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

182 THOMAS A. BASS
new occupying force was another matter altogether. In the
quid pro quo of people seeking An’s advice and his seeking their
information, documents changed hands, even if only briefly.
The political situation in Vietnam was altered dramatically
as the first of what would eventually be a half million troops arrived
in the country. “When the Americans sent in their troops
in 1965, it presented problems for the Vietnamese who were
running the south,” An says. “I suggested people get together
and discuss among themselves how they were going to deal
with the Americans. ‘Up to this point you have been independent.
But now the question becomes, How are you going to
maintain your command? If you aren’t happy with the American
advisers, you can kick them out.’”
This is useful advice for a Communist agent to give the
generals who are commanding his enemy’s army. As I listen to
An tell this story, I relish its ironies. Many of An’s apparently innocent
remarks are loaded with these double and triple entendres.
They are like pebbles careening down a mountainside.
They ricochet through the scree of everyday assumptions and
accumulate huge boulders of meaning before they hit bottom,
with consequences large enough to flatten a country. An helps
the South Vietnamese military shape its response to the arrival
of American combat troops and at the same time provides this
information to his North Vietnamese colleagues. He is a trusted
adviser in the south and an invaluable informant to the north.
“This is good advice,” one imagines the South Vietnamese generals
saying. “Let’s throw out the Americans and face the Communists
on our own!” On second thought, maybe this is not such
a good idea, unless, of course, one is interested in losing this particular
war.
Was An the honest broker or the master of a particular
kind of disinformation, where truth was the destabilizing agent?
The charge that An planted disinformation in the pages of Time
is silly. This would have been a misguided assignment for a
man so brilliant at planting information. An did not have to lie