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

204 THOMAS A. BASS
United States had troops ringing Saigon. We wanted to draw
them into the city. We ourselves had divisions on the outskirts,
waiting to break through.”
“The information he gave us was very important,” Tu Cang
says of Pham Xuan An, the preeminent spy in his Saigon network.
“He knew in advance where the Americans would send
their forces. He alerted us to upcoming attacks and air raids. In
1967, for example, he told us when B-52s would be bombing
our headquarters. This allowed us to get away. He saved the
lives of lots of people. We also found out from An what the
Americans knew about us. This too was very important.” Then
Tu Cang tells me about the twenty-five agents in his unit who
were killed running Pham Xuan An’s intelligence out of the city.
An’s role in the Têt Offensive marks what the Vietnamese
consider the high point of his career as a spy. “After the first
stage of the general offensive, I sent back a report from the
city to senior leaders, saying that the situation was rather unfavorable,”
Tu Cang is quoted as saying in A General of the
Secret Service. On the morning after the offensive was launched,
while driving through the city with An, he was shocked and depressed
to find the streets littered with the bodies of his fallen
comrades.
But after listening to An interview Vietnamese and American
officials, Tu Cang reached a different conclusion. “I changed
my opinion,” he says. “A colonel told us that the offensive had
dealt a heavy blow to the South Vietnamese army, and American
officials told us that the antiwar movement was on the rise
in the United States and American prestige had gone downhill.
After that, I changed my mind and reported that the offensive
would not bring about satisfactory results militarily, but its political
and psychological impact on the enemy would be great.
Senior leaders held that this report had correct assessments.
The previous one was criticized.”
It was Pham Xuan An who convinced Tu Cang and his
Communist leaders that the Têt Offensive was a political vic-