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

The Spy Who Loved Us 157
“We gave him very good strategic briefings,” says Frank
Snepp, of the access Shaplen commanded at the U.S. embassy
in Saigon. “Did some of this intelligence make its way to Pham
Xuan An? You bet. An had access to strategic intelligence.
That’s obvious. This would have been vital information to get to
the north. An was of paramount importance to the Communists
for corroborating what they were receiving from other sources.
He was also picking up information from the network of spies
that operated in the interrogation centers. He knew the Communist
cadre we had captured and what they were saying. The
guy was worth his weight in gold.”
Shaplen and An spent hours closeted together in Shaplen’s
hotel room discussing Vietnamese politics and the progress of
the war, and Shaplen even wrote about An in a New Yorker article
entitled “We Have Always Survived,” published in 1972.
An is “probably the hardest-working and most highly respected
Vietnamese journalist in town,” writes Shaplen, who begins his
article with a lengthy description of café Givral. “Everyone
who comes to Givral does so not only to exchange information
but to play the subtle conversational games the Vietnamese
play so much better than Americans can—testing each other,
putting each other on, trying to humor somebody and to denigrate
somebody else. Cabinet members drop by from time to
time, as do other high civilian and military officials; President
Thieu used to, when he was still an army officer.” Shaplen describes
how the exchange of information at Givral involved a formalized
ritual. “There are three daily ‘broadcast times’ at
Givral—one around ten in the morning, one in midafternoon,
and one between five and seven, after the daily press briefings
held at the National Press Center, across the way. The morning
period is concerned mostly with business rumors and reports, and
the two afternoon sessions with political and military matters.”
Although An made a point of checking into “Radio Catinat,”
as the café was called, throughout the day, he also worked an extensive
network of connections that stretched across other parts