REQUEST FOR ASSISTANCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80R01720R000700080011-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 28, 2004
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: August 9, 1972
• Content Type: MF

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9 August 1972
MEMORANDUM FOR: Mr. William E. Colby
Executive Director-Comptroller
SUBJECT : Request for Assistance
1. As you know, last week Joseph B. Treaster had a story on
Communist executions in Binh Dinh province which, surprisingly, was
played prominently on the front page of the 4 August New York Times.
(The makeup editor for that edition has probably been fired.) This was
followed up with a feature entry, also by Treaster, in the News of the
Week in Review section of the Sunday Times on 6 August.
2. As you also know, those opposed to the war -- including the
Times editorial board -- get very testy at hard news on Communist
behavior of this stripe and are very quick to counter with claims that
we do things equally bad and generally worse. That same Sunday (6
August) Times had a. lead editorial entitled "Bloodbath in Binhdinh...
(copy attached). As you can see, the counter balance cited is the
"infamous 'Phoenix' program. " The Times editorial writer ends his
paragraph on Phoenix with the following sentence:'
"According to testimony before a House sub- .
committee last year, 9,820 civilian Communists
were executed under this program in a fourteen-
month period. "
3. The 9, 820 figure can be extrapolated from Congressman Reid's
comments appearing on page 45 of the U. S. Government Printing Office's
edition of "Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Govern-
ment Operations - House of Representatives - Ninety-second Congress. "
(A copy of the page is attached.) The actual figure of 9, 820 is not
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mentioned but it is clearly the sum of the 8, 191 VCI killed in 1970
plus the 1, 629 killed in January and February of 1971. These, we
understand, were figures provided to Reid in the package sent to him
before the hearings began.
4. What the Times editorial writer has done, of course, is
substitute "executed" for "killed. " Neither you nor anyone else providing
data to Congress has ever said that all of the VCI killed as a result of
Phoenix activities were shot in the sense of the victims of the Commu-
nist operations described by Mr. Treaster. What we would like to run
down, however, is some clear statement already in the record explaining
the derivation of these "VCI killed" figures which makes the point that
these are not victims of execution in the sense of which that word is
used in the New York Times editorial. You yourself addressed this
point in your answer to question 27 of Congressman Moorhead's supple-
mental questions (see attached copy of page 234 of the same hearings
transcript). In answering question 27, you make a very germane point
that some 88% of the Phoenix "kills" are persons killed by military
forces. It would be most helpful if you can remember any other places
in the public record where this issue is specifically addressed, ideally
with language succinct and punchy enough to be quotable in a letter to
the New York Times that some senior U. S. Government official could
sign in an endeavor to take issue with the 6 August editorial and set
the record straight.
25X1
George A. Carver, Jr.
Special Assistant for Vietnamese Affairs
Attachments
25X1
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