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

110 THOMAS A. BASS
War II and an expert, during the McCarthy era, in hunting out
pro-Communist elements. One day she asked me, ‘Have you
come here to learn or to do something else?’
“‘To learn,’ I assured her. ‘I have worked with American soldiers;
that’s why they sent me here.’
“‘I am suspicious that you have come to do something else.’
“What she told me made me more vigilant. I Americanized
myself. There was no more revolutionary talk. No more
French, either.”
That An became a great journalist as well as a great spy is
a testament to the American method of training reporters by
having them spend long hours producing student newspapers.
While working as a subeditor and writer for the Barnacle, An
penned stories on campus food, dorm life, and the special
needs of foreign students, which included a large contingent of
Persians who had come to California to study the state’s offshore
oil wells. There were sixteen students on the Barnacle staff, all
of them enrolled in Journalism 101 and 102. The year An was
listed as “Page 2 Editor,” the paper placed second among Southland
junior college newspapers in a competition at the University
of Southern California.
The long hours An spent at the student newspaper may
also have been motivated by falling in love with his editor, Lee
Meyer, who combined a winning smile with serious, blackframed
spectacles. Lots of people fell in love with Meyer, judging
from the affectionate messages inscribed in her yearbook.
An calls her “an ideal friend” in his inscription and writes of his
hope that “our friendly relationship would be closer and closer
in spite of improper situations.” An is referring to the fact that
Meyer was engaged at the time to a medical student she would
later marry—unhappily and briefly. “She was the girl I would have
married if I’d had the chance,” An says.
That An and Lee’s affection was mutual is evident from
letters they exchanged late in life. Lee contacted An after reading
about him in an article published in Newsweek on the