Operation Gladio-Vietnam Part 8 Phoenix Program

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Transcript

0:00 Okay, we're going to go live a little early. There's only so long you can listen to that music. But I did want to let everybody know that we're back to streaming on Rumble as well. I did have enough time to get that all set up as well since I had already used it earlier today. Just trying to balance everything. So if you prefer watching on Rumble, we're over there as well.

0:30 I will not be monitoring the chat because I got three things open and I'm efficient with one. So I'm way over my max here. I can try to go back and forth. Are you off work? Yeah. It's raining. Their nuts are wet.

0:56 Absolutely. Colonel Towner, if you want, since she's off of work, did you want her to co-host and I can keep an eye on the thing down there in the purple pill and stuff like that? No, Stella, I'm going to be on Rumble. Yeah, I'm going to head over. I'll stay here, but I'll watch Rumble. So if you don't mind, that'd be super. She has admin authority over on Rumble so she can keep the pops out. Yeah. I don't think we should give her too much authority. Come on.

1:26 I forgot about that. I thought you were meaning the purple pill on here where it just has two right now. So not for nothing. I have my very own troll. I'm so excited. What? I do. I have my very own troll. I made a post about Bill Gates and I had some shite from North Wales comment.

1:50 You know, with the left can't mean. So, you know, and he's calling me cousin shit and the whole thing. And I'm like, I have my own troll. I'm so excited. And you had a troll on Bill Gates? Yeah, I made a post here. And for some reason, some jackass from North Wales decided to chime in. Yeah, he must like vaccinating and killing Africans.

2:17 Yeah, that was the Ethiopia post where he's down there and he's meddling with the food sources down there. Go figure. I know, but I was so excited. I've got my very own troll. A fascist that likes eugenics. Yeah, yeah. And it's true. The left can't meme. Just throwing it out there. Definitely true. Definitely true. You have to actually have a sense of humor in order to be able to meme.

2:47 I think that there should be a warning. Do a meme that says warning. Progressive liberals, being a progressive liberal, Gates lover is, you know how like they used to do those things about, you know, this is your brain, this is your brain on drugs. There should be something like that because he probably doesn't have any brain cells left. There should be a warning about brain cell killage by being a progressive. Yeah, because stellar, that was way too many words.

3:16 It was. I don't know how to move it. I just know what I want to say. But, you know, it's just something about liberalism is dangerous for your brain. Yes. Yes. And that's a good. Yeah, that would. Oh, do you remember that commercial? This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. That's what she said. Yeah. Oh, she was saying do that kind of a post. Too many words, Stella. We got to work on that. I get problems with words all the time. Doesn't it always have to line me out? Yeah.

3:46 What's my favorite saying? Use your words. Just say no. How's that? Just say no. That's a good one. There you go. All right. So let's get started. I'll head over to Rumble. I'll still listen here and mute over there, but okay. Sounds good. All right. So we're heading into Phoenix, but not before we get a little bit more dysfunction out of the way.

4:15 But I'm going to fly through this part. There's a guy in the CIA that's part of Phoenix and that Doug Valentine talks to. And his name is Nelson Brickham, B-R-I-C-K-H-A-M. And so he interviews him quite extensively for this book. And what we're going to cover first is basically from this interview.

4:44 I'm going to give you a couple of quotes. He said during the interview, I've been called an organizational genius. That's not true. I'm just well read. Another quote, I feel that I, as well as a number of other people, never got the recognition for some of the things we did. Yeah, he's talking about actually killing people. So another quote, the events.

5:12 we've seen in recent years are a reaction to the psychic trauma of the country following Vietnam, a reaction which, on a far more modest scale, is similar in character. And here's where it gets dangerous, to the frustration and bitterness of something compared to the level of how the Germans felt after World War I.

5:44 He also says, well, let me go a little bit about who he is, because it puts him into context. So he joined the CIA in the immediate aftermath of the creation of it in 1949. He's a Yale graduate, of course, and he graduated magna cum laude with a degree in international politics. So he fits perfectly. He worked on the Czechoslovakian desk.

6:14 And, of course, we know that we demolished the Czechoslovakia as a country. And he also was part of the Korean War and worked, quote unquote, special intelligence branch. And he also worked in an area of the CIA called current intelligence. He kind of focused at this point on the Soviet Union.

6:43 He was involved in an organization, a project called Caesar Project, which had to do with looking at potential Soviet leaders after Stalin's death. And as a result of him participating in Caesar Project, he was invited to basically work with MI6 over in London.

7:12 as like a CIA liaison. He traveled as a result of that all over the world. And in 1955, he transferred to an area that focused specifically on Soviet Russia inside of the CIA and their clandestine operations. In 1958, Brigham was appointed the operations research branch, and he planned covert activity.

7:42 Inside the Soviet Union, these operations dealt with putting sensors and equipment in to be able to spy on the Soviet Union inside the Soviet Union. They put them all around Soviet Union military bases so they could watch what they were doing and to document, quote unquote, black agents.

8:10 He wrote a research paper on this. And it says, this is a quote from him. And so I was put in charge of a massive research project designed to develop collection targets against the Soviet missile program after they sent up Sputnik. Well, in 1954, I had read a report from British intelligence describing how they had developed a target plot.

8:41 approach to guiding espionage and other collection activities. In applying that target plot idea to the Soviet problem, it immediately occurred to me to magnify it as a systems analysis study so that we could go after the whole Soviet missile program. It was the first time that any government agency had taken a systems approach toward a Soviet target. We wanted to pull together all information from whatever source.

9:10 of whatever degree of reliability, and collect that information in terms of its geographical location. And from that effort, we would come up with targets, and they would naturally spring up. So, unquote. So, this systems approach is basically the backbone of how Phoenix was given birth. So, ironically enough, another idea that originates in the UK.

9:41 of pure evilness. And so Brigham also says, quote, for the first time, there was a complete view of everything known about Russian military and missile development systems. The British called this the best thing achieved by American research since the war, unquote. So insofar as Phoenix was sought to combine all existing counterinsurgency programs in a coordinated attack back at the Viet Cong.

10:10 Brigham's notion of a systematic approach served for the conceptual basis for Phoenix. And although in Phoenix, the targets were people, not missile silos. And see, in order to understand this, I hope you guys can appreciate why I had to take you through how dysfunctional everything was in the boring parts of the ones. Not they're boring. I mean, they're informational.

10:38 Not talking necessarily about Phoenix. You have to understand just how screwed up our military slash CIA slash AID, everybody and the Vietnam, you know, because they were actually involved in much of that. How all dysfunctional that was in order to be able to appreciate the desperateness of someone who arrives in country in Vietnam.

11:07 with this quote-unquote scientific approach to Glamontu, regardless of how gross it actually was. They were desperate for anything that may have a chance of working to defeat the Viet Cong, because they had already suffered the defeat of Korea, where it was fought to a standstill.

11:33 This is kind of the egg on your face and everything is not working and everything is totally dysfunctional. So you have to put that in context to understand where we're going with this. Brigham, on his way to Vietnam, was originally assigned to Iran in Tehran, and he managed in 1960.

12:00 their intel and counterintelligence operations against the Soviets. Now, keep in mind, we had couped the Iran and got rid of Mosaddegh and installed the Shah back, right? So he's going in there. He would have served there with Schwarzkopf's dad, who was at this time setting up the SAVAK, their national police. So this guy would have worked with him there.

12:31 In 64, he was sent to manage the Chinese-Soviet relations branch. And at the heart of that organization was creating false flag events in order to piss the Chinese off against the Soviet and vice versa. So that was kind of what he did there was create false flags to turn those two against each other.

13:01 China and Russia. And it says the CIA case officers at Brigham's instruction used the unsuspecting Chinese agents to create mischief against the Russians and vice versa. So then he gets to Saigon in 1965 and

13:28 He's just full of vim and vinegar. He's got all of these ideas. He's done all of this clandestine covert work. And he's anxious to get to work and fix all of the woes of Vietnam. So his boss there is a guy by the name of Tucker Googleman. It's G-O-U-G-L-E-M-A-N.

13:56 The station chief at the time is Gordon Jorgensen, J-O-R-G-E-N-S-O-N. We've already talked about Pierre DeSalva on a previous show. He's there. And he ends up going home shortly after this guy gets in theater because he got hurt in an explosion.

14:24 And so this Jorgensen guy who had been his deputy takes over as the CIA station chief. So there's another guy that by the name of John Hart and he ends up taking over shortly. So the De Silva guy doesn't last very long. So John Hart comes in in January of 66 and takes over as station chief. And he's a he's a piece of work.

14:56 So this Brigham guy describes him as a guy with a strong criminal tendency, but too coward to actually be a criminal. So they go in the CIA and act like a criminal there with the protection of the U.S. government. And that's the category that he puts John Hart in. He is basically not just criminally insane, but criminal as in.

15:27 You know, whatever you want to do. So he also is described him as an egomaniac and says he was real. He's like over six feet tall. So he was very boisterous and domineering. And he spoke fluent French with kind of a British accent or whatever that's worth.

15:54 He would use the French as an arrogant thing because a lot of the Vietnamese spoke French because, of course, they'd been occupied by France for so long. And he basically used it to exclude people in the CIA that he didn't like in conversations with the Vietnamese counterparts. So he was very, very arrogant. And this guy, Brigham, was one of his escort officers when he first came in.

16:24 he kind of got to know him on a more casual side. So normally when a station chief comes in, especially in an active war theater, they're going to tour the area and they will have one or two escort officers assigned to them. And so Brickham got to be, accompany him and was with him for like all day long, every day for like the first month he was in theater. And there was some,

16:56 One of the things about the CIA that I've come to appreciate is when they go into a new job, a lot of them have worked together in other areas, in other countries. And so they have these informal cliques. And one of the guys that was there that had worked for him previously was a guy by the name of John Sherwood. And that was like one of John Hart's buddies.

17:27 And so there was shenanigans played about who's going to get what job. Brigham is quoted as saying, there's a great division in the foreign service world between people who get out on the economy and try to eat native and find out what's going on versus the people that stay on the American colony. And the people that stay on the American kind of reservation is called.

17:54 golden ghetto people. And they're more afraid to mix with the locals. And so there was some kind of rivalry between Hart accusing this Brigham guy as being one of those golden people when he was actually the exact opposite. So after they kind of got over that, there was, you know, a mutual understanding. They didn't care for each other.

18:24 And it says Brickham got assigned to be the chief of special branch field operations in the spring of 66 after this guy that he liked left. And him being installed in that job was basically the go button for laying the foundation for Phoenix. Because had he not been assigned to that.

