Rating: 
Summary: Excellent,gripping,and sobering.Highly reccommened.
Review: A readable and truen account of the seamy workings of our CIA.Far more factual than other white washed versions.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent read, very readable, on a difficult subject
Review: After having read Douglas Valentine's essay on how the Phoenix is coming home to roost via Homeland Security on his website, I decided to look into his book, The Phoenix Program. Besides his comprehensive, journalistic coverage of the details involved with the program, unafraid to uncover the deeds of all sides involved, two things impressed me even more. First, this type of book usually has alphabet soup groups, projects and missions labeled with acronyms, and so many individuals' names woven through that I grow weary of reading half way through, if that far. Not so with Valentine's opus. Somehow he presents all these details in a readable fashion, which if you begin from the beginning, unfolds those normally boring and confusing details without losing the reader. At least not this one, who is easily confused by such matters. Second, and even more impressive were his interviews. It was more like watching a good documentary than reading. Valentine conveyed the characters and their personalities so that they became real people to me, and he let them tell their stories in a very human, honest way. At times even touching, those interviewed were equally human regardless of rank, station, deed or misdeed. It's rare that an interviewer gets the interviewee's real voice and viewpoint. Great stuff, really soulfull and heartfelt. Read it and check out his article on his website, the Phoenix Program is not just history, and it's not just Vietnam.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent read, very readable, on a difficult subject
Review: After having read Douglas Valentine's essay on how the Phoenix is coming home to roost via Homeland Security on his website, I decided to look into his book, The Phoenix Program. Besides his comprehensive, journalistic coverage of the details involved with the program, unafraid to uncover the deeds of all sides involved, two things impressed me even more. First, this type of book usually has alphabet soup groups, projects and missions labeled with acronyms, and so many individuals' names woven through that I grow weary of reading half way through, if that far. Not so with Valentine's opus. Somehow he presents all these details in a readable fashion, which if you begin from the beginning, unfolds those normally boring and confusing details without losing the reader. At least not this one, who is easily confused by such matters. Second, and even more impressive were his interviews. It was more like watching a good documentary than reading. Valentine conveyed the characters and their personalities so that they became real people to me, and he let them tell their stories in a very human, honest way. At times even touching, those interviewed were equally human regardless of rank, station, deed or misdeed. It's rare that an interviewer gets the interviewee's real voice and viewpoint. Great stuff, really soulfull and heartfelt. Read it and check out his article on his website, the Phoenix Program is not just history, and it's not just Vietnam.
Rating:
Summary: Vietnam and Phoenix
Review: Along with saturation bombing of civilian populations, Operation Phoenix has to rate as America's most atrocious chapter in its collection of fun facts from Vietnam. Between 1967 to 1973 an estimated 40,000 Vietnamese were killed by CIA-sponsored "counterterror" and "hunter-killer" teams, and hundreds of thousands were sent to secret interrogation centers. William Colby's records show 20,587 dead between 1968 and 1971, though he likes to believe that most were killed in military combat and afterwards identified as part of the VC infrastructure. Other testimony suggests that Colby was a bit disingenuous in these 1971 hearings. At one point Congressman Ogden Reid pulled out a list signed by a CIA officer that named VC cadre rounded up in a particular action in 1967. "It is of some interest that on this list, 33 of the 61 names were women and some persons were as young as 11 and 12," noted Reid. Valentine spent four years researching this name-intensive book, and managed to interview over 100 Phoenix participants. If post-Vietnam America had ever looked into a mirror, this book might have become a bestseller. Instead it was published just as the Gulf War allowed us to resume business as usual, and went virtually unnoticed. (Daniel Brandt is founder and president of Public Information Research, Inc.)
Rating:
Summary: Setting the record straight
Review: Amazon posed a review (twice for some strange reason) dated August 26, 2003 in which augustabookman described the Phoenix Program book as "unsubstantiated". This is an outright lie, and possibly libelous. Mr. Valentine, the author of the Phoenix Program, interviewed numerous senior CIA officers directly involved in the Phoenix Program including: Nelson Brickham, who created the Phoenix Program, Evan Parker the first Phoenix Program director, John Muldoon, director of the Province Interrogation Center program, plus Jim Ward, Tom Donohue, Tully Acampora, Clyde Bauer, Ed Brady, William Colby, Sam Drakulich, Rudy Enders, Donald Gray, Jack Horgan, Robert Komer, Edward Lansdale, Charles Lemoyne, Roger McCarthy, Tom McCoy, Ralph McGehee, Walter Mackem, Warren Milberg, Stu Methven, Robert Peartt, Rufus Phillips, Bernard Picard, Tom Polgar, Ron Radda, Lionell Rosenblatt, Frank Scotton, Robert Slater, Howard Stone, John Tilton, and Robert Wall. This list does not include the dozens of senior military officers, American and Vietnamese, he interviewed; and State Department officers, Congressmen and others who were directly involved in all aspects of the Phoenix Program. It just kills me that Amazon prints lies as if they were fact.
