Italian Night at Tay Ninh East

I loved to cook, especially Italian food, and once a month—when I could scrounge the ingredients—we had Italian night at our Tây Ninh East compound. One night a civilian joined us. I was told he was from the CIA compound. His bearing said otherwise: probably a captain or major, Army, most likely B-32, 5th Special Forces. Live 24/7 with the same officers in a small compound and any scrap of outside news becomes precious. So we rolled out the hospitality—I even added an antipasto salad.

It was turning into a good night. Then, serving dessert, I tripped over some bags stashed under a table.

The bags were full of loose hand grenades. My boot caught one, hard enough to send five grenades rolling across the floor. I stepped on one, lost my balance, and took the food cart down with me.

Everyone laughed—until they saw what I’d tripped over. Then the room went dead silent, everyone praying the pins had stayed put.

Unsecured grenades in our own mess. I said so, loudly, while I gathered them up. As I started carrying the bag outside, the civilian grabbed my wrist and twisted—hard enough that I dropped it, and the grenades rolled out a second time. Those were his grenades, he said. Don’t touch them. I mouthed off back. That only made it worse, and my major walked me outside to cool down. When I came back in, our guest was gone. Nobody wanted to talk about it.

That was the final straw. Officially we were gathering intelligence for the 25th Infantry Division. I believe that was cover. Why else was a Green Beret sitting in our compound with enough grenades to erase a village? I pushed one of the intel officers for an answer and got a warning instead: drop it, or get relieved. Two weeks later I ran into the major at B-32. He apologized for the mess. I asked about the grenades. “I use them at work,” he said—and climbed into a waiting jeep.

I left Vietnam still not knowing our real mission in Tây Ninh East. It took me decades, and a lot of digging, to understand what I’d probably brushed up against. Phoenix ran on Provincial Reconnaissance Units—South Vietnamese hunter-killer teams built to find and eliminate Viet Cong cadre. Special Forces officers trained them, advised them, and in some cases ran them. The suspects PRUs swept up went to interrogation centers where a lot of them didn’t come out. Green Berets weren’t accused of pulling every trigger. They were accused of running the men who did. A Green Beret major, unmarked hand grenades, “I use them at work”—that’s not a stretch. That’s the pattern.

Forty-nine years later, here’s what I’ve stacked up:

1. I was never allowed into our own intelligence briefings with General Black, though they fell under my duties.
2. The “Phoenix Program” building sat within a hundred feet of our compound. Two intel officers who roomed with me made frequent trips there.
3. We exchanged intelligence with someone from B-32 at least once a week.
4. Our compound sat inside a Vietnamese fort, ringed by Vietnamese Rangers and CIDG troops.
5. We ate lunch at the CIA compound daily.
6. Hand grenades were the PRU killing teams’ weapon of choice.

I still think about that wooden “Phoenix Program” sign hanging in our compound, and how my obsession with those two words—and the secrecy wrapped around them—nearly got me relieved from duty, or worse. Back then, I was too young and too caught up in the war to see the real danger, or how lucky I was to walk away. I was part of a small intelligence team, dropped into a small Vietnamese compound on the edge of a Vietnamese city, surrounded by Viet Cong, with no American unit assigned to pull us out if it went bad.

What more could I ask for?