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

The Spy Who Loved Us 181
city’s numerous sins, but he was always pleased to accompany
friends whenever they dropped into dance halls or opium dens.
The Americans were pumping huge sums of money into Vietnam.
The South Vietnamese generals were stealing it as fast as
they could but had to pretend they were representing America’s
interests. They wanted to lead their troops into “combat” while
avoiding the enemy. An roamed the city’s cafés and restaurants
like a doctor on house calls. He advised people on how to distinguish
the petty sins that could be winked away from the
grave errors that would get you sacked or killed.
“I had hundreds of friends, everywhere,” he says. “We would
get together to discuss things. I would help them figure out these
documents marked top secret or for eyes only. They would let
me read them, and then we would discuss what they meant. Or
they would ask me to help them edit the reports they were
sending back to the Americans.”
Where did these documents come from? “They came from
the army, intelligence, secret police, from all kinds of sources,”
An says. “The commanders of the military branches, the officers
of the special forces, the navy, the air force—they all helped me,
and sometimes they needed my help. I had to return the favor.
They had a problem. How were they going to deal with the
Americans? For example, when the Americans landed their
troops in Vietnam in 1965, the Vietnamese generals knew that
they would be losing power to the American command. They
used to be independent, making decisions on their own, except
for having to deal with American advisers, but now the situation
was changing.” An describes a country full of anxious generals
who had been instructed not to suffer casualties in the
field, politicians who were mystified by the strange practice of
stealing elections and calling it “democracy,” and spies who
were worried about competing intelligence agencies that were
jeopardizing the drug traffic and other successful businesses.
Masters of indirection and obfuscation, the Vietnamese had
learned how to deal with a small American presence, but the