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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Larry Berman
Ironically, it was Khanh who was free to travel regularly between his home in Lubbock, Texas, and Ho Chi Minh City for extended visits with his family. General Pham Xuan An, Hero of the Revolution, had never been permitted to leave Vietnam to visit his many friends or family members in America.
He never had to steal top-secret documents because he was always being provided with classified materials by his sources in order to explain the broader political or military context.
“There were some people who found it difficult dealing with An, largely because of his custom of responding to questions in a very Vietnamese way, which is to say by starting at the fifteenth century and tracing his answers forward from there,”
An admired Bob Anson for the very qualities that had caused Anson such problems with Marsh Clark. He possessed the type of fiery independence that An recalled from the many Americans he had met during his two years in California. He was passionate in his beliefs and not afraid to speak against the tide. An admired this spirit, recalling the day Anson challenged his Time colleagues about the large American flag hanging outside the bureau office on Han Thuyen Street. Time was an independent news organization, not an official government office building, Anson argued. There should be two flags
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Nine days later, as he left captivity, his fellow soldiers of the revolution gave Anson a gift of Ho Chi Minh sandals with soles made from a truck tire and straps from inner tubes. “We use only the best. American made. Four-ply,” said the Vietnamese soldier.
“I was familiar with five armies—the Viet Minh, the French, the Viet Cong, the Americans, and the South Vietnamese—that I should have five stars. I don’t think they understood my sense of humor.”
One of An’s carefully developed strategies was never to get too close to anyone he knew or thought to be a Communist sympathizer; instead he sought out and attached himself to the most ardent and recognized anti-Communist figures in order to protect his cover and gain insights into American thinking.
I admired the American independence of thought and speech. I learned a new way of thinking in America, and I could never get it out of me, even when they tried to do that after the war.”
An sold his car in New York and flew back to California for meetings at the Asia Foundation in order to prepare for his return to Vietnam. The foundation made him an attractive offer: He could take a job with an excellent salary with the United States Information Agency in a program that would also allow him to get a PhD on a full scholarship, or he could teach Vietnamese at the language school in Monterey to the American advisers departing for Vietnam.
I have
Pham Xuan An, himself an undercover Communist spy, was now preparing Dr. Tuyen’s anti-Communist agents for their cover. In Vietnam, nothing was ever as it seemed to be.
An recalled that there was one time when a contact inside that organization showed him a captured enemy document providing a summary of his own report on counterinsurgency and ARVN strategy. “I went crazy and went to the jungle and told them to be careful how they summarized things, especially since this was something I wrote in 1961 and I knew it was mine; it was old but traceable.”
rumor. An saw many similarities between the two professions. “The only difference is who reads your final report,”
Ba Quoc had no idea that An was working undercover: “I was acquainted with Hai Trung, but I knew only that he was a journalist working for the American who had a lot of influence and who had a very wide circle of contacts…. Because I knew that he was a person with considerable influence, I wanted to establish contact with him in order to elicit information from him. I reported my intentions to my superiors, but I received instructions forbidding contact with him.” An was similarly unaware of Ba Quoc’s role.
I asked An why so many people admired Thao. “Bob Shaplen liked him because he thought Thao’s mentality was separate and different from Hanoi. Thao was a dreamer, like many of us.”
All my friends wanted to help, not just Time, so many kind people. Malcolm Browne offered to put me on the New York Times list even though I worked for a competitor; a representative from Reuters came to Givral and offered me and my family passage out. Jim Robinson, who used to work for NBC, offered to take me and my family on the plane he had chartered. Then on April 22 Bob Shaplen told me I had to decide now, for the safety of my wife and children. I said OK, give me one day to think it over.”
did not know the Communists and they did not know me,” An explained. “What was I going to do when one of the cadre pointed a rifle at me? I could not say, ‘Welcome, I have been waiting twenty years, my mission is now over.’ All I wanted to do was be like Tarzan, go off with my Jane and my animals and be left alone. I was so tired. I could not tell them of my mission because they would have laughed and maybe shot me right there as a crazy man, born in a psychiatric hospital in Bien Hoa.
“Why do you have to leave? There is nothing to be afraid of.”59 An knew better: “No, impossible. You must try to leave!”
The situation seemed hopeless, but as the gate was being closed, An instinctively reached under the gate with his left hand and used his right to push the diminutive Dr. Tuyen under the gate. No more than eighteen inches separated the gate from the ground. There was no time to say good-bye or thank you. “Run,” An said as tears ran down his face. Tuyen was also crying and could say nothing except “I can never forget.”65
“I was sad on April the thirtieth,” An told Henry Kamm. “I said good-bye to Tuyen. Most of my friends left, and I knew those who didn’t would be in trouble.”67 Tuyen had similar thoughts. “A strange feeling. So sad. After so many deaths, so many families destroyed so many Americans dead…”
An was now quite literally Time’s man in Ho Chi Minh City, staying in touch with former colleagues and contributing to coverage in post–April 30 editions. “All American correspondents evacuated because of emergency,” An telexed New York. “The office of Time is now manned by Pham Xuan An.”4 Time’s publicity department published a picture of An standing on a deserted street, smoking a cigarette and looking pugnacious.
“My mission was technically over, my country was reunited, and the Americans were gone, but I could not tell anyone the truth. I could not feel happy because I was very lonely and scared. My wife and family were in America. I did not know if I would see them again. I also had many friends who could not leave, and I did not know what would happen to them either. There was so much unknown.”
The new regime had a problem with An’s actions on April 30 when he helped Dr. Tuyen make the last helicopter from 22 Gia Long. An provided an accounting to security, saying it was a humanitarian gesture. Tuyen’s family had already departed Vietnam, and the war was about to end. That explanation sat well with members of An’s own southern intelligence network, but it was met with doubts by security. What did An mean when he said he and Tuyen were friends? Was it personal or business?
An was required to write a “confession” concerning the details of Dr. Tuyen’s escape and instructed to disclose the names of his contacts and sources during the war, obtained while working as a Time journalist. As noted earlier, he provided the details as best he could recollect about Tuyen, but said his memory was very bad about his contacts over the past fifteen years. “I told them I could not remember and gave them very little,” said An, a man who I know possessed extraordinary recall of details from decades earlier.
Elevation to status of Hero was not enough to prevent An from escaping a year of “detoxification” near Hanoi.14 Spending so much time with the Americans was just part of An’s problem.
he remembers being ridiculed as “an American boy.”16 There was no one else like him. He had more experience with Americans than most ARVN officers, who spent just one month training in the United States. An had lived there freely for two years. “I was considered ‘too American’ and ‘bourgeois’ by the new regime, and they expected me to speak like a Marxist after a few months of lectures and confession sessions,” An told me. An did have lots of time to think. “You know, this was my first time living under Communism. I had so much to learn and tried to adjust everything, my way of thinking,
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And so the reeducated An had trouble fitting in and being trusted.
I fought for my country, not against the Americans,”