18:52 this analytical approach to setting up Phoenix would not have occurred. They would have continued in their blustering inefficiencies of all of these different iterations of exactly the same thing called something else. All right. So one of the important aspects is the special branch headquarters was co-located with the National Police Interrogation Center.

19:22 That was very important because Phoenix is a policing action. And that's what makes Phoenix, when it's used other places like the United States, very problematic because it appears like it looks like regular policing, maybe on steroids, but still policing. And so people are caught between.

19:51 Yay, we support the police, but not that police. And that's the same thing with the military. We support our military, but not that military, not the military that goes rogue and does this shit with the CIA. That is absolutely not the role of the military. And that's the problem that we're having. And that's used against us because the CIA knows that. That's why they pretend to be military.

20:20 because it buys them our patriotic support because we tend not to call out military, and that's bullshit. If the military, whether it's a CIA agent dressed in, and that's the reason I put that post out there earlier about why the big accounts won't cover Operation Gladio, because they actually think you're too stupid to figure this out. The CIA poses as military.

20:51 And that's not to say that all military is great because they're not. But we do have a lot of infiltration in our military from the CIA and we have it in the FBI and we have it in the border and we have it in DEA and we have it in the Department of Homeland Security. These ass wipes are everywhere and they're everywhere on purpose because they know psychologically that we have been programmed.

21:19 to root on military no matter what. That shit's got to stop, guys. We have to use our brain, just like I made the comment about this in vitro being funded by the federal government. No, no. The federal government is not. I love the fact that we want to take care of people and have families. That's not the role of the federal government. And it doesn't matter if it comes out of Trump's mouth or a socialist mouth.

21:48 You can't destroy the Constitution and our republic for a campaign promise. And I'm not bending on that. And neither should you, because they use that against us. Then if you bend on that one and I get my toe in the door where that's unconstitutional and it is because it is not the role of the federal government. Well, then I can go right through it with Obamacare because now you've already opened the door.

22:15 We're not opening the door anymore and we're not supporting people who do. We're not supporting the issue. I can still support Donald Trump. I'm against that issue because I don't think we should be doing any funding at the federal level for anything that's not written in the Constitution to be done at the federal level. If the governor of the state of Florida wants to do that, and I would highly recommend him do it since he's already overtaxed us $8 billion sitting in a quote unquote reserve.

22:46 That's not a reserve. That's over taxation. Then that's the way it should be. Back to the story. All right. So and this is a foot stomper. Brigham himself in this interview compares the special branch activity that will house Phoenix with the intelligence division of a major city police force.

23:12 Because that's what they have done with the Phoenix program. They have brought that back with an intelligence function of local big city police departments. And they have basically created a Phoenix program inside the United States. At the time this is going on, William Colby was the chief of the CIA's Far East Division. So all of this stuff fell under him.

23:42 And this special branch setup became very important and was used in future operations, especially when he became the director. It says Brigham's job, as Brigham defined it, quote, was to bring sharpness and focus to the CIA field operations. He basically divided it up and he had like three guys working.

24:12 different areas. One is like the Hamlet Informant Program, which would be like your local NARC program in the big city police departments. They had basically an interrogation center. And they also had, what's the best way to describe that? Like liaisons with other policing organizations in the local environment.

24:42 kind of to circle information back to him. It says the special branch advisors should limit himself to his primary duties, which were training Vietnamese special branch case officers to penetrate the Viet Cong, giving them cash for information and basically building the interrogation centers that all of these new informants were going to come. Like we haven't built enough bullshit over there already for four generations over the last five years.

25:12 of their disorganization. So we're going to build one more. Your tax dollars at work. So basically it says he had, he inherited 14 province officers that were not distributed evenly. And so basically he ends up with 50 of them distributed across the entire southern part of Vietnam. And of course he goes to work.

25:43 training them all up to a standard to work within this new analytical way of policing and doing the CIA activity there. So one of the things he did was have reports that were mandatory. And there was a lot of resistance with that because people were like, you know, I used to be out in the field, not writing reports, writing reports is dumb, blah, blah, blah.

26:12 But he insisted that they be done. And then he created like six regional. So he's got 50 guys out there. And like once a week they had to submit a report. And then he has six intermediate territories and they compile them and give him the consolidated report, which is then transmitted after he reviews it to.

26:41 The station chief, the ambassador, and back to Washington, D.C. And that was kind of a missing link that had not been happening before. So Donahue, who we've talked about the last couple of days, he's like totally pissed off at this whole thing. Because in one way, it kind of shows him up like he hasn't because he's been there for a long time. This guy's new, new kid on the block kind of thing.

27:07 And so he's kind of put off by the fact that everybody seems so excited about this guy's new approach and it wasn't his idea kind of thing. So he starts poo-pooing the idea that they're going to be doing paperwork as opposed to being out in the field. And interestingly enough, Valentine points out that at the time, Donahue's budget was $28 million.

27:36 where Brickham, when he got in theater, only had a million dollars. Now, I can tell you, having worked in this environment before, it really was a dollar thing, because now Donahue's looking at his budget thinking, that guy's going to be coming after my budget, and they're going to give him some of my budget because his ideas are better than mine. And those conversations actually do occur, by the way.

28:03 The main difference between foreign intelligence and paramilitary in this conversation was the fact that we had region officers, but the paramilitary people worked directly out of Saigon. And it was a situation that Hart wanted to stop because he believed that the paramilitary, which is the action element of the intel.

28:32 So you can't separate those two. You can't have a guy that you're holding responsible for penetrating Viet Cong activity in a province where you have only the intelligence going on here. And then the actual action of that intelligence is being directed by some guy way up here. And then there's the delay and the reports getting up there for him to act on and everything else. Decentralized command and control.

29:01 Is basically the way you have to operate this. So that's kind of what he's trying to set up and he gets with the Phoenix program. So you can already see kind of the pissing contest that they'll have. And then he makes another very interesting point about the paramilitary thing. And he says.

29:26 The people that were over there doing the paramilitary at the time, because remember, we've already talked about the guys coming in from the Philippines with Lansdale. They had a sort of checkered past within the agency because most of them at this point, which is the mid-60s, were from the Cuban failure of the Bay of Pigs. Now, you remember when we talked about...

29:56 Felix Rodriguez, he actually said he was in Vietnam and that he had worked for Colby there and several other people. And he was there. And if you've not read that thread that I wrote about this, the deal with the Cuban exiles were after the failure of the Bay of Pigs, they wanted to kind of whitewash them.

30:21 into not being quote-unquote exiles, but make them American citizens. And so the CIA worked with the, as if it's a separate entity, the State Department, and created a caveat that because these people had served the country as assassins, that if they went into the military for a minimum amount of time, that they would

30:49 Not unlike you have to apply and all this other stuff. They were going to be given American citizenship. And so at the time, where would you send an assassin once they've enlisted in the army? And they had their own separate unit in the army, which I've never heard of. They sent them all to Vietnam.

31:13 And basically, they really worked for the CIA just like they did before, but they were wearing military uniforms so they could trick all of us to give them American citizenship, even though they were foreign assassins. That's the bottom line. And so they're part of this jump starting of the Phoenix program, which should really make us feel really good about it. OK, so that's the starting of.

31:41 the covert programs as it relates to, um, Phoenix. So the paramilitary shop was basically an Intel arm undercover getting its own intelligence through armed propaganda teams, consensus grievance teams, and the Montanard program that was ran out of a central location. Um, and they basically had counterterrorism team, which

32:10 were supposedly um uh i don't know hit teams i don't know what you would call them they're they're the paramilitary people so the as for the grievance the census grievance program which we talked about the whole questionnaire thing and ratting out your neighbors and stuff like that uh brickham says about that quote we wanted access to its intelligence because we could get intelligence we didn't have access to

32:41 That's a round way of saying it. And he also says, quote, was, let's see, the basic contract with the Vietnamese peasant was that anything that was learned through the census grievance would not be turned over to the policing authority. So that's kind of that dual dysfunctionalness that we have seen in the past here. Brickham said.

33:12 Quote, all counterinsurgencies depends on the first instance on informants. Without them, you're dead. And with them, you can do all sorts of things. This is something that can only be a local operation. It's a family affair. A few people change hands, unquote. And then in another book that was written.

33:40 called The Future Applicability of the Phoenix Program, which should concern us. And interestingly enough, it was written at my alma mater, Air War College, by a CIA guy that attended Air War College by the name of Warren Milberg. And I did go online and request that. I want a copy of it. He calls the Hamlet Informant Program the focus of the special branches.

34:11 bread and butter activity. It was designed specifically to gain information from and on the people who lived in these hamlets. The problem, he writes, was in recruiting informants in as many hamlets as possible. This task was made difficult by the fact that the informing became dangerous work, especially if you were ratted out to the Viet Cong. It became necessary to try

34:39 other motivational factors in order to get these people to begin informing. Now, I'm going to save you some of the details, but I will tell you that basically what they did was like what we've talked about a little bit before. They dressed up as the Viet Cong. They committed atrocities, and those atrocities

35:10 with the villages believing that they had been done by the Viet Cong, was then used by the CIA to try to turn these people against the Viet Cong. And that's where they began getting informants. So on a fact-finding mission in 1965, Ohio Senator Stephen Young

35:35 charged that the CIA hired mercenaries to disguise themselves as Viet Cong and discredit communists by committing atrocities. It was alleged to me that several of them executed two village leaders and raped some women, according to the Herald Tribune, who had a quote from Young about his visit.

36:00 Indeed, these teams did disguise as enemy, killing and otherwise abusing nationalist Vietnamese, not communists, and used that as part of the psychological warfare. It reinforced negative stereotypes about the Viet Cong, while at the same time supplied recruits for their informant program. In his autobiography, Soldier,

36:29 Anthony Herbert, H-E-R-B-E-R-T, tells how he reported for duty with the Special Operations Group in Saigon in November 65 and was asked to join a top secret PSYOPs war program. Quote, what they wanted me to do was to take charge of execution teams that wiped out entire families and tried to make it look as though the Viet Cong themselves had done the killing.

36:57 The rationale was that other Vietnamese would see the Viet Cong had killed another Viet Cong and would be frightened away from becoming a Viet Cong. Of course, the villagers would then be inclined to be some type of informant and potentially allegiance to our side, unquote. He also went on to say that there were Vietnamese people in the villages

37:24 who were being paid to point fingers at other people that these guys thought were that way, but they didn't have any proof. So they would pay somebody to go on record in order to get that guy. And you keep in mind that a lot of that had to do, after the fact, we found out, with long-term business rivals and stuff like that, where they were just taking out their competition. That sounds familiar, too.

