The Phoenix Program: The CIA’s Controversial Covert Operation to Eliminate the Viet Cong

The intellectual foundations of the Phoenix Program can be traced to the experiences of American advisors who had observed successful counterinsurgency operations in other conflicts, particularly the British campaign against communist insurgents in Malaya during the 1950s. The Malayan Emergency had demonstrated that defeating guerrilla forces required more than battlefield victories, but necessitated systematic efforts to identify and eliminate the civilian support networks that provided intelligence, recruitment, and logistical assistance to insurgent organizations. These lessons suggested that victory in Vietnam would require similar attention to the political dimension of the conflict.