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

218 THOMAS A. BASS
It is my turn to be confused when he continues talking
about the battle from the southern perspective, perhaps to deflect
attention from the lethal consequences of his spying. With
the battle of Ap Bac and the Ho Chi Minh campaign, Lam
Son 719 is one of the major Communist victories that can be attributed,
at least in part, to Pham Xuan An’s intelligence. The
South Vietnamese forces had presumed that their firepower and
American air cover would prevail, but these supposed advantages
proved useless against an enemy that knew their every
move in advance. An’s tactical intelligence allowed the People’s
Army of Vietnam (PAVN) to target South Vietnamese troops
with a devastating array of mortars, rocket batteries, and artillery,
including 130 mm guns that were capable of firing eight
rounds a minute at targets as far as eighteen miles away.
By January 1973, the Paris Peace Accords had been signed,
ushering in the “Vietnamization” of the war, and by March
most of America’s ground forces had left Vietnam. Throughout
the Paris negotiations, relying on leaks from the head of South
Vietnam’s Central Intelligence Office (CIO), An had kept both
Time and the Communists informed about Henry Kissinger’s
negotiating feints and South Vietnam’s opposition to the accords,
which President Thieu saw as a sellout leading to the
south’s eventual demise. Thanks to An’s information, the Communists
trumped Kissinger in Paris and Time trumped Newsweek
in New York. “We scooped them with a better story. It was a
good day for us,” he says.
An once again deftly interpreted the political situation when
he witnessed the Watergate scandal and Richard Nixon’s resignation
in August 1974. He knew that Congress would never
allow the president to reintroduce U.S. ground forces into
the war. With American military power constrained, An urged the
Communists to mount their final assault. They were timid militarily,
until An convinced them that the moment had finally
come to seize Saigon. The last of An’s military exploit medals was
awarded for the role he played in the Ho Chi Minh campaign—