37:54 So anyway, informants who clearly fabricated information, which they thought their special branch case officers wanted to hear, and that when this information was compiled and produced in the form of a blacklist of these people, a distinct possibility existed that the names on such lists had little relation to the actual person or any relationship to them being in the Viet Cong.

38:27 At all. The special branch kept records of the people who had been victims of the Viet Cong atrocities and acts of terrorism so that they could basically try to turn them. So if they were just terrorizing them and not killing them or the surrounding family members of someone that they killed, they had that actually in the database. So I killed the dad. Now I can turn the kids or that type of thing.

38:57 That's what they were doing over there. The special branch then constructed sometimes elaborate, sometimes simple plans to bring in the informants in the sphere of the people that they had just terrorized. Anyway, another major program that this guy wanted to work on, Brickham, he turned it, he called it.

39:27 recruitment in place of Viet Cong. Quote, this is by far the most important program in terms of gathering intelligence on the enemy. My motto was to recruit them. If you can't recruit them, defect them. If you can't defect them, capture them. If you can't capture them, kill them. Very nice guy. Okay. According to OSS veteran Jim Ward, a CIA officer that was in charge of

40:00 IV Corps, between 67 and 69, noted that the special branch kept dossiers on all suspected Viet Cong in a particular area of operations, and that evidence was gathered through interrogations, captured documentations, and what was called walk-ins, these informants.

40:28 When the accumulated evidence indicated that there was someone that looked to be high-ranking Viet Cong, that person was targeted for recruitment like a double agent. First, you had to figure out how you could get access to them, and that was normally done through family members. Then you use bribes, sex, blackmail, and drugs to recruit them.

41:01 It's like criminals recruiting criminals, using criminality to do it. Special branch case officers were used to handle penetrations into the Viet Cong network. And by 1967, Brigham told the author that the CIA had several hundred penetration agents that they had recruited. But generally, these were all low level because the higher up people,

41:34 And this thing, this is the point that this seems to completely miss. The higher up people had been there generationally and they were nationalists as Ho Chi Minh was. And they were in it for their country, not for money and certainly not to get in bed with a foreign power. There had been a foreign power in their country for the last now going on 50 years.

42:04 If they were going to get in with a foreign power, it wouldn't have taken 50 years. So these are die-in-the-wool nationalists that want the United States out of their country. And for some reason, that never dawns on these people. They don't walk in one day and go, you know what? Because their motivation is to keep this war machine going because it's protecting the drug network.

42:34 which is protecting the corporate interest. Otherwise, if you have even one active brain cell, you'd have thrown up your hands long ago and went, too many people are dying. Too many Americans are dying. And this is a waste of time. They weren't allowed to say that. So the CIA Special Operations Unit were for unilateral penetrations.

43:08 and was largely the work of a guy by the name of Sam Draculich, D-R-A-K-U-L-I-C-H. He's a senior special branch advisor for Third Corps in 1965. He had a lot of good ideas, but everybody around him described him as flaky.

43:36 but I think anybody that does this stuff, quite frankly, is flaky. So he was just a little bit more flaky than normal. He was petrified of being in Vietnam. So he wouldn't live in the province that he was assigned to work in under Brigham's hierarchy. So at the end of every day,

44:05 He drove back into Saigon and slept there in a hotel because he did not trust anybody anywhere. He was like totally paranoid about everything. Okay, next guy, Howard Rocky Stone. He came in to be the chief of foreign intelligence. And he was a very interesting guy.

44:40 um worked um for brickham and was given the job of trying to find some of these higher level vietcong to penetrate them and again they don't exist because they're those people are they're not going to turn um they've been at this way too long these guys are all like um new guys and

45:06 You know, when this happens, they can see them coming a mile away. They know what they're there for. Because the whole time this is going on, the part that this misses is what was going on in the north. And that Ho Chi Minh was, they had, and I visited all of these places. They had this ginormous, like war college equivalent to, and we went and spent like a couple of days with these people.

45:36 um the senior officers so they send like senior senior officers to their war college so they were all what appeared to me to be very old um uh guys and um this was ongoing um they had set up these professional um military and um

45:59 training schools for these province senior people representing the Viet Cong nationalists at all of the levels. And the ones that they had, especially the ones they had penetrated in the South, they kept them supplied. They kept them morally and spiritually is not probably the right word, but they really provided a lot of support to them because they knew how vulnerable they were.

46:28 and how much they were going to be attacked by the U.S. forces and the South to try to turn them. So we don't talk about that a lot, but that was a long-going, ongoing, long-term venture for Ho Chi Minh. I spent a couple of days learning the extensiveness of that, and it was crazy. Okay, so moving on.

46:59 So Rocky sets up his special unit and took over basically what that Dracolix guy was supposed to be doing. And then what he noticed is while he was trying to identify these higher up people, that they would either move jurisdictions and they didn't have kind of a cohesive way of tracking them.

47:29 But they basically would disappear on him. And so they were very frustrated with how all of this was working. Let's see. All right. So moving on. In the summer of 1966, steps finally began being taken in Washington and Saigon to end the debate over.

48:02 who was going to be doing what to whom militarily versus CIA. So there was one camp in Vietnam that believed all of this, because of the dual chains of command and all that other stuff that was not working, all of this needed to be put under the military and then have basically the functions of CIA support on the intel side within the military apparatus.

48:32 Now, obviously, the CIA doesn't want that because they're not going to be able to convince the military to do all the evil stuff that they want to do to the people because they're not allowed. So there's a big battle that goes back and forth. And at the time, Westmoreland was still there. And it says the military was providing about 90 percent of the actual logistical support to everything.

49:01 Um, so the CIA couldn't like go around them because they needed them like airplane rides, helicopter rides, all of the logistical support of being in, if they needed something built, it was the Marines and some contract people that were doing all of this stuff over and over again. So, um, the civilian agencies were basically, like I said, afraid that

49:35 If and when it came time for the military to throw the flag up or win and leave, that then they would be left holding the bag because they would not have had the opportunity to kind of worm their way into all of the nationalistic functions of the current government because they would have to only have the face of the military.

50:04 It's basically just a turf war. That's the easy way of saying it. In 1965, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, who we've talked about quite a bit, totally corrupt, had handed the problem to Ed Lansdell, whom he appointed as his senior liaison to the Ministry of Revolutionary Development. But Lansdell didn't want it.

50:33 By 66, the problem was back in Washington, where it was determined that the pacification was failing. And as a result of the combination of poor management and the resistance of the Viet Cong, the nationalistic tendency. So as a way of resolving this, President Johnson summoned his war managers to a conference in Virginia. So in January of 66.

51:01 They had a meeting and they decided that there needed to be a single pacification manager. And through that person, all things would flow. So there was going to be a special assistant for counterinsurgencies and special activities. It was General William Pierce who suggested that the MAC commander be put in charge with a civilian deputy.

51:33 So it kind of was like a dual hat, have one of the civilian NGO kind of people here and then the commander up top. Although the civilians continued to object, Johnson wanted quick results, the kind the military could provide. And therefore, he named National Security Council member Robert Comer, K-O-M-E-R, his special assistant for pacification.

52:03 Comer was an advocate of military control, and the master plan was to unite all of the agencies involved in pacification under his personal management and direct them against the Viet Cong. Saigon Embassy commissioned a study, and this just cracked me up because this isn't the first study they commissioned, and it won't be the last. You're in the middle of a war, and you're doing a study? Okay.

52:34 Everybody's got to get their paycheck. It begun in July 1966 under a mission coordinator by the name of George Jake Jacobson. And it was called Roles in Mission Study. It made 81 recommendations, 66 of which were accepted by everyone. But then it kind of got down to brass tacks.

53:04 Brickham said, we did claim in roles and mission that the police should have a major civilian role and be the spearhead of the effort because it was the police over the long haul in the terms of a victory that would have to own the program once they pulled out. And therefore, we should not let the military run everything till the end of the war and then let everything fall apart. But in pursuit of a total victory,

53:33 the size and the pace of military operations were steadily escalating by 1966. And more and more to the exclusion of the civilian agency. So the military was more concerned about gathering intel that they could actually take action on, like tactical operational level intel, not...

54:03 whose dad was, you know, potentially this versus that. Military agent nets and interrogation zeroed in on the type of information that they needed in order to secure particular areas and not on the second and third order that these guys wanted in order to manipulate the political outcome, because that's not what the military was about. They were there to neutralize.

54:32 the military part of it. So when in provinces manned with smart military officers, they did bring in a police element for protection more than anything else. But because it was not a universal policy, that was kind of done ad hoc. And that was not sitting well with the CIA.

55:05 So, so-called civilian intelligence operations was quickly perverted and to provide tactical information to the U.S. military. And the problem that you have here, if you're not secure and you're having to look over your shoulder physically to go do this pathification program, you might want to secure the perimeter first and allow the military to secure.

55:34 the area before you worry about crafting police states and all this other shit. But that's kind of the failure of these people in not understanding. You can basically do both, but if you've got to prioritize assets, the physical security of a location is much more important to whether or not you're finding out what political way this guy leans. Is he a nationalist? Is he a communist?

56:03 You know, does he support the stooge that you just installed as a president? So according to this guy, what was needed was cooperation. But turf battles between the CIA and military was basically obstructing still even after they've had this powwow with Johnson. So into this minefield stepped Robert Comer in 1966 with the mandate from Johnson.

56:33 that basically the military was going to take it over and the civilian agencies, because they were not privy to all of the meeting, when he gets in theater, they're like shocked. Neither the Agency for International Development nor the CIA thought the military was capable of doing it. And under pressure from Ambassador Lodge, who bestowed upon Comer the nickname Blowtorch,

57:01 President Johnson gave the civilians one last shot. The result was the Office of Civil Operations, OCO. It was formed in October 1966. OCO combined the field operation units of AID, the U.S. Information, the propaganda arm, and the CIA, which is the action arm, and on this basis was organized into branches of

57:32 PSYOP, political action, defectors, public safety, refugees, and economic development. That's too much shit, and you know it ain't going to work. Because none of that has anything to do with your physical security. These people are stupid. Under the director of Wade Latham, L-A-T-H-R-A-M, and his military deputy, they just switched the roles, General Paul Smith.

58:02 OCOs, regional directors, were assigned in all of those different cores and same old people just reshuffle the deck that we've done like we're on iteration number seven if you're counting. They were given four months to show results and of course it was doomed from the start. So, faced with the prospect of military control, agency chains of command extending from Washington to Saigon were

58:33 reshaped, and even though nothing was achieved in terms of pacification, the formation of the Office of Civil Operations spared the military commander, Wes Moreland, from having to reorganize the civilian agencies himself. So in March of 67, President Johnson was to incorporate the OCO into the Military Advisory Command under the Revolutionary Development Support Directorate.

