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

180 THOMAS A. BASS
mistake that comes from getting a story but not reporting it. For
example, I was at dinner talking to someone who told me that
Norodom Sihanouk was about to be overthrown in a coup.
This was the start of the American invasion into Cambodia in
April 1970, when they attacked the Sihanouk Trail. This was important
information, but I didn’t report it to the Communists.
I should have, and if I had, I would have saved a lot of lives.”
“Why didn’t you report it?” I ask.
“I was too busy,” he says. “I had hundreds of other things to
report. My friends gave me the details of the coup, but I didn’t
pass them along. This was a big mistake. I deserve to be blamed.
I should have told the Communists. Later I told them I had
made a mistake.” This rates as one of An’s rare apologies to his
handlers. His attitude toward them was generally dismissive. He
was better informed and smarter than they were. They were
poor northerners in tattered clothes and flip-flops, a dour, distrustful
race, compared to the more jovial and privileged southerners.
“Sometimes they challenged me,” he says. “They
doubted my information. Whenever they asked me for the
names of my sources, I would say, ‘I am the source. If you
don’t believe me, forget about it.’”
An shies away from the subject whenever I ask him for details
about the secret documents he handled, but clearly they
were pressed into his hands by everybody on every side. An had
been a founding member of the Vietnamese Central Intelligence
Organization (CIO) and trusted aide to Tran Kim Tuyen,
its original director. He was presumed to work for the CIA,
and he was free to peruse Time’s background files. Officers in
the South Vietnamese military thought of An as the local weatherman.
He was the forecaster you wanted to consult before
planning a coup d’état or military campaign or other big change
in the political climate. An could help figure out how to satisfy
American patrons, while at the same time protecting the local
constituency and making some money on the side. An was neither
judgmental nor censorious. He indulged in none of the