This SEAL Served 47 Years, Including in Vietnam and the Phoenix Program
History
By Matt Fratus | January 31, 2022
Kirby Horrell served as a Navy SEAL in Vietnam for just three months before he went over to the Phoenix Program in the summer of 1970. The controversial CIA-sponsored program employed US SEALs with either South Vietnamese SEALs or Viet Cong defectors to conduct kill or capture missions deep inside Viet Cong territory.
These missions were far dicier than the jobs the 21-year-old had endured as the point man for SEAL Team 1’s 12-member Foxtrot Platoon.
“When Leon Rauch and I were working the Phoenix Program, we would go out with just two of us,” Horrell said on the Late Night History podcast. “It would be me, him, two KCS in a sampan, and off we would go.”
The KCS, or Kid Carson Scouts, were Viet Cong defectors who had a camp right across the river from one of the Phoenix Program’s sites at the port city of Vung Tau in South Vietnam. The KCS were often used as spies to infiltrate enemy-controlled areas and gather actionable intelligence using their inside knowledge of the region.
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