Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

It is possible to see the beginning of a revisionist school of historical writing on Vietnam. Spector's AFTER TET, Burkitt's STOLEN VALOR, and now PHOENIX AND THE BIRDS OF PREY all represent a point of view that wants to remove the stigma of absolute failure from the U.S. military efforts in Vietnam. Moyar's book is more than a simple defense of the Phoenix/Phung Hoang program; it is a study of intelligence-gathering, pacification programs and their effectiveness against the NVA and the Viet Cong. Moyar concentrates on the post-Tet period which he argues saw increased American and South Vietnamese success in counterinsurgency. He collates interviews, translated captured documents, official statistics, and memoirs for his history and does a pretty fair job of evaluating the material. Moyar criticizes plenty of Americans and Vietnamese, and credits the NVA/VC for excellent motivation, organization and determination. Not all of his arguments are persuasive, but the breadth of his work must be considered by anyone who wants to challenge him. The response by an earlier "reviewer" at this site ("...CIA propaganda...") is enlightening. One of the moral bases of the 1960s political movements was opposition to the war in Vietnam. The antiwar movement cast the U.S. in a villainous role; My Lai, Cambodia, and inflated body counts made that pretty easy. Over the years, evidence of atrocities, the forced collectivization of agriculture in the reunited South Vietnam, corruption in the Communist Party leadership, and grudging admission by NVA leaders of high losses and military mistakes have made some question whether the war was such a stark "good guys v. bad guys" conflict. Of course, questioning the assumption that the U.S. was on the wrong side in Vietnam would seriously weaken the moral arguments of the antiwar leaders. Is the former South Vietnam better off once the U.S. left? If it is, why did so many leave after reunification, and why is the current Vietnamese leadership so eager to welcome American capitalists? On the other hand, if it was important that we took a stand in South Vietnam, why didn't the U.S. push the Diem and Thieu governments into real political and economic reforms? The real study of the Vietnam War can only begin when historians can set aside the need to prove a theory, and can look at what participants really did and why they thought they had to do it.

This book is an invaluable addition to the history of the Vietnam War. Containing much more information on Phoenix and the village war than any other book, it is also packed with new insights. Phoenix and the Birds of Prey brings the scholarship of the Vietnam War and guerrilla warfare to new levels.

It's not hard to see why certain individuals are upset about this book. For years, opponents of the war-- to include much of the media-- have been telling us that the Phoenix Program was an important and cruel component of an immorally conducted war. Moyar's book demolishes their argument, showing that the reports of indiscriminate killing are grossly exaggerated. It's not one-sided, however: it details exploits of the Allied forces that are reprehensible, particularly involving the treatment of prisoners. It is testimony to the intransigence of some of the war's opponents that they are completely unwilling to consider that Moyar may be correct. Apparently anticipating the reaction he would encounter, Moyar loaded his book with a mountain of facts, derived from interviews, memoirs, books, U.S. government documents, and captured Communist documents. Many of the sources are quoted at length, allowing readers to be the judge. While any one source may have its uncertainties, it would be very difficult to look at the sum of all the facts presented by Moyar and not conclude that there is something to them. But the book does much more than just refute. It provides a remarkable look at all aspects of the American and South Vietnamese efforts to wrest control of the villages from the Viet Cong. Whether or not you're likely to agree with everything Moyar has to say, this book is worth reading if you have an interest in the Vietnam War or counter-guerrilla warfare.

If the war's opponents have information that contradicts Moyar, where is it? They certainly haven't published it. Douglas Valentine's book on the subject doesn't come close. Even Morley Safer said Valentine's book was bad, in a review for the New York Times. All of Valentine's star witnesses are discredited in Phoenix and the Birds of Prey-- people like Mike Beamon, Elton Manzione, and Kenneth Barton Osborn, to name a few. These are the people the Left has used for years to build its case on Phoenix. Moyar also discredits journalists and historians like Neil Sheehan and Frances FitzGerald, who based their writings on a few days trips to secure provinces and chats at the bar of the Caravelle Hotel.

Excellent foreword by Col. Harry Summers is an added bonus.

It's good to see that some historians are finally challenging the dogmas of the "mainstream" and are doing so in a thorough manner. If it's true, as Moyar contends, that veterans of Phoenix and other Vietnam veterans were not "assassins" and "baby-killers," then the nation owes them an apology.

