In the mid-1960s, the CIA developed the Phoenix Program under agents Shackley and Clines, who had been operating in Laos to destabilize that government in the 1960s. CIA chief William Colby admitted that between 1968 and 1971 the United States with the aid of the South Vietnam government killed 20,587 suspects who were believed to have cooperated with the National Liberation Front (NLF) and Viet Cong. The South Vietnamese government credited the Phoenix Program with killing 40,994 suspects.

According to the official United States report, the intelligence-military-police (US-GVN) stated that they had succeeded in "neutralizing" some "84,000 Viet Cong infrastructure" with 21,000 killed. Local officials decided to kill 80 percent of the suspects, but American advisers convinced them to publicly state that only 50 percent had been killed. A United States intelligence adviser stated that when he arrived in the Mekong Delta, he was given a list of 200 names of people to be killed. When he left six months later, 260 had been killed. However, none of the suspects, whom he had named, was on that list.

The Phoenix raids employed the services of the Khmer Kampuchean Kram (KKK) which consisted of anti-communist Cambodians and drug smugglers. This death squad was a favorite of Nixon. When there was a move to terminate funding, Nixon objected, the funds were promptly restored, and the indiscriminate murders continued.

The CIA also administered hallucinogenic drugs while interrogating some of the suspects. In one experiment, three prisoners were given an anesthetic and their skulls were opened. Doctors placed electrodes in different parts of their brains and were observed by CIA psychiatrists who hoped that they would attack one another. The experiment failed; the electrodes were removed and used for subsequent tests; and the prisoners were shot and their bodies were burned.

CON SON PRISON. Con Son Prison in South Vietnam was located far out in the South China Sea. It was the largest South Vietnamese prison for 9,600 non-combatants. Throughout the war, United States officials claimed the cages did not exist. Frank E. Walton, Director of the United States Public Safety Program Vietnam said about Con Son Prison: “This place is more like a Boy Scout Recreational Camp.” (Edward S. Herman, Atrocities In Vietnam)

The prisoners at Con Son were incarcerated in tiger cages were deep, dank concrete pits, four by nine feet; each held three to five prisoners. Steel grates covered the top of each pit. Prisoners lay shackled to the concrete floors where they were beaten by guards. A bucket of lime was kept above the prisoners’ cages, and guards occasionally would throw it onto them as a form of sanitary torture. After months of internment, prisoners would lose the use of their legs, develop tuberculosis, gangrenous feet, and life threatening dysentery. (Edward S. Herman, Atrocities In Vietnam)