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

The Spy Who Loved Us 149
ticularly their plans for the second stage of the Têt Offensive in
May 1968, which would be a military failure if stripped of the
element of surprise.
Tu Cang, who was then head of Communist intelligence in
the south, rushed to Saigon to assess the damage. On his way
into the city, he stopped to buy a newspaper. Splashed across the
front page was a headline about Colonel Tam Ha’s defection and
a big photo showing him standing between a Vietnamese general
and William Westmoreland, the commander of American
forces in Vietnam. As soon as Tu Cang reached the city, An
loaded him into his car. They drove to a military base on the outskirts
of Saigon in neighboring Gia Dinh province. Within fifteen
minutes, while Tu Cang waited in the car, An had walked
into headquarters, borrowed the files, and walked out holding
photocopies of Tam Ha’s interrogation.
“Reading Tam Ha’s testimony, I felt extremely angry with
this traitor,” Tu Cang is quoted as saying in Pham Xuan An: A
General of the Secret Service (2003), one of An’s three Vietnamese
biographies. “He revealed everything: our campaign
plan, tactics, weapons, the concealment of our troops, artillery,
bullets, and even the location of the regional command headquarters.
Faced with this situation, our senior leaders changed
the whole campaign plan for launching the second stage of the
offensive, losing minimum casualties. The outcome of this offensive
eventually forced the enemy to deescalate the war and
go to the negotiating table.” This story is remarkable for a number
of reasons, including the fact that Pham Xuan An is driving
onto a military base with the head of Communist intelligence
in the front seat of his car. “We were in a hurry,” An explains.
Besides sharing some of his sources with her, An accompanied
Beverly Deepe into the field. One day they drove out to
visit John Paul Vann, who had resigned from the army but returned
to Vietnam to run the United States Agency for International
Development pacification program in Hau Nghia
province, near the Cambodian border. Vann was a colorful