ABSTRACT
The centerpiece of the allied effort to dismantle the Viet Cong infrastructure, the Phoenix program, officially began after President Nguyen Van Thieu signed it into law in 1968. The Phoenix program laid out clear steps for processing suspects. The party hoped to subvert Phoenix agents, plant communist cadres in the interrogation and coordinating centers, and stir up popular resentment against the program in the villages. Phoenix suffered from a mismatch of American managerial philosophy and South Vietnamese interests. The underlying purpose of Phoenix—to coordinate the efforts of diverse South Vietnamese intelligence and police units against the nerve center of their adversary—was eminently sensible by American standards. The program embodied an American managerial and organizational scheme that Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support expected the South Vietnamese would carry out as the Americans intended. The South Vietnamese viewed the special anti-infrastructure effort as an American program, and numerous observers felt Saigon's officials carried it out ineffectively.
