COMMENT POSTED TO AN INTERVIEW WITH DOUGLAS VALENTINE IN COVERT ACTION MAGAZINE
“Inside the Organized Crime Syndicate known as the CIA”
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Response to a comment which said, “Of course if he did get too close to certain truths, he would be committing suicide.
“Operation Phoenix in the Vietnam war involved murdering people on some of those lists, and they even deployed military hit-men to pull off these murders.
“Something also not mentioned in this review was the opium trade going on involving the CIA in Vietnam, Thailand, in the area known as the golden triangle.”
Yes, Operation Phoenix was a secret American mass-assassination operation that continued for many years during the Vietnam War.
We first learned of it in the 1970s from CIA Director William Colby who himself had earlier administered it.
The name of the program came up again briefly when it was learned that Senator Bob Kerrey, a fairly well-regarded politician running for the 1992 Democratic nomination, had served under the program as a Navy SEAL. He withdrew from the race.
Somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 people were butchered in Operation Phoenix.
And "butchered" is the right word.
They generally had their throats slashed (for silence) by special-forces troops assigned to work under CIA. They would crawl into villages in the night to attack innocent civilians whom CIA previously had identified.
The people selected for death were those who held administrative jobs such as village mayors or just influential figures, not soldiers.
The concept was just plain terror, intended to make America's opponents lose their capacity for resistance.
Nothing ISIS or al Qaeda ever did was more loathsome.
And, yes, CIA was in the drug business during the Vietnam War. Drugs were moved by the Agency’s private airline of the time, Air America, used for many dark operations and, of course, never stopped or questioned or searched by American officials.
The Agency often earns off-the-books money during conflicts by dealing in drugs and/or weapons. The money is good, and there are no official budget records with which to be concerned.
They likely have been part of the flood of drugs coming from Afghanistan since the US toppled the Taliban government there, a government which had banned growing opium poppies.
But the trade has flourished since the American invasion, contributing to the many gang killings over sales turf of recent years in American cities. Such volumes of opioids were flowing out of Afghanistan that prices declined on the streets, much intensifying competition.
Your American tax dollars at work.
