In my earlier post on the CIA's "preemptive manhunt" in the Middle East, there was a mention of the Phoenix Project from Viet Nam. Memory Hole has a cache of documents that weren't destroyed by the CIA. There is also some information on the project's creator, Nelson Brickham.
Created by the CIA in Saigon in 1967, Phoenix was a program aimed at "neutralizing"—through assassination, kidnapping, and systematic torture—the civilian infrastructure that supported the Viet Cong insurgency in South Vietnam. It was a terrifying "final solution" that violated the Geneva Conventions and traditional American ideas of human morality.
...Luckily for history, [project creator Nelson] Brickham kept copies of the documents he wrote while with the CIA; otherwise, there would be no documentary evidence of how Phoenix was actually created. During the evacuation of Saigon in April 1975, the CIA destroyed most of the documents it had about its assassination program, and none of what it kept at Langley headquarters can be obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. This is no accident, for Phoenix is the model for the equally terrifying US homeland security aparatus.
Saturday, December 13, 2003
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