59:02 and it was going to report to General William Knowlton. Announced in May 1967, the Military Assistance Command for Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development, that's a long word, it's called CORDS, C-O-R-D-S, was to be the bureaucratic vessel in which Phoenix program would be given birth. This big reorganization at the end of 66 were...

59:32 They were trying to clean up the chain of command lines of authority and that type of thing. Now, what's interesting to me, they've now been at this since they left Korea in 1953. We're at 66 and they still don't have an organizational chart. I just want to say that out loud. So part of that new organization took over the CIA's covert act.

1:00:08 action programs under its operational branch. There was going to be, they set up an embassy annex and moved the CIA out of the embassy itself and put it in the building with USAID, just called AID at the time. And that's very interesting.

1:00:35 from a perspective of looking at USAID now, when they have been on the battlefield in operations, the CIA has always been integrated with AID. That is not anything new. And so it basically goes and proves that the State Department is in bed with the CIA. There is no wall between those two. So there's a new guy that comes in.

1:01:07 And his name is Renz, R-E-N-Z, Hoeksema, H-O-E-K-S-E-M-A. So he comes in from Washington, D.C. And he's described as ruthless and self-promoting. Yay, another one. All right. So they set up these things called R-O...

1:01:40 ICs, which are basically the revolutionary acronym for that office. And these are the regional elements of it. Okay. Like regional officer in charge kind of thing. All right. So now we've actually got a pyramid and it says, you'll never guess what we're doing now. We're building new buildings with bolts in them.

1:02:14 And they actually put encrypted communications in these new buildings. And they have a chief and a deputy chief and they have hierarchical assistance. So it's really looking bureaucratic, not like we're at war at all. And the preventional reconnaissance units were assigned to these different.

1:02:45 And it says it was one of the options discussed during the reorganization. And basically, it was going to be an integration of the counterterrorist and intel into an actionable paramilitary combined unit. Brigham says that he didn't want them.

1:03:13 mainly because I didn't think we could manage them properly. My foreign intel guys were in no way, in terms of experience, able to control them. Consequently, as of November 1966, the recycled counter-terrorists were called preventional reconnaissance units and therefore managed by the CIA officer out of these cord units.

1:03:42 but still not in a coordinated way. The U.S. military went to Vietnam to fight a conventional war. However, by late 1966, it was clear that the games on the battlefield were very transitory because they were not fighting a conventional war nor a conventional enemy. And they never properly identified the enemy because the CIA kept telling them falsely.

1:04:10 that we were fighting communists. We were never fighting communists in Vietnam, ever. We were fighting nationalists fighting for the survival of their country. Those are two very different, if you want to call one of them even an enemy. I don't know how you can call somebody that is fighting for their country to be unified an enemy. But that's the reason why the CIA had to label them a communist.

1:04:40 The military, the entire time they're over there thinking they're actually fighting communists, were fighting nationalists who would gladly give their blood for their country, as would all of us. Those are two very different enemies, militarily. The guy by the name of the CIA guy they called Rocky Stone arranged for Nelson Brickham to brief General Westmoreland on this whole subject of

1:05:12 Basically reincorporating the national police because the military wasn't able to hold ground because they weren't identifying the enemy properly. And the conclusion of that was basically that they needed to work closer with the police. And that's where we get the forming of the Phoenix program. So this.

1:05:44 It began, let's see, the people wanted to know what you meant when you said attack the against the Viet Cong. OK, so this came out of a briefing. What do you mean by attack the Viet Cong? Are you going to go in and like militarily attack them? Are you going to do what you've been doing and trying to turn them? So the attack was.

1:06:13 circulated among the military and the CIA staff, and basically it was decided in the end of 1966 that they actually needed to define that because the military had a completely different interpretation of attack than did the civilian agencies because they didn't necessarily want them dead. If you follow that guy's progression that we just talked about, that was the end result if they couldn't do these other four things to them. So, in a...

1:06:42 written memorandum in November 1966. Attack is significant for three reasons. First was its definition for the Viet Cong as the Viet Cong organizationally, hierarchically, the management structure as opposed to the guerrillas and the foot soldiers. Many, if not most of these categories, like the guerrillas, the troops, are young people who have either

1:07:13 impressed or seduced into the Viet Cong and cannot in any way be considered hardcore communist. Now, what's interesting about that is if I stopped right there, that's the CIA admitting that we're not fighting the communist, but they kept telling us we were fighting the communist. They also go on to say that attack as Viet Cong were all

1:07:45 party members, and front organization officers, as opposed to the rank and file. Thus, all members of a village chapter, all district committees, and province committee cadres could be included as being a target for an attack. We would also include members of so-called sapper units. These people are basically what they referred to as

1:08:14 hardened Viet Cong troops. They were organized in military formations and basically carried out the sabotage against our military. They also staged bombings and, you know, that type of thing. It says these latter are not casual acts of terrorism, but carefully planned and fully organized military operation using commando style operations.

1:08:45 basically giving back to the Americans what they were doing to them. But in the word, quote unquote, infrastructure, Brigham said during our interview, it may be particularly applicable to insurgencies due to the conceptual view held by rural people in want of literacy and hygiene and technology.

1:09:15 Brigham held the revisionist view that in an insurgency among such people, only 5% of the population is politically active, with 2.5% for insurgents and 2.5% against them. The rural population is not the driving force. Their attitude, he said, is basically they don't want either one. They want to be left alone. Without an infrastructure, Brigham said,

1:09:45 There is only a headless body. If you destroy the infrastructure, you destroy the insurgency. And that just shows you kind of the craziness of the way these people, they're trying to behead something that doesn't exist. There was never a communist insurgency. There were nationalists that wanted their country.

1:10:16 Brigham viewed the Viet Cong as a criminal conspiracy, a mafia operating under the pretense of political ideology, coercing people through the selective use of terror. We've already established they're not generally the ones, not that they didn't do any terror, because they did. They actually aimed their terror not at the people. They aimed their terror at the Americans and the civilian CIA people. They targeted their hotels.

1:10:45 They're convoys. They were all about, because they're nationalists, winning the hearts and minds of the people. That's why you have to be very careful about reading the words of these CIA officers in the books they write, because they purposely manipulate what they're doing. The insurgency, in his opinion, attracted people oriented towards violence and through political fronts, naive individuals.

1:11:16 The presence of such marginal characters, he contends, made the attack on the Viet Cong a difficult task. Also, attack is significant in that it defines the attack against the Viet Cong in terms of the special branch mission, their informants, interrogations, in other words, justifying why they're there. The action tools in the attack on the Viet Cong were primarily

1:11:45 ambushes by police and regional forces and also their special forces elements. The going in and kind of hunting and pecking around to try to find somebody on their list that they had gotten from their informants that they paid. Even though William Colby later testified to Congress that Phoenix was a South Vietnamese police program, Brigham in his

1:12:15 writing about the attack definition, they quote, a final and not insignificant tool are direct military operations, not police. For example, 175 millimeter artillery fire was directed on the reported site of a combined conference of Viet Cong representatives.

1:12:46 Unquote. On the basis of an after action report, Brigham writes, quote, we are confident that the damage to the infrastructure in terms of key personnel killed is significant. Unquote. The attack plan also mentioned a special task force organized to launch a combined intelligence, police and military assault against special zone.

1:13:16 headquarters, and base camps. This is the third significant point raised by the attack plan. The Vietnamese people that helped author this called it the CONTAC, C-O-N-G-T-A-C-4. It was the operational model for Phoenix. General McChristian

1:13:48 M.C. Christian, writes that CONTAC4 evolved as a joint U.S.-Vietnamese combined staff from an intensive intelligence program called Project CORAL, C-O-R-R-A-L, which, oddly enough, you can't find anything about. It was initiated in 1966.

1:14:14 The purpose was to produce intelligence on the identification and location of the Viet Cong operating in a particular area and the dissemination of this intelligence to user agencies for apprehension and exploitation. Also, another element of it was Operation Fairfax, which was begun the next month in December using three Americans and three

1:14:48 forces, battalions searching out and destroying Viet Cong main force units, guerrillas, and infrastructure in the same area. Operation Fairfax and the Combined Intelligence Staff were the primary elements identified in this CONPAC-4 document that, again, serves as the basis for the Phoenix program.

1:15:15 They had compiled a blacklist of infrastructure personalities in support of the North as targets. By the time they got through coming up with names, there was over 3,000 names that were going to be considered infrastructure. The systematic identification and location of Viet Cong and the rapid retrieval of...

1:15:46 a database that they were using made possible by the combined intelligence center set up in Vietnam with a computer. The foundation for the combined intelligence staff was laid on the American side to create. And we, we already talked about that. They had that set up. So that becomes again, another tool that's going to be used in Phoenix, kind of like,

1:16:19 They had to have 9-11 in order to get the Patriot Act so they could have the same kind of database to track us. A guy by the name of Tullius, T-U-L-I-U-S, and I'm going to spell his last name, A-C-A-M-P-O-R-A. Campora is a U.S. military, army, counterintelligence officer, and was also...

1:16:49 fought in Korea, was attached to the CIA in 1966 and was used as General Loan's advisor. As an officer on General James Van Fleet's staff in Korea, Kempura had had prior dealings with John Hart, who was the station chief in Korea before he got to Vietnam.

1:17:19 had masqueraded as an army colonel and had interfaced in military operations to the extent that General Van Fleet called him an arrogant SOB. The old grudges were carried forward into Saigon. The assisted part, Campora side, when we first met in 1986 at Fort Myers, which is a base outside of D.C., quote, he called me in and said,

1:17:51 We're dealing with an enigma, a cobra, General Lone, unquote. He went on to say, Lone had a Mandarin Dai Biat background and his father had rescued Dem. Consequently, under Kai, Lone was very powerful and Hart resented Lone's concentration of power. Although he was not a political animal, Lone was substantial. So Hart took away.

1:18:22 First, his supervision of the military security service, and eventually he took over control of the Central Intelligence Organization altogether inside of Lone's authority. And eventually Lone ran them both, along with the National Police. When I arrived on Saigon, Kampora continued, at the national level, the U.S. Embassy with the agency and the military command

1:18:49 had decided to take over everything in order to change the political climate of Vietnam. And obviously they're going to butt heads with the Vietnamese in order to do that. So to create a counterforce to take over control from Cai, who was basically like they refer to him as the premium peacock. This was done by intercepting Viet Cong political cadre, surveilling them and then arresting them and moving toward them.

1:19:20 then buying them over to the American side in order to destroy the integrity of the Viet Cong. Kampora qualified the statement by noting the Viet Cong would always say yes, but they were always acting duplicitous as a double agent. And so the CIA began using the fact that they were supposedly turning these Viet Cong, which they really weren't, to discredit the Vietnamese government in order to gain control.

