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

The Spy Who Loved Us 51
they will turn the flank of all S.E. Asia. They can infiltrate into
Laos and from there into Burma and down into Malaya. By
this means Communism will hit Cochin China before the
troops arrive.”
Flying north to Hanoi for a “very impressive army show,” the
Kennedys spent the afternoon touring little hilltop fortifications
in the Red River delta. The Kennedys lunched in one of
these forts with a French colonel who said he was “optimistic . . .
about the successful end of war, although this might not occur
during our lifetime!!” Bobby recorded this observation with
double exclamation marks.
“We are not here to help French maintain colonial rule,
but to stop Communists,” wrote John F. Kennedy in his journal.
His brother was more honest in his assessment. “We are
here to help French maintain colonies. French suspicious of
U.S. intentions.”
With the schools on strike and politics occupying his time,
An never returned to high school. His father had taken
early retirement at a reduced pension, and with no one else to
support the family, An went to work. He moonlighted at various
jobs, including driving a cyclo-pousse—a bicycle-mounted
rickshaw—before he was hired as a bookkeeper at the CalTex
oil company.
In 1950 An scored high marks in the competitive exam
used to recruit civil servants. He left his bookkeeping job to become
one of fifty people trained by the Indochinese government
to work as customs inspectors. “There were ten for North Vietnam,
called Tonkin, ten for central Vietnam, called Annam,
ten for Laos, ten for Cambodia, and ten for Cochin China,” An
says. In 1950 he reported for work at the Saigon customs house
at the harbor. For a normal person, this would have been a
lifetime sinecure, leading to a happy retirement feathered by
the usual bribes and kickbacks. But An was too smart for this
limited career and too restless. He continued studying English