Phoenix rises, Kerrey gets burned?

It has been called an awful night at Thanh Phong. Some said it was something that happened all the time in the Vietnam War. The participants, including a former governor and senator from Nebraska, Bob Kerrey, were called inexperienced, confused young men, who did only what they were trained to do in the heat of battle. One political leader, Sen. Trent Lott, inexplicably is quoted as saying he did not know what all the hoopla was about.

I disagree.

Thanh Phong, and all the accompanying incidents, needs to be the subject of a full-scale, under-oath, preliminary investigation to determine if a war crime was perpetrated.

As a veteran of the Phoenix program, of which Thanh Phong was part, I am abhorred by the charge of murder of innocent civilians. That was not our policy, contrary to rumors and assertions. Killing civilians in free-fire zones who were unarmed was not a policy I knew of, and I ordered fire on targets in free-fire zones.

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Contrary to his fellow vets in the Senate -- only one of whom can be associated with Phoenix, John Kerry, D-Mass. -- unless you were in Special Ops, you cannot adequately understand what went on there.

I cannot articulate a bombing mission from a jet, as can Sen. McCain. I can, however, describe a rocket I ordered firing from an OV-1 bird dog or a helicopter gun ship. I cannot adequately describe a battalion maneuver in combat from experience, as can Sen. Hagel. I can, however, articulate a raid on a VCI target, like the Kerrey incident, or firing rockets in support of his 9th Infantry Division on the border between Go Cong and Ben Tre Provinces in 1969.

I can sympathize with those who say it might ruin the senator politically. However, there is no time limit on war crimes.

Ask former Capt. John J. McCarthy Jr., my friend and Special Ops confidant, how harrowing it is to be accused and convicted of a war crime by the media and later have it found that evidence was fabricated to convict you of premeditated murder. He knows.

He was convicted for involvement in part of a Special Ops CIA program, "Cherry," designed to unlawfully overthrow and assassinate Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia and conduct what are called "black terror operations" -- acts which could be blamed on the opposition. The victim, in his case, was a triple spy for the KGB, CIA, and Sihanouk himself.

Once killed, compensation was paid to the Khmer Serei -- the victim's employer, who definitely wanted him dead -- for redress of his death. The compensation was $180,000, provided by the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, in $20 bills, on Dec. 1, 1967. That would be worth about $4 million today after going through the black-market rates.

John has been trying for 34 years to clear his name fully and is today denied the opportunity to face his former accusers to seek legal redress and regain his name, honor and compensation for losing the same. He had to file civil suit in federal court, and the government (CIA, Justice, Defense, State Department, etc.) is opposing his efforts on the grounds it is stale, too old to be of consequence. Yeah, just like the case in Alabama, the bomber of the black Church, under their definition, should not have been prosecuted because his case, from 1963, was too old and stale. Well, he was prosecuted and convicted just last week.

Victims are victims, regardless of race or creed, or national origin. That's what my Constitution says.

Cherry was a "rogue" CIA program, unknown to John at the time, and the CIA wants it covered up -- even to the extent of sending denying basic rights and sending to jail one of their own. He is known as a Prisoner of War in America, unable to defend himself, stopped by the same people who want to sweep these new allegations under the rug.

There is sufficient, credible evidence to warrant the investigation of Thanh Phong and subsequent activities. Why are political figures rushing to quash such an investigation? Part of the reason is that it is associated with Phoenix, which has been called an assassination program. Political liberals, like Bob Kerrey and John Kerry, who had the experience with Phoenix, don't want to face the political fallout from their liberal base for that association. That is not a legitimate excuse to quash an investigation.

The question arises about the timing of the original charges in 1998. Were they politically motivated to keep Kerrey and Kerry out of a race they were both expected to enter? Even on the Sam Donaldson show, Kerry recently denied CIA participation in Phoenix and was uncomfortable with answers about Phoenix. Why?

I'll defend Phoenix at that level, my level, openly, without equivocation. I am not ashamed of what I did. John McCarthy is not ashamed of what he did.

Another reason I believe for the attempt to sweep under the rug any investigation is that they do not want to reopen the McCarthy case, which is pending right now in federal district court. It has been discussed at the highest levels of government, specifically, the JCS, NSA, and CIA.

John, about six years ago, was offered by John Anast -- a New Jersey resident working as a financial adviser to the CIA in various operations -- an offer to cease and desist his activity to seek legal compensation. The offer, said to be from William Colby of CIA and Phoenix renown, was a half million dollars and the Congressional Medal of Honor. John said no, let's go to trial; after all, a conspiracy to obstruct justice -- in this instance, a capital murder case -- has no statute of limitations for many legal reasons.

Offer a Congressional Medal of Honor for political reasons? Kerrey is quoted as saying his was given for political reasons. It may have been, but not for the reasons Kerrey believed.

In the May 1 Time magazine it was charged that "'They all knew it was ridiculous,' Ambrose told Karen Tumulty, then with the Los Angeles Times, in 1992. 'Bob wanted to turn the medal down. ... It was just another night out. ...'" Notice, 1992, years before this came up. Only since the last administration was in has Kerrey had problems with Thanh Phong. A political coincidence, or a way to blackmail and silence critics, of which Kerrey was a prominent Democratic one of the last administration?

Back on the political reasons. Take two scenarios, both valid.

First scenario: Kerrey is guilty of the war crime. There is an investigation going on, the records show that. The investigation is abruptly dropped about the time Kerrey is wounded and put up for the Silver Star, a competent award, as his defenders believed at the time. The CIA, protagonists of the Phoenix Program and its many umbrella adjuncts, are under siege stateside for alleged atrocities. No one in wartime investigates a Medal of Honor winner. Kerrey does not even have to know why he received the award he and those who recommended him felt he did not deserve.

