The Phoenix Program (Paperback)

by Douglas Valentine (Author)
Key Phrases: combined intelligence staff, cong tac, four corps, Special Branch, South Vietnam, Field Police (more...)

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.

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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 484 pages
• Publisher: iUniverse, Inc (August 3, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595007384
• ISBN-13: 978-0595007387
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #422,546 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This book is more fiction than fact., February 17, 1999

By	[e-mail] (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Phoenix Program (Paperback)

Douglas Valentine's _The Phoenix Program_ is loopy conspiracy riddled nonsense that offers a great deal of speculation without much hard evidence.

Valentine uses a great number of interviews with disgruntled low-level operatives to justify his rather ideologically extreme perspectives, but he offers little in the way of hard documentation. The book could be entitled "X-Files meets the Vietnam War." The Phoenix program is connected to virtually every other military operation and atrocity in the conflict. Valentine manages to see conspiracy everywhere, even inferring that the Kennedy assassination was related to the Vietnam War. "America endured a similar bloodletting three weeks later, when President Kennedy was caught in a crossfire of gunfire in Dallas, Texas. The assassination, curiously, came shortly after Kennedy had proposed withdrawing U.S. advisers from Vietnam." (Page 53).

One can get lost trying to stay with Valentine as he leads the reader through twisted logic and justifies conclusions by introducing incidents and events that are otherwise unexplained or quite likely unrelated. This book is written in journalistic prose and offers little in the way of verifiable fact, but does offer a great deal in speculation and ideological perspective. If one is interested in understanding the U.S. involvement in Vietnam then look elsewhere. There are many books that are far more readable, factual, and balanced.

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Pure unadulterated barnyard brown, July 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Phoenix Program (Hardcover)

To start with, the SEAL Mr. Valentine interviewed in this book never existed. There has never been an Elton Manzione who graduated from the Navy's Special Warfare Training, UDT/R or BUD/S. This combined with the fact that the Navy only sent their senior people who had time in country to work with the Phoenix Program. Either Valentine made this up or relied on sources that were pretty shaky. Do your homework better next time.

16 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the Best Books on Vietnam, August 26, 1998

By	[e-mail] (Oregon City, Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Phoenix Program (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