The Phoenix Program in the Vietnam War
People search “phoenix project vietnam” for the Phoenix Program, a CIA-designed effort against the Viet Cong infrastructure. It ran in earnest from 1968 to 1972. It is not called Project Phoenix in the documents, and it is not a game.
Name and dates
The English name is Phoenix Program. Vietnamese usage is Chiến dịch Phụng Hoàng. Searchers add the word “project,” which is why the page sits on a site about things called Project Phoenix. ICEX, the predecessor, dates to June 1967. After Tet in 1968 the effort widened. Official operation continued through December 1972.
CIA designed it and coordinated the start. In 1970 coordination moved toward CORDS. Partners included South Vietnamese forces, Provincial Reconnaissance Units, and province-level intelligence teams. A 1969 State Department document in the Foreign Relations of the United States series describes a Phoenix organization of about 6,000 people plus about 500 U.S. advisers, and PRU strength above 5,000. The same document says that in 1968 Phoenix accounted for 10 to 20 percent of Viet Cong infrastructure “neutralizations.”
What the argument is actually about
The program’s stated tools included penetration, capture, defection, interrogation, assassination, and counter-terror. Congressional hearings and press coverage focused on torture, the killing of civilians, and whether assassination was a legal instrument. Those criticisms are part of the public record. This page does not treat any single memoir as proof of a wider conspiracy theory, and it does not treat the Wikipedia totals as undisputed.
University of Michigan holds a Phoenix Program Papers collection dated 1965–1969. That is an archive pointer, not a number. The video-game plot that borrows a similar name is Projekt Phönix in Call of Duty: Vanguard, which is fiction and has its own page.
Questions
What was the Phoenix Program?
A program to identify and dismantle the Viet Cong infrastructure through infiltration, arrest, defection, interrogation, and targeted killing. CIA designed it and coordinated the early years.
When did it run?
ICEX was set up in June 1967. After the 1968 Tet Offensive it expanded under the Phoenix name. The official program ran until December 1972, with some activity continuing until the fall of Saigon in 1975.
How many people were killed?
Wikipedia cites Andrade and Willbanks: 81,740 “neutralized,” of whom 26,369 were killed. Of those killed, 87 percent were attributed to conventional military action and 13 percent to Phoenix. Other historians dispute the accounting.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Phoenix Program — checked 2026-11-12
- FRUS 1969–76, vol. VI, doc. 74 — checked 2026-11-12
- University of Michigan finding aid — checked 2026-11-12