Evan J. Parker Jr. was the senior CIA officer William Colby chose as the first director of the Phoenix Program in Saigon.
A graduate of Cornell and a colleague of Colby’s in the elite OSS unit the Jedburghs, Parker was the CIA’s ranking
expert on unconventional warfare. He had superstar status; he brought the veneer of respectability to the Phoenix
program that Colby badly wanted. Soft spoken yet firm, Parker expresses his discomfort as a company man saluting and
following orders in a program that he found at times to be tragically ineffective, if not “hideous.”
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