Phoenix and the birds of prey
Subtitle: the CIA's secret campaign to destroy the Viet Cong
By: Mark Moyar.
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Annapolis, Md
Language: eng
Number of pages: 416
Subjects: United States. Central Intelligence Agency.; Mặt trận dân tộc giải phóng miè̂n nam Việt Nam.; Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975 -- Underground movements.; Counterinsurgency -- Vietnam.
Description: 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 399-406) and index.