Between the years 1967 and 1972 the CIA introduced a program they designed, coordinated by the Republic of Vietnam's (South Vietnam) and created as a security practise to identify and "neutralize" the civilian infrastructure supporting the Viet Cong or National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam. Between 1968 and 1972 Phoenix neutralized 81,740 NLF members, of whom 26,369 were killed. In 1970, Communist officials near Da Nang in northern South Vietnam instructed their assassins to "kill 400 persons" deemed to be government "tyrant's" and to "annihilate" anyone involved with the pacification program. The Phoenix Program is sometimes seen as an "assassination campaign," and has been criticized as an example of human-rights atrocities alleged to have been committed by the CIA or other allied organizations, including U.S. Military Intelligence. Consequently, the military command in Vietnam issued a directive that reiterated that it had based the anti-VCI campaign on South Vietnamese law, that the program was in compliance with the laws of land warfare, and that U.S. personnel had the responsibility to report breaches of the law. For More Info.: Bob Kerrey, The CIA and War Crimes: http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine...