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

238 THOMAS A. BASS
“strategic hamlets” that he was elevated to running the program
throughout the country. His vigorous promotion of Diem’s idea
to build sixteen thousand forced labor camps was a master
stroke of disinformation. A defoliated countryside filled with
peasant gulags was ripe for Communist recruiting. While he
was putting together the pieces for a peasant rebellion, Thao was
damping down Communist activity in the areas under his control.
Kien Hoa, long known as a Viet Minh stronghold, became
the most peaceful of South Vietnam’s provinces.
“Thao was a coup cooker,” An says. He kept trying to
knock over the government and spare Vietnam another decade
of war, but his luck ran out in 1965, when he was captured at
the end of a failed coup. An lowers his voice when he describes
Thao’s punishment. He reaches out his hand and gives
his clenched fist a swift, clockwise jerk. “They crushed his
testicles. Then they strangled him. This was done by General
Loan.” An holds a cocked finger to his head, reminding me
that Loan was the Saigon police chief pictured in the famous
Eddie Adams photo of a Vietcong prisoner assassinated at
point blank range.
An never vaunted his own skills as a spy, attributing to luck
what others would have claimed as cunning. An considered
his work defensive rather than offensive in nature. He was not
an aristocrat like Sir Anthony Blunt, who advised the Queen on
her art collection while spying for the Soviet Union. He more
closely resembled Richard Sorge, the German journalist who
befriended all the top Nazis while spying for Stalin. Sorge was
hung by the Japanese in 1944. The closest An got to playing on
the world stage was his aborted posting to the United States.
After 1975, as Vietnam blundered into wars against Cambodia
and China and destroyed its own economy, three million people
were forced to flee as refugees; An regretted not being
able to lend his services to the government which obviously
needed him. “No one listened to me,” he complains of the apparatchik
who came to power after 1975.