1:19:50 So they're undermining their own long-term benefit. And so what's interesting about this from a 30,000-foot look is the whole reason the civilians in the CIA and AID said they didn't want the military to run it is at some point the civilian government had to do that, while at the same time they're undermining the civilian government, just in case you missed that. When it came to the counterterrorism,

1:20:21 Lone wanted control. Lone said to Hart, you join us, we will not join you. In effect, Lone told Hart to go screw himself. And so Hart wanted me to go kind of work out the difference. But General Lone, a dye-in-the-wool nationalist, had his own agenda. In fact, the basis for the counterterrorism derived from the Vietnamese side from a counter-subversion program that he commissioned.

1:20:51 And thus, the program was to prevent the Viet Cong agents from infiltrating their political parties, which, of course, this guy's more concerned about that for the long-term duration of the government in the South than the military is ever going to be. So you're asking the guy that created kind of their own program that he wants to have long-term.

1:21:21 after the U.S. is gone to give up his program and count on the U.S. delivering him a win when he didn't trust them. So the North doesn't trust him. The South don't trust him. And here we are in the middle. So eventually, this difference is what undermines Phoenix long term. The program that this

1:21:59 guy, this general, set up to protect the political infrastructure of the South, had a name called Fung Hung, P-H-U-N-G, H-O-A-N-G. And that, at some point, like right now, during this time in 66, running into 67, there's a compromise that's worked out where

1:22:30 Fung Hung and this attack plan that the U.S. set up merges and gives birth to Phoenix. And of course, we talked about the Phoenix being the mythological bird that perpetuates, that perpetually rises from its own ashes. As the Americans drew it, the bird held a blacklist.

1:23:01 In its claw. Because that's what they were going to go after. That's what they called their target list. That was in this computer. A black list. And so they actually developed. Like an emblem. The phoenix program. That had the phoenix bird. With grasp in one of their talons. Were the black list. In this manifestation. Phoenix. Being a predatory bird.

1:23:30 that selectively snatches its prey is emblematic of this entire organization. So nowhere is the gap between American and Vietnamese sensitivities more apparent than in their interpretation of Phoenix and the Phong Hong doctrine, which also represents the struggle between General Lo and John Hart for control over the entire program.

1:24:00 In this contest, Loan scored first when, for legal reasons, Contact 4 was placed under his control. Loan assigned as many as 50 officers to the program from the participating Vietnamese agencies, with Major Hung Mau in charge of operations, assisted by a guy by the name of Dang Van Minh.

1:24:26 The U.S. provided 20 military counterintelligence officers, each of whom served as a desk officer in Saigon to represent the precincts that they had reorganized into. And a guy by the name of Tom Becker supervised that staff. There were also Australian officers, because, you know, this was officially a U.N. mission, that were integrated into this as well.

1:24:55 that had all served together generally in Korea as well as here. And so by November of 1966, this new integrated approach was basically beginning to filter down to the precinct level around the country. And they began, you know, picking up the

1:25:23 blacklist people that had been generated. And interestingly enough, all of this now, because we're just basically beginning to creep into the Phoenix program, they called it police work. Kampora said, quote, because the police had the constitutional authority for subversive arrest, but it was paramilitary in nature.

1:25:51 In an event, Lone was going to bring it all together and he did until Comer came out in February 67 and was briefed by Mao and Tracy because Comer saw it as a prototype and wanted to make it nationwide before working out all of the details. Comer wanted to use counterterrorism as...

1:26:17 a showcase as part of the combined intelligence staff, but General Lone was reluctant to participate and had to be strong-armed by Cromer in February 67. By April 67, the combined intelligence staff would have entered more than 6,500 names in the database to be targets. They were adding up to 1,200 every month. With the military providing a shield, the field police

1:26:46 checked IDs against blacklists at every checkpoint, and there were checkpoints everywhere. By December 1967, approximately 500 Viet Cong action agents were apprehended in Saigon and the surrounding area. The significance of these arrests and success of the staff cannot be measured, but unquestionably was attributed to the communist failure in Saigon during the 1968 Tet Offensive.

1:27:19 They did another study on how well this organization was working. But while the bureaucratic titans clasped in Saigon, a few military and CIA officers and some of the more remote had decided to work together despite all the dumbasses back in Saigon. And so many of them had already set up working relationships and sharing intel and that type thing.

1:27:45 Bob Wall, W-A-L-L, a paramilitary officer, CIA guy, in one of the provinces said in December 1966, Wall was made deputy to one of the regional commanders by the name of Jack Horgan. Wall recalled when he met Doug Valentine, the author, in the winter of 1966 to 67.

1:28:15 There was a Marine general that basically came over every morning, got the intel brief from the CIA, and they worked hand in hand and basically had created an ad hoc model that really should have been implemented everywhere, which is kind of the way we do it now. We have at every major command, warfighting command, CIA.

1:28:46 In some cases, DEA and FBI, advisors that attend every staff meeting at all levels, both in the theater and like at CENTCOM back at MacDill, so that they can keep an open flow of communications. None of that was set up at this time.

1:29:07 Wall also went on to say that a guy by the name of Forbes was a special branch advisor, but there was no coordination between the military and AID as a result of that. So let's see. All right. So they are now going to set up, as a result of their last study, a thing called DIOC, which is D-I-O-C-C.

1:29:41 which is just another fancy name for the same thing that they've been doing. And it integrated police-supplied ID kits. And basically, this starts looking exactly like the Homeland Security kind of thing. And the little kit that they hand out at school for your kids to do the fingerprints and that type of thing. So they start... And this...

1:30:10 is how they begin generating arrests again off that blacklist. And Wall goes on to say, quote, Phoenix represented the strategy that could have won the war. The problem was that Phoenix fell outside foreign intelligence and paramilitary programs are historically troubled for intelligence. So Phoenix never got primary attention. The military command did not have the mentality to work with the police.

1:30:38 And the police were not trained to win the hearts and minds. And the minister of interior, fearing a coup, mistrusted their own police force and would not assign quality personnel to it. Phoenix did not work in Vietnam because it was dominated by the military mentality. They couldn't believe they would lose. And of course, that comes from the CIA is because.

1:31:12 They didn't believe that was ever their mission. Their mission was to provide security and basically defeat an enemy that they had been identified as being communist. So typical CIA, blame it on the military. When you can see every bit of this, very rarely was any of the dysfunction, and I'm not being...

1:31:42 overly sensitive, but you can see the bureaucratic piece of this laid between the Vietnamese government, because it was a stewed government installed by the CIA and the CIA. Their territorial pissing contest, they always put the military in the middle of it because they couldn't do any of it without it.

1:32:08 For most of these CIA operations, the military is a necessary baggage like the nuclear codes that you've got to carry around with you because they fly you everywhere. They provide all of the logistical support to you. And when you get in trouble, they're the ones that come get your ass. So they're a necessary evil. They're never part of the actual plan, nor do you ever tell most of the military what it is your real goal is.

1:32:38 For example, they knew all along, and we've repeatedly said that as we've called it out here in going over this plan, that they were not fighting communists. They were fighting nationalists, but they wanted the territory to protect their drug trade. And none of that was ever disclosed to the military. You can ask any Vietnam veteran, and they will tell you they were there fighting communists. I've talked to a couple of them, and I had one guy just like,

1:33:09 He was pith. But, of course, I had facts that they were never fighting communists. They were always fighting nationalists. And that strategically, even if you want to defeat nationalists, you fight a completely different war, completely different operational plans, completely different tactics. And it's much more difficult because they will die. Communists.

1:33:38 It's like I can just move to a different country and implement communism there. It's not the same at all from a motivational standpoint. And that's it for today. We probably have one more day of this, and then I think we could probably wrap it up tomorrow. Okay. What you got, Trump frog? Hey, what's up, Colonel? What's up, Stella? What's up, Bridget? How y'all doing? Good. How are you?

1:34:15 I'm doing as good as I can be. I just thought you made a really, really brilliant statement, which is kind of a reflection of our country. Communists and nationalists are different because the nationalists actually have something to fight for and care about, which is their country, where they come from and pride in their country. Communists are like parasites. They just want to go anywhere they can to kind of, you know, jump in and sponge off of people. And I kind of missed a lot of what you said, but.

1:34:46 Right there, I was like, it makes complete sense. Because if you use the parallel of our country, these communists don't give a shit about our country. They really don't care. They just care about their feelings. Right? But people like us who actually care about America, what we stand for, and liberty for everyone, it just kind of touched my heart right there. I was like, okay. I mean, as my pastor would say, you know, facts over feelings. He goes, it's...

1:35:14 the book of acts, not the book of feelings, which is the truth. So thank you for that. I just want to jump in and say, you are awesome. And I appreciate you all. And I see twisted sister from another mister down there too. Silent assassin with the long hair. Thank you. All right, Ron, what you got? Unmute myself there. You were talking about how the CIA inputs people.

1:35:47 All over the government. Now, were you talking about the government or were you talking about the civilian sector as well? Well, the government is made up of both the military and civilians. True. No, the only reason I'm asking is because I don't want to duplicate anything that you said because I came in when you were talking about it. So I'll just make my point. Are you talking about corporations? We did make the point about them being in.

1:36:15 bed with the corporations. But go ahead. No, yeah, that wasn't really the point. So, you know, I read The Secret Team. It's been a while since I read The Secret Team. But I also remember when when Prouty was interviewed about that book and he he told a story about how people from the CIA are basically placed in positions all over the place, whether they be judges or lawyers or.

1:36:41 Air traffic control, you name it, janitors, whatever, all over the place for the purposes of spying and making sure that things go through like in the court system. If a court case comes up that is going to be sensitive to CIA operations, then you'll have a court clerk that flags that and then make sure that a specific judge who is going to be favorable to CIA gets it.

1:37:07 You know, somebody who's like air traffic control is running the is is on that day or make sure that he's on on a specific day so that if a flight lands that he can make sure that, you know, FAA doesn't check it or something, something along those lines. And what they would do is they would put these people in. They would tell that they were responsible for telling the administration of whatever civilian agency it was.

1:37:32 Or governmental agency that this person was being paid by the CIA. But in time, like the boss would move on and then the new boss would come in and not be aware that that person was CIA. And so that person would remain in that position for, you know, essentially until retirement. And then they would put somebody new in there. But that would be that that's that's a way that the CIA would infiltrate the civilian.

