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Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism in Vietnam Paperback – Illustrated, December 10, 2007

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 37 ratings

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This study explodes prevailing myths about the Phoenix Program, the CIA's top-secret effort to destroy the Viet Cong by neutralizing its “civilian” leaders. Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with American, South Vietnamese, and North Vietnamese sources, Mark Moyar examines the attempts to eradicate the Viet Cong infrastructure and analyzes their effectiveness. He addresses misconceptions about these efforts and provides an accurate, complete picture of the allies’ decapitation of the Viet Cong shadow government.

 

Combining social and political history with a study of military operations, Moyar offers a fresh interpretation of the crucial role the shadow government played in the Viet Cong's ascent. Detailed accounts of intelligence operations provide an insider’s view of their development and reveal what really happened in the safe havens of the Viet Cong. Filled with new information, Moyar’s study sets the record straight about one of the last secrets of the Vietnam War and offers poignant lessons for dealing with future Third World insurgencies. This Bison Books edition includes a new preface and chapter by the author.
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“A groundbreaking piece of revisionist history on the war.”—Senator James Webb, Wall Street Journal

Phoenix and the Birds of Prey is the definitive work on the Phoenix program to date, and will remain so for a long time.”—Periscope

“There are as yet only a few nonfiction works dealing with the Vietnam War that are worth the reader’s time. . . . We can happily add Mark Moyar's
Phoenix and the Birds of Prey to this short list of ‘required reading.’”— John D. Waghelstein, Journal of Political and Military Sociology

“[Moyar] succeeds admirably. His work could be a textbook for the do's and don'ts of counterinsurgency warfare.”—William Nester,
Asian Thought and Society

"At last! An intellectually and academically honest overview of the Phoenix Program. Moyar has balanced both the military and social historical perspectives and dealt fairly with all factions—American and Vietnamese, non-Communist and Communist, northern and southern—to give the reader the first full and sensible accounting of the Phoenix."—John M. Del Vecchio, author of
The 13th Valley

"A fascinating, readable, long overdue exposition of the war in the shadows behind the big unit war in Vietnam."—Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore, author of
We Were Soldiers Once..and Young

"Mark Moyar's well-researched book will likely become a frequently cited reference. He addresses one of the least understood and least documented aspects of the Vietnam conflict with clarity and objectivity. Unlike the plethora of 'I was there' narratives and the histories that end with Tet of 1968, Moyar's book follows the conflict from beginning to end pointing out how changes in strategy, operations, and tactics impacted upon the campaign against the Viet Cong infrastructure."—Lt. Gen. James Terry Scott, Director, National Security Program

"
Phoenix and the Birds of Prey elevates Mark Moyar to the ranks of the rare scholars who truly understand the Vietnam War and its warriors."—Lt. Col. Michael Lee Lanning, author of Inside the LRRPs

"Moyar's examination and assessments of the struggle against the Communist shadow government in South Vietnam are fresh and, in my view, right on the mark. His book warrants serious consideration by all scholars of the Vietnam War, as well as those who would apply the 'lessons' of that war to future American involvements."—Prof. James R. Reckner, Director Study of Vietnam Conference, Texas Tech University

From the Back Cover

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.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bison Books; Illustrated edition (December 10, 2007)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 496 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0803216025
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0803216020
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.45 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.08 x 1.04 x 9.04 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 37 ratings

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4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
37 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2019
Tremendous follow-on read after Triumph Forsaken. I was there and I didn't realize what the CIA's involvement was.
One person found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2016
Ordered it for my husband as a required text for a graduate school class, but he really enjoyed reading it. Came in good shape and quickly.
3 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2014
Excellent resource on Counterinsurgency and the PHOENIX program. It is a fairly heavy read but well worth it. By far one of the best books I've read in a while.
3 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2017
A very well researched and written account. Too bad we (Americans) tired before we succeeded!!!
2 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2015
Good book, good condition.
Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2014
everything ok
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Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2014
As a participant in the Phoenix Program as an advisor to the Tay Ninh PRU in 1969-70, I can speak with first hand authority about the events and facts presented in Mark Moyar's outstanding piece of research. I have read just about all the works related to CORDS and Phoenix, having devoted a lifetime of study to the Vietnam War and publishing articles and a book on the war. Professor Moyar is the bane of the leftist historians who seem intent upon fabricating the history of the Phoenix Program and attempting to promote the idea that the program was an "assassination program" that routinely committed atrocities against enemy and civilians alike. This line of historical fabrication, often based upon highly suspect sources, is clearly false and Moyar completely demolishes it with hard facts. I can state categorically that I never once received an order to kill anyone during the time I was assigned to the Phoenix Program; and, in fact, had to sign a MACV and US Embassy statement that I would not participate in any action that was contrary to the UCMJ or The Laws of Land Warfare, a document that I was required to have countersigned by my immediate American boss and my South Vietnamese counterpart. I was also required to report any infraction of the UCMJ or LOLW to MACV immediately upon observing them or be subject to a courts martial. My unit never assassinated anyone since we had been instructed to always plan on arresting the political cadres we were targeting. These cadres were often armed and escorted by guerrillas, so we often had to engage in fire fights, but that was something we tried to avoid, if at all possible. We captured twice as many enemy cadres as we killed and all of those killed were the result of fire fights. A dead VC political cadre was worthless to us. We wanted to interrogate them or possibly turn them as our agents. Despite the nonsense one sees in such books as Douglas Valentine's The Phoenix Program and Frank Snepp's Decent Interval, one can find the truth about Phoenix in just two books: This book by Mark Moyar and Dale Andrade's Ashes to Ashes. I strongly recommend this book to any serious student of Phoenix, especially if you are looking for the truth and not a leftist, sophist screed.
17 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on November 2, 2008
This expanded edition of Moyar's work from the University of Nebraska arrived at the time that the U.S. Army finally discovered itself in another counterinsurgency war (three years sfter that war had already begun). The text, however, is not an improvement on the original. Although a healthy balance to previous works on the Phoenix program (especially that of Douglas Valentine)it should not be taken as the definitive history, which will have to wait for the opening of the Vietnamese archives.

Moyar makes careful use of his footnotes, especially when they support his positions and tends to forget them when they do not. This tome is one of the least documented works on the Vietnam Conflict that I am aware of (among those writers that bothered with footnotes). The author also tends to like to make sweeping unsupported statements to maintain his thesis, contradicts his own supporting facts (often on the same page), and spends lots of time debunking other historians whose works on the counterinsurgency activities (or lack of them) in Vietnam contradict his own. One example of selective editing was Robert Komer's famous quote that Phoenix was "a poorly managed and largely ineffectual affair," does not appear anywhere in the text. This is pretty slack, considering that the CIA ran the program under the aegis of Komer's CORDS).

The old bugaboos of Vietnam also tend to raise their hoary old heads - the politicians and the anti-war protesters were responsible for the loss of Vietnam, not the generals, not the strategy, and most certainly not their enemy. The only fact that appeared in the text that was "new" to this reviewer was that one of the participants in the program laid the blame for any psychological problems faced by returning veterans solely at the door of the anti-war protesters. Interesting.

For basic information on Phoenix, its predecessors, the personalities involved (Vietnamese and American), its operations, etc... this is as good a work as we have gotten so far, but take it with a large dose of salt.
31 people found this helpful
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