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

NOTES 277
Colonel, in 1976, the same year he was named a Hero of the
People’s Armed Forces. “This was a big insult,” Tin says.
“Lots of people at the end of the war were jumped up the
ranks, straight to the top. They should have made An a full
colonel right away.”
“The Communists were suspicious of him,” Tin says.
“He bred dogs—a bourgeois pastime—and he had too many
Western friends. They prevented him from leaving the country
and seeing visitors, and they put him under heavy surveillance.”
Even after these restraints were loosened in the
1990s, An could not receive guests without permission, and
he had to write reports on his conversations. In 1980, following
his year of political indoctrination, An was promoted
to Thuong Ta, Senior Lieutenant Colonel. Only in 1982 was
he made a Dai Ta, a full Colonel. Then in 1990, at the age
of sixty-three, he was promoted to General.
226 “I’d like to kill him”: See Grant, Facing the Phoenix, 257.
231 sufficiently accessible to commission a biography: See
Nguyen Thi Ngoc Hai, Pham Xuan An: Ten Nguoi Nhu
Cuoc Doi (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Cong An Nhan Dan, 2002).
233 “a short course in the history of Vietnam”: See Truong
Nhu Tang, A Vietcong Memoir, trans. David Chanoff and
Doan Van Toai (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1985), 15.
A BRIGHTER WORLD
260 An’s sixteen medals: Not until they were displayed next to
his open casket was it revealed that An had won sixteen
military medals, not four, as previously reported by his biographers.
Quan Cong are Military Exploit medals, and
Chien Cong are Battle Exploit medals. Each medal is
awarded in one of three classes. A First Class medal recognizes
a major contribution to the nation. A Second Class