1:38:00 places within the United States and run operations so that they could get things, making it seamless or more seamless for them to be able to, to go in and out of the United States. So I'll, I'll let you. Yeah, no, that's absolutely true. And it is, we were just talking last night on Alpha's program about

1:38:28 the HR element of these, you know, like back in the 40s and 50s, that they had these quote-unquote research libraries that collected paper clips and information on people, and they were housed in places like Chicago and San Francisco and New York City. And they had, eventually, after the CIA was formed,

1:38:54 CIA people working. And we just talked about, I did a long thread this morning about the failing guy that was the prisoner that was just released from Russia. And he had a job at Kelly Services, which now for the U.S., having a CIA asset on these ginormous personnel.

1:39:26 infrastructure services is like gold and they have them there. And what they do in the cases that I've seen is they will go, they will recruit somebody. They will have been a career. They may be 10 years. They may be middle management, but they've got access to some critical.

1:39:50 authorization as far as the database goes. And it may be the IT person. And they put them on a retainer. And the retainer is a very healthy retainer.

1:40:00 like $10,000 a month. Because again, in most of these cases, this is Black Ops money. It's a bottomless pit for them. It's come out of the drug proceeds, the weapons proceeds, and the human trafficking proceeds. And they will put them on a retainer. And then anytime, you may not get a call from them for a year. And then you may get five calls from them.

1:40:22 Right. But you get your check every month.

1:40:52 Now the federal government can see what's going on in almost every jurisdiction. A refusion program is the Phoenix program. That's right. And that's exactly why I went through excruciating detail about these reorgs from the mid 1950s on through the 1960s is them setting up the regional control of the national police. Yep.

1:41:22 And the fusion centers are critical to that. Well, I got to say what I wanted to say. So I know there's a lot of people who want to talk. So thank you for that. Go ahead, Miles. Thanks, Colonel. Good to hear you again. Guys, if you're not following Ron, you need to follow Ron. Great information. Great show. So my question to you, Colonel, I'm always trying to figure out this switch.

1:41:53 With when this guy was loved and now he's hated. And I was like trying to figure out why were they so afraid of an outsider getting into that position? And I was thinking of like what we're talking about, but I'm going with the signature reduction. And that was in place for a while. And my question to you, if.

1:42:22 a president gets in there, can he affect certain areas and interject people that he wants in the signature reduction program to infiltrate different sectors? Thanks, Colonel. Sure. I mean, in theory, yes. If you believe as I do that the Trump operation

1:42:50 started long before 2015. I believe that there are many of them, like in Operation Grey Lord in Chicago, many of these organizations had patriots in them. And the entire request of having someone like a Trump that is not

1:43:21 corrupted coming in allowed them for the period of time, almost like a dual system, if you will, from 2017 until 2021 to lay in the infrastructure. Let me use their word. And by infrastructure, I don't mean people. I mean actual.

1:43:49 agencies the necessary executive orders and that type of thing in order for them to create the almost like their own shadow government, if you will, to spy on the spies. And I believe they got the information because the whole thing about FISA working both ways, all of that stuff, that's all true.

1:44:16 It gave them, because the one thing you cannot do with these people is control all of the access to them when they're outside the system. So if you hire them, excuse me, and you put them inside the system, they're a lot easier to track because you have eyes on them virtually all the time.

1:44:46 Can I inject something there real quick? I just posted a link. There was a story that came out in Newsweek in about, I think it was 2021, and it talked about the Pentagon and Trump's secret army or the military secret undercover army that they've been building for over a decade. And that goes to exactly what you're talking about, I believe. I put the article in the thread. Yeah, and I read that and I do believe that that is the case.

1:45:17 Yeah. Anyway, who else? Can you elaborate on that? Well, can I say Trump frog? I'm sorry to interject. I didn't see someone out there. Can you elaborate on that secret army? Add some color to what he's referencing, because that's that's, you know, something pretty interesting, but I would like some more detail. Yeah, he put the article down in the purple pill.

1:45:50 I think just for time, we can talk about it tomorrow. But, yeah, it's a very interesting article. Miles, is that your hand? I just want to interject on talking in spaces and talking to patriots and MAGA and America First. They do their research, but I don't think they understand.

1:46:19 how the PSYOPs, Fifth Generation Warfare, is working, where certain things had to be left in place because it does work both ways, because it does give protection to people on our side, and they don't realize that. Like the Smith-Monk Act, they're always bitching like, well, he didn't get rid of that, he should have got rid of that, but you don't understand it works both ways, just like you were saying with FISA.

1:46:46 So we had to leave, you know, certain things in place that, you know, our people don't like, but they don't understand it gives us protection, just like it was protecting them. Thanks, Colonel. Yeah, sure. And there's definitely, and what's interesting to me, and I'm going to say this, and please don't think that I'm knocking this person. I'm not. Everybody has good and bad attributes.

1:47:14 I really respect Whitney Webb's ability to do research. She has an uncanny ability to find information. My point with regards to her is that because she has never worked inside a bureaucracy or

1:47:44 the government or a military operation. I think the inability to say there could be a second possibility is kind of what limits her. And I would love for somebody who talks to her to ask her if she's ever

1:48:13 researched Operation Grey Lord or the whole operation of taking down the Denostris gang in Mafia in Italy. When you're involved in those operations, no one knows who's the good guy and who's the bad guy. And if that is what's happening, you wouldn't know, we wouldn't know.

1:48:42 Who's the good guys and the bad guys? And I would like somebody to ask a few of these people that do that diehard, you know, otherwise very brilliant people, but are still in the camp that Trump is as bad as everybody else, simply because they cannot see past the possibility that he was

1:49:10 doing what he did in order for things to be like they are right now and to have the information necessary to take the entire thing down. So if I was present in Chicago and I happened to work for the DA's office in Chicago, and let's just say I was the lead DA.

1:49:39 And somebody came to me and said, hey, I want you. We're running this massive organization. I can't tell you who all the good guys and bad guys are. But if you want to help bring down this corruption, I need you to do these things. And, you know, here's how we're going to do it. All you're ever going to know is your part until the whole thing's over.

1:50:05 There's no way if I was told to be a corrupt DA and to take bribes and all of that other stuff. And I was told that when somebody comes to bribe you, you're not going to know whether it's the good guy or the bad guy. And that's all part of this whole scenario. And so those things actually happen. Those are how these types of things are taken down.

1:50:30 And you are you are working in a role the entire time. And would I know if even if it's my best friend, a guy that I've been to college with and has been an attorney and he may be a prosecutor and he comes to me and tries to buy me off.

1:50:49 Do I know whether he's a good guy? Do I know whether he's working for one side or the other? I don't know because I'm not read in on all of the rest of the stuff in case I am actually kidnapped and tortured. I can't tell anybody else anything because I don't know anything. So they build these things when they take down major mafia slash international syndicates.

1:51:17 that's the way they do it. And if you can't ask yourself at the end of the day, is there any possibility that that's a good guy versus bad guy or bad guy versus good guys? Because what will happen is even some of the bad guys turn for basically ratting out their buddies and ends up

1:51:46 still acting like a bad guy, but he is not going to be prosecuted because he turned state's evidence. And so I'm very reluctant in any scenario to call out somebody as being a 100% dirtbag when there's any question of whether they may or may not be. I tend to just watch on the sidelines of that because

1:52:16 I did the research in Operation Grey Lord and I understand how that works. And I have seen it on the inside as we have tried to capture high value targets on the battlefield to just the little bit that I knew and was exposed to. And then you watch like a year later in the takedown of something and you realize the little piece that you knew had to deal with this little thing over here.

1:52:44 You can see the aftermath, but you never know while you're in it. And I think everybody would be better served to understand that's the scope, and it's the only way it can be taken down. So that was a long answer. Can I piggyback on that? I think you're 1,000% correct, and I think most patriots out there, they don't allow for the 36-hour rule.

1:53:16 they just see something and they immediately react. And we all like to talk about how people on the left are so emotional, but people on the right are equally emotional. They just display it in a different way. And that's because information has been weaponized with emotion over the course of our lifetimes through the education system, the media, and everything.

1:53:45 Religion, everything. Everything has been attached to emotion. And most patriots, like you said, they tend to be myopic. And they, oh, they see, you know, and I'll use an example. Trump is supporting Israel, so he's a Zionist. Well, you don't know that. You just, you know, there's a game that has to be played in this whole situation. And Trump, I think, is playing it masterfully.

1:54:14 And because if he isn't playing it and he's actually against us, then we would never really would have had a prayer, in my opinion. I'll relinquish the mic. So I don't. And again, I'm just I'm going to nitpick here for a minute only because I'm I'm very meticulous about this. I would not call it a game. And I know you didn't mean it in that vernacular. And so when people are trying to explain this to their friends, there is a.

1:54:43 a method to the madness in the way that this type of operation has to be ran. And so, yeah, Stellar, go ahead. I was going to agree.

1:55:00 A lot like what you what we've been learning, what you've been showing us, like all these different operations that they're all interconnected. And, you know, the project, you know, with the Operation Gladio, you know, we I you know, we refer to the you know, the the shadow people running governments, because I do feel that there's been two governments running pretty much in parallel for a very long time. It's the deep state, you know, that's doing you know, that are.

1:55:28 like say operators of the operation or, you know, the deep state or what do you, international syndicate.

1:55:36 Thank you. And, you know, the Operation Gladio and, you know, like the Phoenix Project and these different ones that are coming out, you know, what happened in Korea, you know, after World War II, OSS, you know, the stay behinds and all that other stuff are all connected to what's going on today. So I do feel that the history lesson and learning the true history of what really was going on, which we were blanketed from being able to know what was going on.

1:56:03 is that. Now, as far as like, you know, Israel, the government of Israel, just like the government of the United States, you know, there's ones that are bad. You know, they're part of the international syndicate that are the globalists and things like that, that are trying to enslave the entire world.

1:56:21 So there's that. But the people, just like the American people, those of us that are aware of what's been going on and learning the shenanigans, aren't with the warmongering and that other stuff, the trafficking and things like that, which that's where it's at. That's how I look at it. So it's about the people and not the bad ones or the shenanigans that are played to keep us blocked.

1:56:47 And as far as like where I started seeing things changing, because I woke up from the monetary system and the banking system. So with that being said, I started seeing a lot of changes happening around 2007 and 8, just starting to happen within the monetary system.

1:57:06 And and things like that. And especially after 2010, when you start going into the Basel three, you know, the Basel one, two and three stuff, you can literally see where you where it started getting, you know, where they started taking control of it, you know, and then with the systems that are coming in place, you know, we've got the blockchain, you know, the ISOs and things like that.

1:57:30 that is running parallel to the SWIFT system, which has a lot of holes in it. It's a centralized system, but I do feel that, you know, that's also data.

