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

The Spy Who Loved Us 119
would have revealed in his face what he was feeling. That’s all.
It’s very simple.
“In New York, the Asia Foundation arranged for me to stay
with one of their men who lived in the Bronx. He took me
around and showed me Central Park, where I saw a lot of crazy
people making speeches. I took a sightseeing trip around New
York. I rode the ferry out into the harbor to see Lady Liberty.
I went to visit the offices of Time magazine. They said, ‘Maybe
in the future you will work for Time.’ I said yes, that would
be very nice. But for now, I prefer to go back home and work
for Vietnam Press. The Asia Foundation had already told me,
when I returned to Vietnam, that I should work for Vietnam
Press, to help them.”
The ambiguity of An’s statement only strikes me later, and
I never get to ask him about it. Why is the Asia Foundation advising
him to work for Vietnam Press? Will An be helping the
cause of Vietnamese journalism or the CIA?
“I had briefed Vietnamese officers before sending them to
the United States, showing them pictures of life in America, but
I was amazed when I saw it with my own eyes. The only way
Vietnam could fight a war against the United States was to
hope that one day they would go away. Vietnam is a small, isolated
country. We had relations with almost no one outside our
borders, and inside we were fighting day and night. We came
from zero. We had to sacrifice until we were reduced to zero.
No matter how long it took, we had to continue. We had already
fought for hundreds of years against the French and thousands
of years against the Chinese. There was no reason for us to
stop now.”
Almost two years to the day after he left Vietnam, An sold
his car and flew from New York to San Francisco. This was his
last chance to change his mind. He had been offered a language
teaching job in Monterey for a salary of three hundred and
fifty dollars a month, a lot of money in those days. Lee Meyer
had sent him a postcard from San Francisco, showing the bay