The Spy Who Loved Us_ The Vietnam War and Pham Xuan An's Dangerous Game ( PDFDrive )

Travels
in America
I
n 1956, An’s Communist handlers ordered him to quit the
Vietnamese army and start a new career. They wanted him
to go to the United States and study the country that was waging
war on them from halfway around the world.
An was the first Communist spy at Vietnamese military
headquarters, but when another officer was recruited from the
general staff, it was time for him to move on.
“After being demobilized I was supposed to go back to the
customs house. But I didn’t like being a fonctionnaire. I wanted
a free profession. This was my problem, always my problem. I
refused to go back. I submitted a letter of resignation, which had
to be approved by the minister of finance, and I took all the
money out of my pension. People were surprised. ‘You have a
lifetime job. Why would you leave that?’”
An thought of becoming a doctor or studying economics, a
subject that had interested him ever since he read Economie
Politique, a book based on Karl Marx’s Capital. “I thought,
maybe I’ll go to America and study economics or political theory.
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