Doug Valentine reporting

[Jan Klimkowski]

Robert Ramsdell, the CIA Phoenix advisor in Quang Ngai Province, told task Force Barker that only VCI would be there that day, and a team of US MI guys and GVN special police went in to interrogate people, I believe right after or during the massacre.

It's important to differentiate the Phoenix concept from the Phoenix program.

Both target civilians.

the Phoenix Program had few forces of its own, just the advisors, but they could call upon troops - like Task Force Barker - to "block" off nationalist forces so the MI guys and Viet special police could do their thing.

And that's what happened.

Please can you expand a little on the difference between the Phoenix Program and the Phoenix concept?

Investigation of Operation Gladio (in its broadest sense) exposes an original programme of "stay behind" guerrilla cadres or cells, with access to weapons caches, conceived (according to the official narrative) as an underground army designed to "rise up" after (Soviet) communist invasion.

However, the practice and use made of Gladio cells was very different.

The philosophy of Gladio, as revealed in its actions, was one of atrocities against civilians, such as the Bologna railway station bombing, committed by a Gladio cell (Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari) but designed to be blamed on the opposition (in this case the Red Brigades).

Ultimately, the Gladio philosophy is the Strategy of Tension, the creation of fear amongst the civliian population achieved through false flag atrocities, designed to make the population welcome loss of freedom and embrace a police state.

Gladio is all about targeting, and breaking the will of, civilians.

In your answer, you suggest that the heart of Phoenix is also about targeting civilians.