FC: CIA's secret Phoenix Project documents on The Memory Hole

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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From: "Russ Kick" <russ () mindpollen com>
To: declan () well com
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 11:03:41 -0500
Subject: Documents on CIA's Phoenix Project posted on The Memory Hole

Hi Declan--

This might be of interest to readers of Politech........

-Russ-


27 May 2003
Russ Kick, pub-editor of the Memory Hole [russ () mindpollen com]

http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/

Created by the CIA in Saigon in 1967, Phoenix was a program aimed at
"neutralizing"--through assassination, kidnapping, and systematic
torture--the civilian infrastructure that supported the Viet Cong
insurgency in South Vietnam. It was a terrifying "final solution"
that violated the Geneva Conventions and traditional American ideas
of human morality.

The CIA destroyed its copies of the documents related to this
program, but the creator of Phoenix gave his personal copies to
author Douglas Valentine. He, in turn, has given them to The Memory
Hole. They have never previously been published, online or in print.

These extremely rare and revealing documents are being posted at The
Memory Hole, a Website dedicated to rescuing knowledge and freeing
information. The site's publisher and editor, Russ Kick, says: "I had
worked with Doug before, and I knew that he had lots of documents on
Phoenix, one of the CIA's most controversial and hushed-up programs.
When I asked if I could post them, he immediately agreed. He was even
kind enough to write introductions to each document and to Phoenix in
general especially for the site."

Kick continues: "This is exactly the type of material I had in mind
when I created The Memory Hole last July. The mainstream media is
terrified of this story and won't touch it with a 10-foot pole. I
think it was during a segment on Senator Bob Kerrey that '60 Minutes'
made a hit-and-run reference to Phoenix, saying something like, 'The
full story of this program has yet to be told.' Then the narration
went on to other things. That was it--one or two sentences, and I'm
yelling at the TV: 'Then why don't you tell the whole story?' The
primary documents are available. A lot of the people involved are
still alive. Several books about it have been written (of course,
they've been published by independent publishers). This is obviously
something that frightens the media, and the CIA has tried to erase it
by destroying the documents. What better subject for The Memory
Hole?"

Currently, the site contains fourteen multi-page documents, and more
will be posted in the coming months.

http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix/




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