action in
* 1967.
*
* "It is of some interest that on this list, 33 of the 61 names were
* women and some persons were as young as 11 and 12," noted Reid.
*
* Valentine spent four years researching this name-intensive book, and
* managed to interview over 100 Phoenix participants. If post-Vietnam
* America had ever looked into a mirror, this book might have become a
* bestseller. Instead it wa