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

The Spy Who Loved Us 3
As Saigon fell to the Communists, An was hoping to be
evacuated to the United States. This was not because he feared
Communist reprisals, as everyone assumed, but because Vietnamese
intelligence planned to continue his work in America.
They knew there would be a war-after-the-war, a bitter period
of political maneuvering in which the United States might
launch covert military operations and a trade embargo against
Vietnam. Who better to report on America’s intentions than
Pham Xuan An? In the last days of the war, An’s wife and their
four children were airlifted out of Vietnam and resettled in
Washington, D.C. An was anxiously awaiting instructions to
follow them when word came from the North Vietnamese
Politburo that he would not be allowed to leave the country.
An was named a Hero of the People’s Armed Forces,
awarded more than a dozen military medals, and elevated to the
rank of brigadier general. He was also sent to what he called a
“reeducation” camp and forbidden to meet Western visitors. His
wife and children were brought back to Vietnam a year after
they left. The problem with Pham Xuan An, from the perspective
of the Vietnamese Communist Party, was that he loved
America and Americans, democratic values, and objectivity in
journalism. He considered America an accidental enemy who
would return to being a friend once his people had gained
their independence. An was the Quiet Vietnamese, the man in
the middle, the representative figure who was at once a lifelong
revolutionary and ardent admirer of the United States. He says
he never lied to anyone, that he gave the same political analyses
to Time that he gave to Ho Chi Minh. He was a divided man of
utter integrity, someone who lived a lie and always told the truth.
“An’s story strikes me as something right out of Graham
Greene,” said David Halberstam, who was friends with An
when he was a New York Times reporter in Vietnam. “It
broaches all the fundamental questions. What is loyalty? What
is patriotism? What is the truth? Who are you when you’re
telling these truths? There was an ambivalence to An that’s