This is the real truth about the Phoenix Program. The anti-war left has tried for years, with some success, to discredit it with disinformation. This is a well-written, accurate history of what really happened and is convincingly documented. And real -- I know, I was there (June 1968-June 1969)

We've been waiting for a book like this for a long time. Laying waste to many of the lies of the anti-war movement, the author presents the definitive history of the Phoenix Program and the CIA in Vietnam. Did the United States use the Phoenix Program to assassinate hundreds of thousands of civilians? Were the Viet Cong a modern version of Robin Hood and his fellows? Are Vietnam veterans a bunch of wacked-out misfits and criminals? Read this book and find out. Those who are interested in seeing the lies of the Vietnam War destroyed should also check out Stolen Valor by B.G. Burkett.

For a work of history, PHOENIX AND THE BIRDS OF PREY has a very odd flavor as it possesses almost no "narrative flow." That is, it neither tells a story chronologically, nor presents its interpretive points in a smoothly flowing, logical sequence. Instead, the book is organized into a series of strictly thematic chapters, each of which presents its own arguments largely in isolation from the rest.

This odd flavor is attributable to the fact that what Mark Moyar has written is less a work of history than a legal brief. The author writes like a defense attorney who is reading down the list of charges in the indictment against the Phoenix Program and trying to refute them one by one, each in its own chapter. The fruits of Mr. Moyar's documentary research and interviews with American and Vietnamese veterans are presented as 'expert witnesses' to support the defense's case, contributing to the book's choppy delivery.

Like any good defense attorney, Mr. Moyar sometimes uses his witnesses in a selective and even misleading fashion. One specific case involves my own dissertation, which dealt with the 173rd Airborne Brigade's pacification operations in Binh Dinh Province in 1969-1971. In Chapter 26, Mr. Moyer states: "When the GVN [Government of South Vietnam] installed good leaders, it succeeded in forming village governments and effective territorial forces from the hamlet populations of every single province, including the coastal provinces from Phu Yen to Quang Nam [including Binh Dinh] where many villagers were still poor and landless and had relatives in the VC." Appended to this statement is a footnote that refers the reader to my dissertation as evidence of the accuracy of this statement. The problem is that my disseration proves the exact opposite -- namely that the GVN was unable to find good leaders in northern Binh Dinh and that its territorial forces there were accordingly almost totally worthless and ineffective.

Mr. Moyar wins some of his points (e.g., Phoenix was not just about assassination, that American advisers generally did not prompt Vietnamese interrogators to use torture, etc.), but in many cases his analysis is deeply flawed and unconvincing. Yet, even in those cases where Mr. Moyar presents telling arguments, his analysis suffers from an excessively polemical tone that pervades the entire book. His all-too-obvious loathing for antiwar critics of the Vietnam War, and determination to discredit other historians who do not agree with his thesis that the U.S. military successfully met the challenges posed by revolutionary guerrilla warfare that it encountered in Vietnam can only make the reader question his objectivity.

Serious historians will also be struck by the paucity of footnotes and citations in certain parts of the book -- particularly those wherein the author presents his most controversial conclusions. For example, Mr. Moyar repeatedly makes broad, sweeping statements about the motivations, attitudes, and political aspirations and loyalties of the South Vietnamese population that are absolutely central to his thesis, but -- judging by the absence of citations -- are unsupported by any evidence other than his own judgement. What makes this absence of supporting quantitative and/or qualitative analysis so alarming is the fact that Mr. Moyar is an historian, not an anthropologist or sociologist.

Thus, altough PHOENIX AND THE BIRDS OF PREY presents a considerable amount of new research, I cannot recommend it those seeking a deeper understanding of the reasons why the United States lost the war in Vietnam.

It is a revisionist history comparable to Guenter Lewy's America in Vietnam. Although I've read just about everything that's been written about Vietnam, I found plenty of new material in Phoenix and the Birds of Prey. This innovative book, the product of a tremendous amount of research, will influence all future writing on Vietnam and counterinsurgency. It ought to be required reading for anyone in the U.S. government involved in counterinsurgency operations.

A convincing and well documented history of the insurgent war in Vietnam. Moyar shows that a war against a determined insurgent enemy can be protracted, bloody, and dirty. My reason for giving it four stars instead of five is that the author doesn't argue that the United States had no business being in Vietnam. We didn't have any business being there.