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

The Spy Who Loved Us 73
wrote in 1980, “is why the battle was ever fought at all, why
twelve battalions of the French Army were committed to the
defense of an armed camp situated in a hopeless geographical
terrain—hopeless for defense and hopeless for the second objective,
since the camp was intended to be the base of offensive
operations. (For this purpose a squadron of ten tanks was assembled
there, the components dropped by parachute.) A commission
of inquiry was appointed in Paris after the defeat, but
no conclusion was ever reached.”
The mystery was solved only when Trinquier and Belleux revealed
the importance of the heroin trade in financing the
French army in Indochina, which in turn dictated the position
of Dien Bien Phu and its strategic significance. After Vietnam,
Trinquier directed the French torture campaign during the
battle of Algiers. He went on to organize mercenary armies in
the Congo and then retired to write his widely read military
manuals on counterinsurgency, which recommend “calculated
acts of sabotage and terrorism.” If Trinquier’s use of drugs to finance
military operations was one strategy later adopted by
the CIA, his embrace of torture as an effective tool in counterinsurgency
was another practice that came to be widely employed
in Vietnam.
Pham Xuan An eventually found himself engaged in every
aspect of Trinquier’s program. While working for his cousin at
G5, he became an expert in counterinsurgency. Later he got involved
in laundering drug money for Vietnamese intelligence,
and he faced throughout his life the constant fear of being unmasked
and tortured. He would either be implementing Trinquier’s
program or falling victim to it.