Phoenix Program
The Phoenix Program was a covert intelligence operation undertaken by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in close collaboration with South Vietnamese intelligence during the Vietnam War aimed at identifying and rooting out the infrastructure of Vietcong cadres who were engaged in recruiting and training insurgents within South Vietnamese villages. Not only did these networks recruit new members to the Vietcong forces, but they supplied the elusive Vietcong guerilla forces with food and arms.
The title of the program came from the rough translation of phung hoang, a mythical Vietnamese bird endowed with omnipotent attributes.
The Phoenix Program was an attempt to isolate and target specific individuals within the Vietcong network using Human Intelligence (HUMINT) sources.
One US Army method for targeting this Vietcong infrastructure was the cordon and search method in which troops surrounded a village suspected of Vietcong activity, and interrogated and evacuated its population; it was a method which resulted in both a refugee problem and greater discontent among the population.
However, the Phoenix Program has also been branded as an "assassination campaign" and has received much criticism as an example of human rights atrocities committed by the CIA and the organizations it supports. Indeed, faulty intelligence often led to the murder of innocent civilians; furthermore, the killing of civilians, insurgents or not, is against the Geneva Conventions.
Due to ineffective intelligence, minimal commitment, and public outcry, the Phoenix Program was ultimately a failure; its lesson is in the difficulties of dealing with an insurgent population during wartime. On the other hand Vietnamese communists acknowledged later, that it had weakened the Vietcong, eliminating 95% of the communist cadres in some areas of South Vietnam.