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

6 THOMAS A. BASS
soldier, did An reveal that he later commanded a platoon, which
on at least one occasion had fired on French soldiers. This was
not the work of a strategic analyst but the act of a partisan.
I am sorry to report that this book also benefited from An’s
death. The control he exercised over the story of his life ended
in the fall of 2006. Intelligence sources, both in North and South
Vietnam, began revealing previously undisclosed information.
This included details about An’s involvement in some of the
war’s major battles and campaigns. We learned, for example, that
he had won a First Class military medal for providing advance
warning of U.S. plans to invade Cambodia in April 1970. The
warning allowed Communist forces, especially the military command,
to escape to the west. Another First Class medal had
been awarded for revealing South Vietnam’s plans to invade
southern Laos in February 1971. Here An’s tactical involvement
led to a crushing military defeat for Republican forces.
The information revealed since An’s death confirms that
he was privy to a breathtaking array of military intelligence.
Some of the new information was released accidentally, some
intentionally. In either case, I began receiving a steady stream
of messages, notes, photos, and other documents about a man
who, seventeen years after I first met him, continues to surprise.
An’s cover will finally come undone only when someone gets the
chance to read his collected oeuvre—the intelligence reports he
sent to Ho Chi Minh and General Giap, which made them
clap their hands with glee and exclaim over the verve and narrative
grip of the Tolstoy in their midst, known to them by his
code name as Z.21.
During our meetings over the years, An knew that he was
speaking to me at greater length than was required for a magazine
article, even a feature story written with the leisurely
scope that was once afforded to Robert Shaplen. But An had his
cover, and I had my cover, at least until The New Yorker article
was published. After this, neither of us could pretend that we