From 1966-68, John Singlaub commanded the Studies and Observations Group, a top secret “joint unconventional warfare task force” during the Vietnam War, which apparently made him “one of the on-site commanders” of Operation Phoenix, the CIA’s secretive assassination program that murdered thousands of Vietnamese civilians. 20 years later, after the Iran-Contra affair spilled into the open, journalist Peter Tarr reported for the Los Angeles Times that he “turned up evidence that the counterinsurgency strategy advocated by Singlaub and other private American citizens on the far right for use in Central America now had taken firm root in the Philippines.”