‘PHOENIX PROGRAMME’ ALLEGATIONS

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32170, 13 December 1969, Page 13

‘PHOENIX PROGRAMME’ ALLEGATIONS

<N.Z. Press assn.— Copyright) BALTIMORE (Maryland) , Dec. 12. A report by two former United States Army lieutenants saying that they were instructed on hiring mercenaries to kill Viet Cong sympathisers, “male or female civilians of any age” is being brought to the attention of United States senators the Associated Press reported.

The statement attributed to the officers claimed also that they were told that frequent “resort to the most extreme forms of torture was necessary.” - -

They said that they were assigned to the “Phoenix programme” which they were informed “sought to accomplish through capture, intimidation, elimination and assassination what United States up to this time, was unable to accomplish through the conventional use of military power, i.e., to win the war.” The statement is on file in the United States District Court for Maryland on behalf of the lieutenants who sought and obtained Army discharge as conscientious objectors. Francis T. Reitemeyer and Michael J. Cohn were attending a combat intelligence school at Fort Holabird in Baltimore when they sought discharge after receiving orders for Vietnam last December and January. Mr William H. Zinman, their Baltimore lawyer, said that he was sending to several senators a copy of a statement he had filed last February 14. It was a written offer to prove that instruction to each officer that he “might actually be required to maintain a kill quota” of 50 Viet Cong sympathisers a month helped “crystallise” their “abhorrence to participation in war in any form.”

Lieutenants Reitemeyer and Cobn, both about 25 years old, were not called to testify under oath on their allegations of hiring killers because Judge Frank A. Kaufman decided that they had supported their conscientious objector claims without it Mr Zinman said that, since the case no longer was pending he felt public attention should be directed to the statement by the two former lieutenants in light of recent alleged massacres of Vietnam civilians. He said that he was having a copy delivered to Senators J. W. Fulbright (Democrat, Arkansas), Edmund S.Muskie (Democrat, Maine), Edward M. Kennedy (Democrat, Massachusetts), John Stennis (Democrat, Mississippi), and Charles Mathias (Republican, Maryland) in hopes that they would “be inclined to take a hard look at it” Mr Zinman said Lieutenants Reitemeyer and Cohn were in a class of 48 officers at Fort Holabird and presumably most of the others now were in Vietnam. The statement said that they were officially instructed they were to be. American advisers in the “Phoenix Programme” when they arrived in Vietnam.

The paper for each petitioner continued: “The Phoenix programme was described to him as a policy of the United States Government which sought the elimination and destruction of the Communist ’infrastructure’ in South Vietnam. “Your petitioner was informed that he would be one of many Army officers designated as an adviser whose function it was to supervise and to pay with funds from an undisclosed source 18 mercenaries (probably Chinese, none of whom would be officers or enlisted men of the United States military) who would be explicitly directed by him and other advisers to find, capture, and/or kill as many Viet Cong and Viet Cong sympathisers within a given number of small villages as was possible under the circumstances.

“Viet Cong sympathisers were meant to include any male or female civilians of any age in a position of authority or influence in the village who were politically loyal or simply In agreement with the Viet Cong or their objectives.

“The petitioner was officially advised by the lecturing United States Army officers, who actually re-

counted from their own experiences in the field, that the petitioner, as an American adviser, might actually be required to maintain a ■’kill quota’ of 50 bodies a month. fYour petitioner was further informed at this intelligence school that he

was authorised to adop£ any technique or employ; any means through his njercenaries, which was calculated to find and ferret out the Viet Cong or the Viet Cong sympathisers. 1 ' “Frequently, as related by the lecturing officers, j resort to the most extreme i forms hf torture was necessary.”

[ The proffer claimed | that a lecturer told of an occasion where a civilian suspected of being a sympathiser was killed, decapitated and dismembered and parts; of the body “prominently dsplayed on his front lawn as > warning ...” ( “Another field technique,” according to the Court paper, "designed to glean information from a captunad Viet Cong soldier, who was wounded and bleeding, was to promise medical; assistance only after the ’ soldier disclosed the Information sought by interrogators. “After the interrogation had terminated, and the mercenaries and advisors were satisfied that no further information could be obtained from the prisoner, he'-was left to die in the middle of the village, still bleeding, and without any medical attention whatsoever. i

“On the following morning, when his screams for, medical attention reminded the Inter-rogators-of his presence, he was unsuccessfully (poisoned and finally killed hy decapitation with a rusty (bayonet “The American | advisers, who were having breakfast 40ft away, acquiesced in these actions, and , the death of this soldier was officially; reported ‘shot while trying to, escape’.” The Court paper ;said that the student officers (were officially instructed thffi. the purpose of tire Phoetnix Programme "was not qimed primarily at the enemy's military forces, but was essentially designed to (eliminate civilians, politicalenemies, and ‘South Viet Cong’ sympathisers.” Judge Kaufman i filed an opinion on July ordering the discharge of liieitemeyer and Cohn. The Army filed notice of appeal but-withdrew it in October, '