“Soldiers fight. Green berets slip inside houses
and kill the enemies in front of their families”
Here Trautman is referring to the famous Phoenix Program, the controversial program of search, capture and aimed-murders with which the C.I.A. tried to destroy the Vietcong structure hiding between the South Vietnamese civilians.
Contrary to what most movies and even some books say, the Phoenix program was mostly ran by South Vietnamese officials and gave very good results, to the point that near the end of the US involvement, the Vietcong irregular movement was almost inexistent and the Vietnam conflict was (almost) just a conventional conflict (which is also the reason why, today, many think that if the US had just continued fighting for another couple of years, it would have probably won).
On the other side, the Phoenix Program created collateral damages also.
The number of civilians wrongly accused grew larger and larger every year, up to outrageous levels.
Moreover, many prisoner - no matter if guilty or innocent - were tortured and then arbitrary killed by the South Vietnamese police.
At a certain point during the war, someone found the existence of the program and it became public.
A journalist discovered one of those 'aimed' executions and a SOG colonel went under trial for murder.
'Apocalypse Now' clearly mentions the episode in the beginning of the movie, during the pre-mission briefing during which Willard is explained who the Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) is.
Kurtz belonged to the 'Fifth Special Forces' (as Trautman does during the first movie). Also, his background clearly shows the usual SOG activities: to enlist local civilians, fight on neutral countries' soil and commit murders without any 'collateral damage' concerns.
The trial for murder – the real one, the so called 'Green Beret affair'- led then to the closure of the SOG.
Many are still talking about the effectiveness and doubtful morality of the Phoenix Program , even today.
The keyword to deepen the subject on the Internet, is “PHOENIX PROGRAM”.
