Vietnam vet to discuss Phoenix Program

Retired Army colonel Larry Smith will discuss a controversial Vietnam War program in a military history talk at 6 p.m. Friday.

The free talk will be at the 40 et 8 Chateau, 7607 N.E. 26th Ave., on the south side of 78th Street about a mile east of Interstate 5.

Smith, now a Vancouver city councilor, will share his first-hand experiences of the Phoenix Program, one of several pacification and rural security programs in South Vietnam.

Smith will discuss the mission of the Provincial Reconnaissance Units in South Vietnam in 1969 and their role in the elimination of the Vietnamese Communist infrastructure. They were the operational units under the Phoenix Program, which was operated by the CIA as a then-classified effort.

As an Army captain on his second combat tour, Smith led a 150-man team in two provinces of South Vietnam from November 1968 through November 1969. His unit was mostly Montagnard tribesmen, with some Cambodians and Laotians.

The presentation is part of the monthly military history talks sponsored by the Vancouver Barracks Military Association.