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

116 THOMAS A. BASS
were less colorful than Bay Vien and his river pirates. An drove
to Niagara Falls, where he spent a week attending a seminar for
Vietnamese Catholic students organized by Emmanuel Jacques,
a Belgian Jesuit missionary. An never pretended to be anything
but Buddhist. He must have thought it a good idea, though, to
add Father Jacques, who had lived in Vietnam and “spoke Vietnamese
like a Vietnamese,” to his list of references.
An drove next to Washington, where he stayed in Arlington,
Virginia, for ten days with his CIA friend Mills Brandes and his
family. “After seeing Capitol Hill, the White House, the Pentagon,
they took me on a tour of the FBI, where I saw agents
shooting at targets on the firing range with live ammunition,” An
says. “They pushed a button and up popped a shooter. We
were supposed to admire how many bull’s-eyes they got. Most
people got bull’s-eyes.”
“I asked them, ‘What is this used for?’ ‘It’s a warning to
people: don’t commit crimes, or the FBI will put a bullet in
you very easily.’ I thought to myself, ‘This is good psychological
warfare, meant to reduce the number of criminals.’”
An drove back to New York in time to watch the opening of
the United Nations. The Asia Foundation introduced him to the
U.N. correspondent from India, who took him to get a press
pass and showed him around. “This was the session where
Nikita Khrushchev made his first visit to the United States.
The streets were lined with mounted policemen, riding huge
horses and looking very handsome in the autumn light. Crowds
filled the sidewalks to watch Khrushchev drive by in a black limousine,
with the Soviet flag flying on the hood of his car. I
watched his motorcade pass by. Then I went to the press gallery
to watch Khrushchev deliver his speech.”
I ask An if he was excited to see Khrushchev in New York,
as a fellow Communist, and if he believed him when
Khrushchev said to the United States, “We will bury you!”
An gives me a rousing yes, a long, drawn-out note of agreement,
accompanied by a hand wave of assent, fingers mounting