Phoenix and the Birds of Prey : The CIA's Secret Campaign to Destroy the Viet Cong [Hardcover]

Mark Moyar (Author), Summers Harry G (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1997

For more than thirty years the mere mention of the Phoenix Program, the CIA's top-secret effort to destroy the Viet Cong by neutralizing its "civilian" leaders, has conjured up dark images of secret assassinations, kidnappings, and the torture of civilians by the South Vietnamese and their U.S. advisers. This study explodes many of the prevailing myths and perceptions of the program and the myriad efforts that until now have been mistakenly lumped together under the term Phoenix. Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with more than one hundred U.S., South Vietnamese, and North Vietnamese sources, Mark Moyar dissects the various attempts to eradicate the Viet Cong infrastructure and analyzes the effectiveness of each. With balance and full documentation, he addresses serious misconceptions about these efforts and provides the most accurate and complete picture available of the allies' decapitation of the Viet Cong shadow government.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Mark Moyar, a young (born in 1971) Harvard-trained historian, unburdened by the stories drummed into the public psyche by those who built careers on the conventional wisdom, has written a remarkable book that challenges what has become the "Jane Fonda" interpretation of the Vietnam War. Based on primary documents and interviews of firsthand participants on all sides of the conflict. Moyar's book focuses on the CIA role in the now notorious Phoenix Program... [Moyar] displays an uncommon grasp of the problems of agent recruitment and handling peculiar to Vietnam, the social and practical challenges faced by the American advisors and the Vietnamese at all levels, and the blinkered reaction of those reading, watching, and criticizing at home. One is forced to wonder how Phoenix and the Birds of Prey will be received by the many contemporary commentators who for years promulgated as truth views that the book exposes as myths, if not falsehoods. Dare we hope for a broad public debate, or is it more likely that Oliver Stone will produce his own "truth" about Phoenix? -- World Intelligence Review, Hayden Peake, Spring 1998

Mr. Moyar does not moralize; war as he describes it is brutish and occasionally gruesome... Mr. Moyar ably demonstrates that young persons can emerge from Harvard with their senses intact, provided they keep their minds open. This is a fine war read. -- The Washington Times, Joseph Goulden, July 5, 1998

Today's best young scholars tend to question the dogma of an antiwar left that has grown gray without abandoning its animus toward those who served. As one example, Mark Moyar won the 1993 prize for historical research at Harvard University by peeling away the shibboleths that have surrounded the Phoenix program, an effort directed against Vietcong leaders. Mr. Moyar's book, "Phoenix and the Birds of Prey" (Naval Institute, 1997), is a product of that research and a groundbreaking piece of revisionist history on the war. -- The Wall Street Journal, James Webb, July 15, 1998

As an impartial, credible observer, Mark Moyar deserves a laurel for bringing the facts of the Phoenix Program to light. -- Special Warfare, Robert B. Adolph Jr., Winter 1999

He succeeds admirably. His work could be a textbook for the do's and don'ts of counterinsurgency warfare. -- Asian Thought & Society, William Nester, January-April 2000

Moyar began this study as an undergraduate thesis at Harvard, and even though he is now only in his mid-twenties, this book makes him a serious scholar of the Vietnam War. -- Infantry, Joe P. Dunn, January-April 1999

Product Details

• Hardcover: 392 pages
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press (December 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557505934
• ISBN-13: 978-1557505934
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,580,109 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An honest and accurate book about the Phoenix program, October 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Phoenix and the Birds of Prey : The CIA's Secret Campaign to Destroy the Viet Cong (Hardcover)

I'm glad to see someone has finally written an accurate, dispassionate account of the Phoenix program and the Vietnam war. As a Phoenix advisor in late 1967 and 1968, I can say from personal experience that Mr. Moyar gets just about everything right in his account of that period. I can only assume from the extent of his research that the rest of the information is just as correct. His descriptions of the attitudes and motivations of the Vietnamese civilians, government officials and military validate many of my own observations and confirm many of my suspicions. I just wish I had known then what I know now.

Reading this book and the reviews about it prompted me to hunt down a copy of Douglas Valentine's book about Phoenix for comparison. I shouldn't have bothered. Clearly Mr. Valentine hasn't heard that old joke about the difference between a fairy tale and a war story. Phoenix and the Birds of Prey does a much better job of presenting the facts.

If I have any criticism of Phoenix and the Birds of Prey, it is that I felt Mr. Moyar applied some of his conclusions about the Phoenix program a little too broadly to all participants. Every district operation was different in some ways depending on the tactical situation, the capabilities of the advisor, and the involvement of the Vietnamese counterparts. But I suppose that is to be expected because he is taking a broad look at the overall program.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is a serious student of the Vietnam war or guerrilla conflicts in general. It should be required reading for all of our military Special Ops people. I would especially recommend the book to all my fellow Vietnam veterans.

As for the anti-war types who have been yelling about the Phoenix program for the last 30 years, they're going to have to find a new horse to ride because that one won't run anymore.

28 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Big Thumbs Up, August 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Phoenix and the Birds of Prey : The CIA's Secret Campaign to Destroy the Viet Cong (Hardcover)

This book contains an unbelievable amount of facts about the Phoenix Program. The author was able to interview many participants, including Vietnamese. Since some are now dead, including William Colby, and others will be soon, this is likely to be the last history of Phoenix to draw on first hand accounts. Also very interesting was the author's use of captured Viet Cong documents, which indicate that Phoenix was highly effective. The author has a keen understanding of the people on the Vietnamese side, both participants and bystanders, which is refreshing after you read the hundreds of books in which the Vietnamese are treated as minor actors in the drama- with the possible exception of the Viet Cong. In addition, a lot of the antiwar dogma concerning Phoenix is systematically destroyed. I hope that Moyar and other historical pioneers like B.G. Burkett (Stolen Valor) and Samuel Zaffiri (Westmoreland) write some more books on Vietnam.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful book, May 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Phoenix and the Birds of Prey : The CIA's Secret Campaign to Destroy the Viet Cong (Hardcover)

I must recommend this book to all readers. As a Vietnamese, I can say that Mr. Mark Moyar understands the Vietnam people and Vietnam war better than most white Americans. Unlike the newsmedia, he appreciates that the Vietnamese are not like white people who just look different. There is a difference of mind. He also knows about Ho Chi Minh and communism and the schemes they used to subvert government in Vietnam. I don't usually like American books about Vietnam, but this one is good.