Rating:
Summary: Setting the record straight
Review: Amazon posed a review (twice for some strange reason) dated August 26, 2003 in which augustabookman described the Phoenix Program book as "unsubstantiated". This is an outright lie, and possibly libelous. Mr. Valentine, the author of the Phoenix Program, interviewed numerous senior CIA officers directly involved in the Phoenix Program including: Nelson Brickham, who created the Phoenix Program, Evan Parker the first Phoenix Program director, John Muldoon, director of the Province Interrogation Center program, plus Jim Ward, Tom Donohue, Tully Acampora, Clyde Bauer, Ed Brady, William Colby, Sam Drakulich, Rudy Enders, Donald Gray, Jack Horgan, Robert Komer, Edward Lansdale, Charles Lemoyne, Roger McCarthy, Tom McCoy, Ralph McGehee, Walter Mackem, Warren Milberg, Stu Methven, Robert Peartt, Rufus Phillips, Bernard Picard, Tom Polgar, Ron Radda, Lionell Rosenblatt, Frank Scotton, Robert Slater, Howard Stone, John Tilton, and Robert Wall. This list does not include the dozens of senior military officers, American and Vietnamese, he interviewed; and State Department officers, Congressmen and others who were directly involved in all aspects of the Phoenix Program. It just kills me that Amazon prints lies as if they were fact.
Rating:
Summary: Author Comment
Review: Dear Reader, Please take seriously only those reviews that are signed. It is very easy for people to make false statements and personal attacks under the cover of anonymity. Thank you. Doug Valentine
Rating:
Summary: Valentine book indispensable
Review: Doug Valentine's Phoenix Program is an indispensable history of one of the most heinous assassination programs ever carried out by the US military. The information it contains on the computer systems used by Phoenix alone makes it a remarkable resource. These computer tracking systems later developed into the PROMIS software, which became the subject of investigator Danny Casolaro's research before Casolaro was found mysteriously dead. I used this book for research on the one I authored about Casolaro, The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro. Only the misinformed or the disinforming will argue that these "conspiracies" aren't real or aren't connected. Valentine has a keen eye for making the connections and making them understandable.
Rating: 
Summary: Less credible than that which it attacks?
Review: Douglas Valentine's book reads like a novel. It is entertaining but it is also highly fictional. History has proven several of Valentine's factual statements and conclusions to be false, while many of his sources have been argued to be frauds. Elton Manzione (who cannot even prove to have been where he claims he fought)is the most infamous of these alleged pretenders. Valentine's claims that VC atrocities were less numerous and egregious than those committed by allied forces (a position no self-respecting scholar, Vietnamese or American, seems willing to maintain anymore) may be his most embarrassing position. It is a shame that such an ambitious author could be so thoroughly deceived. Still, perhaps Valentine's "mistakes" are more sinister, considering that Valentine reveals early on that he has an axe to grind against the government (he claims the military betrayed his father, a veteran). This admission is admirably frank, but in light of the falsehoods Valentine's book reportedly contains, it is curious. One may find value and some insights in this book, but please balance it with more sophisticated and nuetral sources.
Rating: 
Summary: This book is more fiction than fact.
Review: Douglas Valentine's _The Phoenix Program_ is loopy conspiracy riddled nonsense that offers a great deal of speculation without much hard evidence. Valentine uses a great number of interviews with disgruntled low-level operatives to justify his rather ideologically extreme perspectives, but he offers little in the way of hard documentation. The book could be entitled "X-Files meets the Vietnam War." The Phoenix program is connected to virtually every other military operation and atrocity in the conflict. Valentine manages to see conspiracy everywhere, even inferring that the Kennedy assassination was related to the Vietnam War. "America endured a similar bloodletting three weeks later, when President Kennedy was caught in a crossfire of gunfire in Dallas, Texas. The assassination, curiously, came shortly after Kennedy had proposed withdrawing U.S. advisers from Vietnam." (Page 53). One can get lost trying to stay with Valentine as he leads the reader through twisted logic and justifies conclusions by introducing incidents and events that are otherwise unexplained or quite likely unrelated. This book is written in journalistic prose and offers little in the way of verifiable fact, but does offer a great deal in speculation and ideological perspective. If one is interested in understanding the U.S. involvement in Vietnam then look elsewhere. There are many books that are far more readable, factual, and balanced.
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