This is an Authors Guild/BIP title. Please use Authors Guild/BIP specs. "An important work."John Prados, author of President's Secret Wars"This definitive account of the Phoenix program, the US attempt to destroy the Viet Cong through torture and summary execution, remains sobering reading for all those trying to understand the Vietnam War and the moral ambiguities of Americas Cold War victory. Though carefully documented, the book is written in an accessible style that makes it ideal for readers at all levels, from undergraduates to professional historians."Alfred W. McCoy, author of The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
This shocking expose of the CIA operation aimed at destroying the Vietcong infrastructure thoroughly conveys the hideousness of the Vietnam War. Photos.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Designed to destroy the Vietcong infrastructure and ostensibly run by the South Vietnamese government, the Phoenix Program--in fact directed by the United States--developed a variety of counterinsurgency activities including, at its worst, torture and assassination. For Valentine ( The Hotel Tacloban , LJ 9/15/84), the program epitomizes all that was wrong with the Vietnam War; its evils are still present wherever there are "ideologues obsessed with security, who seek to impose their way of thinking on everyone else." Exhaustive detail and extensive use of interviews with and writings by Phoenix participants make up the book's principal strengths; the author's own analysis is weaker. This is a good complement to Dale Andrade's less emotional Ashes to Ashes (Lexington, 1990) and such participant accounts as Orrin M. DeForest and David Chanoff's Slow Burn (S. & S., 1990).
- Kenneth W. Berger, Duke Univ. Lib., Durham, N.C.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
- Kenneth W. Berger, Duke Univ. Lib., Durham, N.C.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
34 of 43 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Phoenix Program is a grim history of one of the darkest episodes of the Vietnam War, the CIA's civilian torture and assassination program called Phoenix. Phoenix was the grotesque brainchild of William Colby and may have resulted in the elimination, to use Colby anaseptic phrase, more than 40,000 South Vietnamese civilians, suspected by the CIA of having anti-American sentiments. This was a difficult story to excavate, taking all of the professional and human resources of one of America's most gifted and tenacious investigative reporters, Douglas Valentine.
Valentine dares to tred across territory long considered taboo to reveal the shocking and baldly criminal behavior of the CIA and its South Vietnamese clients at the peak of the war in Vietnam. Wholesale arrests of non-combatants, burtal interrogations, torture of the most unspeakable nature and murder. Valentine shows that the My Lai massacre was no isolated incident, but an outgrowth of a systematic, decade-long program of state sponsored terrorism.
Dare to tell the truth about the CIA and you will pay a heavy price. Valentine's book has oddly disappeared from the shelves of American bookstores. This a historical tragedy, since it is one of the few volumes that has dared to tell the truth about the true nature of the CIA's role in Vietnam. This book demands to be republished, as it is quite simply one of the best histories of the Vietnam war.
Jeffrey St. Clair Co-author Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press
31 of 42 people found the following review helpful
By Paul Fassa
Format:Paperback
After having read Douglas Valentine's essay on how the Phoenix is coming home to roost via Homeland Security on his website, I decided to look into his book, The Phoenix Program. Besides his comprehensive, journalistic coverage of the details involved with the program, unafraid to uncover the deeds of all sides involved, two things impressed me even more.
First, this type of book usually has alphabet soup groups, projects and missions labeled with acronyms, and so many individuals' names woven through that I grow weary of reading half way through, if that far. Not so with Valentine's opus. Somehow he presents all these details in a readable fashion, which if you begin from the beginning, unfolds those normally boring and confusing details without losing the reader. At least not this one, who is easily confused by such matters.
Second, and even more impressive were his interviews. It was more like watching a good documentary than reading. Valentine conveyed the characters and their personalities so that they became real people to me, and he let them tell their stories in a very human, honest way. At times even touching, those interviewed were equally human regardless of rank, station, deed or misdeed. It's rare that an interviewer gets the interviewee's real voice and viewpoint. Great stuff, really soulfull and heartfelt. Read it and check out his article on his website, the Phoenix Program is not just history, and it's not just Vietnam.
34 of 47 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Along with saturation bombing of civilian populations, Operation Phoenix has to rate as America's most atrocious chapter in its collection of fun facts from Vietnam. 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 was published just as the Gulf War allowed us to resume business as usual, and went virtually unnoticed.
(Daniel Brandt is founder and president of Public Information Research, Inc.)
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
read it over and over
this was a very interesting and helpful book for me as I was subjected to
some of this as a young private. Read more
some of this as a young private. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Diane
5.0 out of 5 stars
Essential
Have heard of Douglas Valentine's work on Phoenix for sometime now, but held off from reading it because I felt I needed to be in the right frame of mind before I did. Read more
Published 13 months ago by John Conlon
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Read
This book is rife with information about the conduct and operations of the Vietnam War. I am glad I read this book. Read more
Published 17 months ago by AvidReader
5.0 out of 5 stars
By Far the Best Book on the Subject
Valentine manages to tell the truth about about a difficult subject while never allowing the reader to lose sight of the humanity of all the people involved. Read more
Published on August 24, 2010 by Rambis_Fan
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Little Shop of Horrors from C.I.A.
In "The Phoenix Program," a magisterial work of history, author and journalist Douglas Valentine exposes in copious detail one of the darkest and least known passages of... Read more
Published on March 9, 2010 by C. Frazier
1.0 out of 5 stars
Valentine's book is flawed and misleading
This book is an excellent imitation of a historical work, but falls apart in light of Valentine's own methodology and the actual historical work done by real historians. Read more
Published on June 22, 2005 by Alexander Verbeck
1.0 out of 5 stars
Revisionist History Discrediting True Hero's
I regret that I purchased this book. Douglas Valentine demeans the HEROISM of two close personal friends that were part of the Phoenix program. Read more
Published on March 30, 2005 by P. D. Agnew
1.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing
The author's intent is very obvious, however, his structure is too detailed in facts that clouded the issues by making a boring and difficult read. Read more
Published on January 19, 2005 by Gary L. Bolte
1.0 out of 5 stars
Just one question ....
One reviewer writes: "It is a sad but telling fact that the CIA's secret supporters have managed to suppress this book"...
Hmmm. Read more
Hmmm. Read more
Published on August 7, 2004 by Katy Lake
5.0 out of 5 stars
Setting the record straight
Amazon posed a review (twice for some strange reason) dated August 26, 2003 in which augustabookman described the Phoenix Program book as "unsubstantiated". Read more
Published on September 19, 2003 by Douglas Valentine
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