page_title: Richard Helms
section_title: Vietnam: Phoenix
hierarchical_section_title: Richard Helms / Johnson presidency / Vietnam: Phoenix
caption_attribution_description: English: William Egan Colby, 10th Director of Central Intelligence.
context_page_description: Richard McGarrah Helms was an American government official and diplomat who served as Director of Central Intelligence from 1966 to 1973. Helms began intelligence work with the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. Following the 1947 creation of the Central Intelligence Agency he rose in its ranks during the presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy. Helms then was DCI under Presidents Johnson and Nixon.
  As a professional, Helms highly valued information gathering and its analysis. He also prized counterintelligence. Although a participant at planning such activities, he remained a skeptic about covert and paramilitary operations. Helms understood the bounds of his agency role as being able to express strong opinions over a decision under review, yet working as a team player once a course was set by the administration. He saw it as his duty to keep official secrets from press scrutiny. While DCI, Helms managed the agency following the lead of his predecessor John McCone. In 1977, as a result of earlier covert operations in Chile, he became the only DCI convicted of misleading Congress. His last post in government service was Ambassador to Iran from 1973 to 1977.
context_section_description: As a major element in his counterinsurgency policy, Ngo Dinh Diem (President 1954–1963) had earlier introduced the establishment of strategic hamlets in order to contest Viet Cong operations in the countryside. From several antecedents the controversial Phoenix program was launched during 1967–1968. Various Vietnamese forces (intelligence, military, police, and civilian) were deployed in the field against Viet Cong support networks. The CIA played a key role in its design and leadership, and built on practices developed by Vietnamese, i.e., the provincial chief, Colonel Tran Ngoc Chau.}}
  Yet, CIA was not officially in control of Phoenix, CORDS was. DCI Helms, however, in early 1968 had agreed to allow William Colby to take a temporary leave of absence from the CIA in order to go to Vietnam and lead CORDS, a position with ambassadorial rank. In doing so, Helms personally felt "thoroughly disgusted"... thinking Robert Komer had "put a fast one over on him". Komer was then in charge of the CORDS pacification program in South Vietnam. Recently Helms had promoted Colby to a top CIA post: head of the Soviet Division (before Colby had been running the CIA's Far East Division, which included Vietnam). Now Colby transferred out of CIA, to CORDS to run Phoenix. Many other Americans worked to monitor and manage the Phoenix program including, according to Helms, "a seemingly ever-increasing number of CIA personnel".
  After receiving special Phoenix training, Vietnamese forces in rural areas went head to head against the Viet Cong Infrastructure, e.g., they sought to penetrate communist organizations, to arrest and interrogate or slay their cadres. The Vietnam War resembled a ferocious civil war; the Viet Cong had already assassinated thousands of Vietnamese village leaders. Unfortunately, in its strategy of fighting fire with fire, forces in the Phoenix program used torture, and became entangled in actions involving local and official corruption, resulting in many questionable killings, perhaps thousands. Despite its grave faults, Colby opined that the program did work well enough to stop Viet Cong gains. Colby favorably compared Operation Phoenix with the CIA's relative success in its "secret war" in Laos.
  Helms notes that the early efforts of Phoenix "were successful, and of serious concern to the NVN [North Vietnamese] leadership". Helms then goes on to recount the Phoenix program's progressive slide into corruption and counterproductive violence, which came to nullify its early success. Accordingly, by the time it was discontinued Phoenix had become useless in the field and a controversial if not a notorious political liability. Helms in his memoirs presents this situation:
  PHOENIX was directed and staffed by Vietnamese over whom the American advisors and liaison officers did not have command or direct supervision. The American staff did its best to eliminate the abuse of authority—the settling of personal scores, rewarding of friends, summary executions, prisoner mistreatment, false denunciation, illegal property seizure—that became the by-products of the PHOENIX counterinsurgency effort. In the blood-soaked atmosphere created by Viet Cong terrorism, the notion that regulations and directives imposed by foreign liaison officers could be expected to curb revenge and profit-making was unrealistic.
  After the war, interviews were conducted with Vietnamese communist leaders and military commanders familiar with the Viet Cong organization, its war-making capacity, and support infrastructure. They said the Phoenix operations were very effective against them, reports Stanley Karnow. Thomas Ricks, in evaluating the effectiveness of the counterinsurgency tactics of the Marine Corps and of the Phoenix program, confirmed their value by reference to "Hanoi's official history of the war". If one discounts the corrupt criminality and its political fallout, the Phoenix partisans were perhaps better able tactically to confront the elusive Viet Cong support networks, i.e., the sea in which the fish swam, than the regular units of the ARVN and the
caption: William Colby, a key U.S. officer in Vietnam, later DCI.
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