1:57:39 They're getting a lot of data and finding a lot of these, you know, it's like cleaning up. So like the, you know, like you guys were talking about FISA. In some respects, that's what I see going on there. So yeah, it's a process, but it's getting people to wake up to realize that we are in operations that we never even knew that we were in. You know, we believe that we were actually helping the world, you know, and in actuality, it was just, you know.

1:58:04 doing the enslavement by what they do. And now it's happening here in the United States. And then the fact that you have been able to put all these different things together for us to see and see the patterns. So with that being said, I'm going to yield. So thank you. Sure. And I want to say that I think the whole purpose of doing this, to Ron's point of us

1:58:31 collectively being programmed to act emotionally to a response, any given response. They've spent lots of money kind of researching this whole realm of pseudoscience to perfection. And I believe the reason why they withhold history from us is so that

1:58:59 they can trigger those emotional responses. You cannot have an emotional response if you actually know the details, which again is why they classify things because they want to keep everything vague. You know, the whole JFK, all of that other crap. So if you know the history and you see the Crocus

1:59:25 attack over in Russia, you no longer respond emotionally like, oh, my God, people died. You go, oh, that's Operation Gladio. And let's go immediately and look at where the CIA is in Ukraine and what was the avenue that the travelers took, what nationality are they? Yeah, they're Tajikistan. They've got an entire group of people that's been trained that hangs out there that both did terrorist attacks. So you begin to start.

1:59:54 putting the pieces together on every event. And while you're doing that, you are not responding emotionally. You are providing information to the people who are responding emotionally to settle down. Here's what happened. And here's who actually is responsible. Miles, go ahead. Colonel, you don't realize that you're an ophthalmologist, do you? So if you have your new glasses available to you.

2:00:24 And you want to find out who Trump really is and what he's doing. And even if you've read it before, you've got to read it again with your new glasses on. The Art of the Deal and Sung Soo. And that will explain how Trump is doing stuff in coordination with the military and intelligence agencies that he has access to. So, I don't know. All right. Thanks, Colonel. SR-71.

2:00:56 Thank you, Colonel, and thank you all for contributing. It's really appreciated what's going on. But the one thing I want to drive home out of all of this is the Colonel is absolutely right when she talks about labels. And as you can tell, labeling these people Viet Cong was a bad thing to do. So when you see this stuff going on with LBGTIQ+, and this, that, and the other,

2:01:26 It's a bad thing to do. In a way, it helps us because we can see through it and see the mistakes they make in all of it. It's the people who consider themselves that. I can imagine that Viet Cong saying we're labeled Viet Cong, we're laughing in our face. The only difference we got here is the LBGTIQ plus crowd says, oh yeah, that's who I am.

2:01:58 Yeah, we, well, but even that crowd has began pushing back because they were lied to too, right? They first come up with the L, you know, the lesbian gay, and then they started adding alphabet letters and the original alphabets going like, wait a minute, wait a minute, you didn't tell me there was going to be 25. I'm only in here because I wanted to be the one in two.

2:02:26 So, yeah, I agree with you. Cousin Nick, go ahead. I just have to say, I think it's absolutely hysterical that Maverick is playing with your hands. He's licking all over my arm. Yeah. I can't stop laughing. It's the funniest thing. I have to hear him bark because John went outside to put the chickens up.

2:02:57 Oh, that's funny. So I bet just so you know, he's going to be famous because I've been posting everything on the billboard. Oh, you little shit. Absolutely. It's the funniest. Oh, look at you. Yeah, he's our baby. That's hilarious. All right. Anybody else got anything? We're at our two hour point.

2:03:31 I'm going to get off here so I can have some dinner. I appreciate everybody being here, and we're going to... Colonel? Yes? Can you see Jeff? Jeff's got his hand up. No, I can't see Jeff with his hand up. Go ahead, Jeff. Yes, ma'am. Good afternoon, Colonel Bridget. Stella. And Cousin It, my favorite people. I did have a question. I remembered you had mentioned that Ho Chi Minh was...

2:04:02 trained in paris and was friends of the united states before the vietnam war and it was just quite a shame that we couldn't have developed that relationship uh to where this situation wouldn't have ended in the way that it did and my question is this is that i think to prevent collateral damage we basically just gave gave up on the war in the vietnam because i

2:04:29 We had thought that if they had bombed Saigon, Hanoi and Haiphong Harbor simultaneously, that Vietnam would have fell. And I think that the collateral damage was the reason. I just wanted your opinion on that, please. Well, I mean, at some point politically in the United States, without like a nuclear attack level.

2:04:59 You're not going to defeat people that are nationalists that are willing to fight till their death. And at some point, inside the United States, no one at the cabinet level was willing to do that. And to me, all along, it was never even contemplated on a, or they would have already done it.

2:05:28 The whole idea was managed chaos. And they were going to hold on to their managed chaos to control the opium for as long as they could. They knew going in, it wouldn't last forever. While they were doing that, they were setting up alternative growing areas. The Golden Crescent for one, South America for another.

2:05:58 It was never about a long-term win. This was all about situating initially with Chiang Kai-shek in the North before Ho Chi Minh kicked him out, situating him to be the opium controller. They never wanted him in Taiwan. They always wanted him in Northern Korea or Northern Vietnam in order to control the opium in the Golden Triangle.

2:06:28 Him going, him having to go to Taiwan and doing it not co-located with the major growing fields at the time in southern China and Burma was a pain in their butt. And they were just walking a rail. And that's what I think understanding Operation Gladio when you read over this history makes all of that understandable that.

2:06:55 This whole reorganizing, reorganizing, reorganizing, if you were really in a war to win it, you wouldn't have done any of that shit. This was a managed crisis in order to facilitate drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, and human trafficking. That's all it ever was, period. And as hard as it is to say that, that's all it ever was. It was never a real war.

2:07:24 Amen. That is 1000% accurate. And SR-71 just said on Rumble, yes, it sounds like Ukraine. That's exactly what Ukraine is. Yeah. Definitely money laundering, Colonel. Colonel Manis mentioned you. Oh, I'm aware about Gladio now. I've spoken with Colonel Tanner. I thought it was pretty cute. We had discussed that the CCP.

2:07:52 And the cartels are embedded in Mexico with the fentanyl and the pseudofedrin, amongst other things. And that is our biggest national security threat. But again, let me just say this. I don't mean to cut you off, but I do need to go. I want to say this about the quote unquote Chinese embedded. I'm not saying communist China is not a bad person, but I do want to say this.

2:08:19 In normal conversation, when people tell you that China has been involved, what I have found in cases like, and I was actually shocked at this one, we were told that Elaine Chao and Mitch McConnell's in-law family were Chinese ship owners and they own this big cargo thing in China. Well, when you look into her, she's actually from Taiwan.

2:08:49 She comes from the whole, you know, Chiang Kai-shek corrupt government in Taiwan, not mainland China. And so I don't know that fentanyl came from mainland China. No one's ever showed me any proof of that. What I do know is when I researched Taiwan, that they have over 50 pharmaceutical companies, which is where fentanyl comes from.

2:09:18 And a little tiny island with a ginormous pharmaceutical industry. And that area produces the majority of the fentanyl. I got questions. I have real questions. So, yeah, I don't know about that. I'm not convinced. But I'm just throwing that out there.

2:09:42 Again, I will see you guys tomorrow at four and we're going to try to wrap up the Phoenix program. Appreciate everybody being here. I'm going to go ahead and sign off. Thank you, Colonel. Sure. Thank you, Colonel. Thanks.

Entities here

CIA65 Nelson Brickham42 Vietnam32 Phoenix Program30 Viet Cong25 John Hart14 Soviet Union10 Nguyen Cao Ky9 China9 Tullius Acampora8 Operation Gladio8 Police Special Branch7 South Vietnam6 Lyndon B. Johnson5 United States5 Ho Chi Minh5 USAID4 William Colby3 Doug Valentine3 William Westmoreland3 Bay of Pigs3 Howard Stone3 Phung Hoang3 Bob Wall3 Inter-Services Intelligence3 Office of Operations3 Robert Komer3 Edward Lansdale3 CONTAC-43 Iran2 Sam Draculich2 Roles in Mission Study2 Stephen Young2 Anthony Herbert2 Regional Coordinating Centers2 Provisional Reconnaissance Units2 Pierre de Silva2 John Christian2 Czechoslovakia2 Ukraine2

Claims made here

Nelson Brickham member_of Phoenix Program book_quoted ▶ 4:15

“But I'm going to fly through this part. There's a guy in the CIA that's part of Phoenix and that Doug Valentine talks to. And his name is Nelson Brickham, B-R-I-C-K-H-A-M. And so he interviews him qui…”

Nelson Brickham member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 5:44

“He also says, well, let me go a little bit about who he is, because it puts him into context. So he joined the CIA in the immediate aftermath of the creation of it in 1949. He's a Yale graduate, of co…”

Nelson Brickham member_of Inter-Services Intelligence book_quoted ▶ 6:43

“He was involved in an organization, a project called Caesar Project, which had to do with looking at potential Soviet leaders after Stalin's death. And as a result of him participating in Caesar Proje…”

Nelson Brickham appointed CIA book_quoted ▶ 7:12

“as like a CIA liaison. He traveled as a result of that all over the world. And in 1955, he transferred to an area that focused specifically on Soviet Russia inside of the CIA and their clandestine ope…”

Nelson Brickham spied_on Soviet Union book_quoted ▶ 7:42

“Inside the Soviet Union, these operations dealt with putting sensors and equipment in to be able to spy on the Soviet Union inside the Soviet Union. They put them all around Soviet Union military base…”

Nelson Brickham founded Phoenix Program book_quoted ▶ 10:10

“Brigham's notion of a systematic approach served for the conceptual basis for Phoenix. And although in Phoenix, the targets were people, not missile silos. And see, in order to understand this, I hope…”

Nelson Brickham member_of Iran book_quoted ▶ 11:33

“This is kind of the egg on your face and everything is not working and everything is totally dysfunctional. So you have to put that in context to understand where we're going with this. Brigham, on hi…”

CIA overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh host_asserted ▶ 12:00

“their intel and counterintelligence operations against the Soviets. Now, keep in mind, we had couped the Iran and got rid of Mosaddegh and installed the Shah back, right? So he's going in there. He wo…”

Norman Schwarzkopf Sr. founded SAVAK host_asserted ▶ 12:00

Nelson Brickham carried_out_attack China book_quoted ▶ 12:31

“In 64, he was sent to manage the Chinese-Soviet relations branch. And at the heart of that organization was creating false flag events in order to piss the Chinese off against the Soviet and vice vers…”

Nelson Brickham member_of China book_quoted ▶ 12:31

John Hart appointed CIA book_quoted ▶ 14:24

“And so this Jorgensen guy who had been his deputy takes over as the CIA station chief. So there's another guy that by the name of John Hart and he ends up taking over shortly. So the De Silva guy does…”