The second scenario: Kerrey fully understood and executed his orders as given. He was part of a counter terrorist team, which Special Ops people have told me included assassination. Remember McCarthy and his orders to conduct black terror in Cambodia. The CIA, in defiance of presidential orders, issued instructions on June 26, 1966, to quit all support for Khmer Serei activities in the operation to overthrow Sihanouk. That support included monetary, military and personnel. In defiance of that memorandum, the CIA chose to defy LBJ's presidential directive with monetary and military support, albeit covert, until they overthrew Sihanouk with the Khmer Serei support in 1970. The reasons put forth in the State Department History point out that LBJ did not want to expand the war into the 50,000 square miles of Cambodia and he personally wanted to get close to Sihanouk. The CIA sabotaged the president's directives. Again, policy is not the issue. Right and wrong, an agency following presidential directives is.

As this second scenario develops, the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued their implementing orders, applicable to all cross-border operations (SOG) in June 1966. They were, in turn, told not to hire any Khmer Serei for cross-border operations into Cambodia. MACV-SOG chose to ignore the presidential directive and hired all remaining indigenous members of Project Cherry, after that operation was compromised and terminated in December 1967.

I discovered these documents in October of last year in the State Department History online service. The only objections to declassifying them came from the CIA, according to the American Federation of Scientists. Cherry is not mentioned by name at LBJ Library, State Department, or anywhere else of a government nature. You don't know about things that are being hidden from you, as Cherry was hidden by the CIA from the president and his national security staff. The CIA probably reasoned what they did in Cambodia, they can do in Vietnam. The problem is that assassination and these tactics seldom work unless all witnesses are silenced, and that very seldom happens.

I know I said we had specific orders in Phoenix against this. Phoenix was an umbrella program with numerous co-joining activities carefully compartmented to keep one part from knowing what the other part was doing. After 32 years of looking, I am just beginning to find other parts to what I did. I don't like what I am finding. And what I am finding is that Cherry had sister programs like Oak, Pine, Birch and Elm, the functions of which McCarthy and I were unaware, because of this compartmentalization.

I do know that Oak was targeted against Viet Cong activity in South Vietnam, but because of the compartmentalization, I do not know the means or methods of accomplishing its purposes.

This is another chapter of a debate between myself and Col. David Hackworth beginning in 1971 in the professional Army Magazine over counterinsurgency tactics. His straight leg tactics were right in some instances and mine were right in some instances. Neither of us knew the ramifications of that for which we were not cleared.

If my suppositions are correct, I may have to apologize to Seymour Hersh for besting him in a mini-debate at the University of Arizona in 1975 over Phoenix and assassinations. And Seymour Hersh is one person who mentioned McCarthy in his book "Price of Power." Few others have found out about McCarthy and Cherry.

In short, here is the reason for the investigation. Kerrey is either innocent or guilty of doing what Gerhard Klann charged, namely slaughtering unarmed Vietnamese villagers. Then, he is either innocent or guilty of being a pawn in a bigger game, run by the CIA, in which those who get the blame are really the ones who were used and abused by the agency employing them.

I can empathize with Kerrey. As with Cherry, in Phoenix, we've been there and done that. Now is the time to untangle the webs carefully crafted by the CIA and see what lies beneath. The honor of Sen. Kerrey is at stake. The honor of John McCarthy Jr. is at stake. The honor of all Special Ops victims of CIA shenanigans, known, unknown or suspected, is at stake. To overlook mistakes or problems in the past can jeopardize the maneuverability of the executive in foreign policy in the future. Most of us, and maybe all of us, held true to the Geneva Conventions, rules of land warfare, but because of CIA violations and suspected violations, we have been publicly pilloried for what we did not do.

The politicos, on both sides of the aisle, should welcome a full-scale, under-oath investigation, to clean up this chapter of Vietnam.

For the record, I was proud of my service, my contribution to the war and my helping my Vietnamese allies. I was a co van my, or translated, a trusted adviser. After the war, I was trained and researched in cover and deception, which included writing cover stories to mislead the public. I can recognize, fairly accurately, that which I was taught to execute.

A full-scale investigation is in everyone's interest. This is not a replay of the Vietnam conflict political debate, as charged by conservatives. This is not a justification of the liberal position on Vietnam, as the liberals charge. It is a simple exercise. Either the words of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, echoed many long years ago, when I was a freshman in high school about ready to enter ROTC, are true or they are not; duty, honor, country, the code of the officer and of the servants in government, are either true or not. What happens will be a test of what MacArthur, myself, John McCarthy Jr. and Bob Kerrey all swore to uphold -- to preserve and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Congress and Defense Department, the ball is in your court, as specified by that same Constitution. Checks and balances, one branch on the other. It works only if you figure out that the hoopla is about something that needs tending to. This problem does, and right now.

Larry J. O'Daniel was a Phoenix operative in the Vietnam War. An MI officer, he was cross-trained in electronic warfare and tactical cover and deception. He left active duty in December 1972 as a captain. He has written two books on Vietnam, "Missing in Action: Trail of Deceit" (Arlington House 1979) and "Trails of Deceit"(Golden Coast Publishing 2000). In 1969, as a 22-year-old second lieutenant, he ran a Phoenix operation, similar to Kerrey's in Go Cong Province, the province to the north of Ben Tre, where Thanh Phong is located.