Free Phoenix Program by Douglas Valentine Page B

because having a fixed complex was spiritually uncomfortable. Spiritually the thing to do was to go into the villages. At Vung Tau they were not dealing with unconventional warfare, but with warehousers. There was always the threat that ‘We’ll turn off the water’ if you don’t do it our way.” 11
    He also criticized the “development of incantation and rote” and the resulting “doctrinaire” mind-set that led to the Rural Construction program’s being compared with Hitler’s Strength Through Joy camps. Its cadre studied the ninety-eight duties, the eleven-point criteria, and the twelve phases ofaction. They sang the “New Life Hamlet Construction” song, with its symbolic twelve stanzas and ninety-eight notes, and recited the ritual Five Oaths: “Standing before the altar of our Fatherland and the national Flag, we, in the capacity of rural construction cadres, take the oath … to remain faithful … to firmly believe … that cadres are created by the people … to mingle with the people … and to make constant efforts in study in order to progress in behavior, education and techniques.” 12
    Scotton’s biggest complaint, however, was the shift from intelligence and displacement to civic action. The change took place in early 1965, when Robert Kelly joined the CIA and took his team of instructors to duplicate the Quang Ngai program in other provinces. At that point Harry “The Hat” Monk took over in Binh Dinh Province and began working as case officer to Major Nguyen Be, the former insurgent who, before defecting, had been party secretary for the Ninth Vietcong Battalion. A visionary, Be wanted Rural Construction to be more than an attack on the VCI; he wanted to provide services to the people as well. Perceiving the PATs as “too American,” he retrained his people as they returned to Binh Dinh from Vung Tau and, with the help of Monk, combined “mobile” Census Grievance cadres, PATs, and CTs, and came up with the fifty-nine-man Revolutionary Development (RD) team.
    Be’s fifty-nine-man RD teams had group leaders and psywar, intelligence, and medical specialists in staff positions. There were three elevenman teams constituting an “action element” and having a counterterror mission, and there was a Rural Construction leader with a six-man Civic Action team; a six-man “mobile” Census Grievance team under the intelligence office; and a six-man economic unit. Be’s teams were called Purple People Eaters by American soldiers, in reference to their clothes and terror tactics. To the rural Vietnamese they were simply “idiot birds.”
    Said Scotton: “Be was trying to create a climate to make the VC blunder into ambushes and fear the unpredictable.” His goal was to neutralize the VC, but his style was “be nice to VC agents, give them gifts, smother them with affection, and then let them try to explain that to their superiors.” It was a style Scotton did not approve of, although he loved Be himself. “Be was like an older brother to me and an uncle to my children,” Scotton said. “He lived with us from 1976 until he died in summer of 1981.”
    Despite Scotton’s compunctions, by mid-1965 the CIA was using Be’s fifty-nine-man model as its standard team, at which point the Rural Construction Cadre program was renamed the Revolutionary Development Cadre program. With larger teams and standardization came the need for more advisers, so Donohue began recruiting military men like Joe Vacarro, a Special Forces sergeant working as a Public Safety adviser in Quang Nam Province. “I met Joe and chatted with him,” Donohue said, “and he lookedinteresting, so I went to AID, and he was sort of seconded to me; although he still worked for AID, I wrote his fitness reports. Then I worked out a direct hire for him, and he came back here to D.C., did