Nelson Brickham appointed Phoenix Program book_quoted ▶ 18:24

“And it says Brickham got assigned to be the chief of special branch field operations in the spring of 66 after this guy that he liked left. And him being installed in that job was basically the go but…”

William Colby headed CIA book_quoted ▶ 23:12

“Because that's what they have done with the Phoenix program. They have brought that back with an intelligence function of local big city police departments. And they have basically created a Phoenix p…”

Nelson Brickham trained Vietnam book_quoted ▶ 24:42

“kind of to circle information back to him. It says the special branch advisors should limit himself to his primary duties, which were training Vietnamese special branch case officers to penetrate the …”

Felix Rodriguez member_of Vietnam host_asserted ▶ 29:56

“Felix Rodriguez, he actually said he was in Vietnam and that he had worked for Colby there and several other people. And he was there. And if you've not read that thread that I wrote about this, the d…”

CIA recruited Bay of Pigs host_asserted ▶ 30:21

“into not being quote-unquote exiles, but make them American citizens. And so the CIA worked with the, as if it's a separate entity, the State Department, and created a caveat that because these people…”

Warren Milberg founded The Future Applicability of the Phoenix Program host_asserted ▶ 33:40

“called The Future Applicability of the Phoenix Program, which should concern us. And interestingly enough, it was written at my alma mater, Air War College, by a CIA guy that attended Air War College …”

CIA recruited Hamlet Informant Program book_quoted ▶ 33:40

Warren Milberg member_of CIA host_asserted ▶ 33:40

CIA carried_out_attack Viet Cong host_asserted ▶ 35:10

“with the villages believing that they had been done by the Viet Cong, was then used by the CIA to try to turn these people against the Viet Cong. And that's where they began getting informants. So on …”

Stephen Young exposed CIA documented ▶ 35:35

“charged that the CIA hired mercenaries to disguise themselves as Viet Cong and discredit communists by committing atrocities. It was alleged to me that several of them executed two village leaders and…”

Anthony Herbert carried_out_attack Viet Cong book_quoted ▶ 36:29

“Anthony Herbert, H-E-R-B-E-R-T, tells how he reported for duty with the Special Operations Group in Saigon in November 65 and was asked to join a top secret PSYOPs war program. Quote, what they wanted…”

Anthony Herbert member_of Special Operations Group book_quoted ▶ 36:29

CIA recruited Viet Cong book_quoted ▶ 39:27

“recruitment in place of Viet Cong. Quote, this is by far the most important program in terms of gathering intelligence on the enemy. My motto was to recruit them. If you can't recruit them, defect the…”

Jim Ward member_of CIA host_asserted ▶ 39:27

Sam Draculich member_of CIA host_asserted ▶ 43:08

“and was largely the work of a guy by the name of Sam Draculich, D-R-A-K-U-L-I-C-H. He's a senior special branch advisor for Third Corps in 1965. He had a lot of good ideas, but everybody around him de…”

Howard Stone member_of CIA host_asserted ▶ 44:05

“He drove back into Saigon and slept there in a hotel because he did not trust anybody anywhere. He was like totally paranoid about everything. Okay, next guy, Howard Rocky Stone. He came in to be the …”

John P. Cabot Lodge appointed Edward Lansdale host_asserted ▶ 50:04

“It's basically just a turf war. That's the easy way of saying it. In 1965, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, who we've talked about quite a bit, totally corrupt, had handed the problem to Ed Lansdell, who…”

Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Robert Komer host_asserted ▶ 51:33

“So it kind of was like a dual hat, have one of the civilian NGO kind of people here and then the commander up top. Although the civilians continued to object, Johnson wanted quick results, the kind th…”

George Jacobson founded Roles in Mission Study host_asserted ▶ 52:34

“Everybody's got to get their paycheck. It begun in July 1966 under a mission coordinator by the name of George Jake Jacobson. And it was called Roles in Mission Study. It made 81 recommendations, 66 o…”

Lyndon B. Johnson founded Office of Operations host_asserted ▶ 57:01

“President Johnson gave the civilians one last shot. The result was the Office of Civil Operations, OCO. It was formed in October 1966. OCO combined the field operation units of AID, the U.S. Informati…”

Paul Smith headed Office of Operations host_asserted ▶ 57:32

“PSYOP, political action, defectors, public safety, refugees, and economic development. That's too much shit, and you know it ain't going to work. Because none of that has anything to do with your phys…”

Wade Latham headed Office of Operations host_asserted ▶ 58:02

“OCOs, regional directors, were assigned in all of those different cores and same old people just reshuffle the deck that we've done like we're on iteration number seven if you're counting. They were g…”

Lyndon B. Johnson founded Civil Operations and Rural Development Support host_asserted ▶ 59:02

“and it was going to report to General William Knowlton. Announced in May 1967, the Military Assistance Command for Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development, that's a long word, it's called CORDS…”

William Knowlton headed Civil Operations and Rural Development Support host_asserted ▶ 59:02

Renz Hoeksema member_of Civil Operations and Rural Development Support host_asserted ▶ 1:01:07

“And his name is Renz, R-E-N-Z, Hoeksema, H-O-E-K-S-E-M-A. So he comes in from Washington, D.C. And he's described as ruthless and self-promoting. Yay, another one. All right. So they set up these thin…”

CIA covered_up Viet Cong host_asserted ▶ 1:03:42

“but still not in a coordinated way. The U.S. military went to Vietnam to fight a conventional war. However, by late 1966, it was clear that the games on the battlefield were very transitory because th…”

Nelson Brickham recruited William Westmoreland host_asserted ▶ 1:04:40

“The military, the entire time they're over there thinking they're actually fighting communists, were fighting nationalists who would gladly give their blood for their country, as would all of us. Thos…”

Howard Stone recruited Nelson Brickham host_asserted ▶ 1:04:40

Nelson Brickham book_quoted Viet Cong book_quoted ▶ 1:10:16

“Brigham viewed the Viet Cong as a criminal conspiracy, a mafia operating under the pretense of political ideology, coercing people through the selective use of terror. We've already established they'r…”

William Colby book_quoted Phoenix Program book_quoted ▶ 1:11:45

“ambushes by police and regional forces and also their special forces elements. The going in and kind of hunting and pecking around to try to find somebody on their list that they had gotten from their…”

CONTAC-4 founded Project Coast book_quoted ▶ 1:13:48

“M.C. Christian, writes that CONTAC4 evolved as a joint U.S.-Vietnamese combined staff from an intensive intelligence program called Project CORAL, C-O-R-R-A-L, which, oddly enough, you can't find anyt…”

John Christian book_quoted CONTAC-4 book_quoted ▶ 1:13:48

Tullius Acampora member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 1:16:19

“They had to have 9-11 in order to get the Patriot Act so they could have the same kind of database to track us. A guy by the name of Tullius, T-U-L-I-U-S, and I'm going to spell his last name, A-C-A-M…”

John Hart member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 1:16:49

“fought in Korea, was attached to the CIA in 1966 and was used as General Loan's advisor. As an officer on General James Van Fleet's staff in Korea, Kempura had had prior dealings with John Hart, who w…”

Tullius Acampora member_of Nguyen Cao Ky book_quoted ▶ 1:16:49

John Hart removed_from_power Nguyen Cao Ky book_quoted ▶ 1:18:22

“First, his supervision of the military security service, and eventually he took over control of the Central Intelligence Organization altogether inside of Lone's authority. And eventually Lone ran the…”

Nguyen Cao Ky headed CONTAC-4 book_quoted ▶ 1:24:00

“In this contest, Loan scored first when, for legal reasons, Contact 4 was placed under his control. Loan assigned as many as 50 officers to the program from the participating Vietnamese agencies, with…”

Dang Van Minh member_of Hung Mau book_quoted ▶ 1:24:00

Hung Mau headed CONTAC-4 book_quoted ▶ 1:24:00

CIA funded Phoenix Program book_quoted ▶ 1:24:26

“The U.S. provided 20 military counterintelligence officers, each of whom served as a desk officer in Saigon to represent the precincts that they had reorganized into. And a guy by the name of Tom Beck…”

Tom Becker headed Phoenix Program book_quoted ▶ 1:24:26

Bob Wall member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 1:27:45

“Bob Wall, W-A-L-L, a paramilitary officer, CIA guy, in one of the provinces said in December 1966, Wall was made deputy to one of the regional commanders by the name of Jack Horgan. Wall recalled when…”

Bob Wall member_of Jack Horgan book_quoted ▶ 1:27:45

Forbes member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 1:29:07

“Wall also went on to say that a guy by the name of Forbes was a special branch advisor, but there was no coordination between the military and AID as a result of that. So let's see. All right. So they…”

CIA funded Vietnam host_asserted ▶ 1:31:42

“overly sensitive, but you can see the bureaucratic piece of this laid between the Vietnamese government, because it was a stewed government installed by the CIA and the CIA. Their territorial pissing …”

Richard M. Bissell Jr. book_quoted The Secret Team host_asserted ▶ 1:36:15

“bed with the corporations. But go ahead. No, yeah, that wasn't really the point. So, you know, I read The Secret Team. It's been a while since I read The Secret Team. But I also remember when when Pro…”

Operation Gladio targeted_for_regime_change Denostris gang host_asserted ▶ 1:48:13

“researched Operation Grey Lord or the whole operation of taking down the Denostris gang in Mafia in Italy. When you're involved in those operations, no one knows who's the good guy and who's the bad g…”

Ho Chi Minh trained Paris caller_asserted ▶ 2:03:31

“I'm going to get off here so I can have some dinner. I appreciate everybody being here, and we're going to... Colonel? Yes? Can you see Jeff? Jeff's got his hand up. No, I can't see Jeff with his hand…”

Ho Chi Minh member_of United States caller_asserted ▶ 2:04:02

“trained in paris and was friends of the united states before the vietnam war and it was just quite a shame that we couldn't have developed that relationship uh to where this situation wouldn't have en…”

United States installed Chiang Kai-shek host_asserted ▶ 2:05:58

“It was never about a long-term win. This was all about situating initially with Chiang Kai-shek in the North before Ho Chi Minh kicked him out, situating him to be the opium controller. They never wan…”

Chiang Kai-shek overthrew Ho Chi Minh host_asserted ▶ 2:05:58

Elaine Chao member_of Chiang Kai-shek host_asserted ▶ 2:08:49

“She comes from the whole, you know, Chiang Kai-shek corrupt government in Taiwan, not mainland China. And so I don't know that fentanyl came from mainland China. No one's ever showed me any proof of t…”