huge flotilla of boats), and his tenure there encompassed the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Vietnam, Laos and the "Phoenix Program" In 1966, Shackley moved on to the Vietnam War, becoming the CIA station chief in Laos between 1966 and 1968, where he directed the CIA's secret war against the North Vietnamese forces in Laos. He also helped coordinate local army efforts against the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese Army in the northern regions of Laos. In late 1968, he then moved to Saigon to become station chief for Vietnam. Shackley was responsible for running the Phoenix Program and the Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs), a secret assassination and capture campaign aimed at members of the Vietcong infrastructure. However, in his memoirs Shackley claimed that he had not been the mastermind of the Phoenix Program (which had already started before his arrival in Saigon) and did not even approve of it, given its disappointing effectivity at producing intelligence material and "its poor press image" of being an assassination program rather than one for information procurement. In November 1969, he decided a six-months "phase-out" of CIA's involvement in the program before transferring it under South Vietnamese control, CIA agents being replaced by CORDS personnel. Shackley served in South Vietnam through February 1972 when he returned to Langley, Virginia. Western Hemisphere Division and Chile From May 1972, Shackley ran the CIA's "Western Hemisphere Division". When Shackley took over the division, one mission for him was "regime change" in Chile (United States intervention in Chile / Project FUBELT). During this time, Shackley also dealt with the case of ex-CIA officer Philip Agee, who was suspected of having defected to Cuban intelligence. Agee had told acquaintances that he was going to write an exposé of the CIA (published in 1975 as Inside The Company: CIA Diary). Shackley managed to get a copy of Agee's book before it was published, and according to journalist David Corn, even arranged for Agee to receive a bugged typewriter. Associate Deputy Director for Operations In May 1976, Shackley was made Associate Deputy Director for Operations, serving under CIA director George H. W. Bush. After Jimmy Carter had succeeded Gerald Ford as President and replaced Bush with Stansfield Turner, Shackley was relieved of his post in December 1977, before officially retiring from the organization in 1979 – when the Carter administration announced wide cuts in the CIA's network of officers