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

150 THOMAS A. BASS
figure who gave journalists good copy. A critic of America’s
strategy in Vietnam, he wanted a better, smarter war with closer
engagement on the ground and less reliance on high-altitude
bombing and long-range artillery. Vann was considered a world
authority on counterterrorism until Neil Sheehan gave him a
darker cast. As Sheehan revealed in A Bright Shining Lie: John
Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, while Vann allowed people
to assume that he was forced out of the army because of
his outspoken criticism of U.S. policy, he was actually cashiered
for statutory rape.
An and Deepe set off one morning in his little green Renault
4CV to drive fifty kilometers northwest of Saigon to Vann’s
Hau Nghia office. “I hadn’t notified anyone first,” An says about
this trip in January 1966. “If they had known we were coming,
they probably would have denied us permission. We drove to Tay
Ninh and then turned left into Hau Nghia province. When we
pulled into town, the Vietnamese general guarding Vann’s headquarters
was surprised to see us. ‘Goddam it,’ he yelled. ‘I don’t
want you journalists coming here.’ He gave me a real tonguelashing.
‘You’re Vietnamese. If you die, I don’t care. But you
have an American lady with you, and if she’s killed, I’ll have lots
of problems. The road you arrived on is attacked every day by
the Communists. We have to sweep it for mines whenever we
send out a convoy. People are ambushed and killed all the time.’”
Because Vann was away, An and Deepe met with Doug
Ramsey, his second in command. They ate an early lunch in
order to get back to Saigon before nightfall. The province chief
sent a platoon to clear the road of mines and escort them back
to Route 1. The next week, Ramsey was seized by the Communists,
who would hold him captive for seven years.
“When they captured someone, they let me know about
it,” An says. “I told them, ‘He’s a nice man. You should release
him.’ ‘But he speaks Vietnamese,’ they said. ‘We are suspicious
of people who speak Vietnamese.’” It was not until the signing of
the Paris Accords, after he survived B-52 strikes, starvation,