(MACV Dir 381-41) This document is one of the first confidential memorandums associated with the Phoenix Program, which details in 1967 the mostly U.S. involvement in counterinsurgency intelligence and activities and discusses the future training and development of South Vietnam forces to serve the same function, that had been supported by the U.S. In civilian (mostly CIA) and military roles. The document stresses that the U.S. role is to emit a "shotgun" type injury to the infrastructure of the insurgency, while eventually the South Vietnamese agencies (based largely on existing U.S. forces) that will be developed later hold the responsibility of directing a more "riffle shot" like blast to the core of the movement, i.e. To perform appropriate apprehension and/or assassination of key figure leaders.

Since this time and likely in part as a response to the controversial clandestine actions of the past the U.S. has abandoned assassination as a...
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