Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism in Vietnam - Paperback

by Mark Moyar (Author), Harry G. Jr. Summers (Foreword by)

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.

Back Jacket

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.

Author Biography

Mark Moyar is an associate professor at the U.S. Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia, and the author of Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965. Harry G. Summers Jr. (1932-99) served in both the Korean War and the Vietnam War and was an instructor and distinguished fellow at the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College.