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Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

Professor Berman's latest book is highly readable and fascinating. An the spy left Saigon in 1957 (at that time, dozens, maybe hundreds of South Vietnamese also came to the United States including my father who arrived for pilot training with the Air Force) for Orange Coast College (OCC), smack in the middle of John Birch's conservative Orange County, California, now the de-facto capital of ex refugees who fled after An's North Vietnamese Army overran their homeland.

And yes, An played a major role in that victory. Just ask the much-heralded Saigon press corps and the likes of Neil Sheehan, Stanley Karnow, and Morley Safer. The late David Halberstam knew An fairly well too. Most of them have seen An in the years since the war had ended and have raised money to send his son to the University of North Carolina in the 1990s. Toward the end of the book, there's a picture of An's son standing next to President Bush during his "first" visit to Vietnam in late 2006. The son was serving as a translator. Time Magazine, An's last American employer, still had a pension for him.

Berman, an occasional marathonist with plenty of energy for an academic, had traveled to Vietnam numerous times to visit with An. He defly weaves a terrific narrative that takes readers through the Vietnam War and An's relationships with South Vietnamese officials and his American counterparts. The rehashing of key events during the war sometime bog down the pacing of the book. What I found most fascinating was An's time at OCC, where he was remembered as being outgoing, flirtatious and even fell in love with an American student, a blonde haired, blue eyed editor of the school's newspaper. He later befriended the daughter of newspaper mogul, C. K. McClatchy.

No one had a clue about the identity of this double mole who somehow survived a war that killed 58,300 Americans and 3 million of his fellow Vietnamese. Couldn't this "hero" and general have done more to end that quagmire sooner? Yet hardly any of the American correspondents who knew him expressed any remorse when they found out who An really was.

During an interview on NPR, Berman was asked by the host if An had lied to him. "An probably took 80% of his secrets with him to his grave," admitted Berman. Personally I believe many younger Vietnamese Americans could care less about An. Those of An's generation had family members on the Communist side as well. I do wonder about some in the Saigon press corps who tried to get An to attend their 2005 reunion in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) 30 years after it had been renamed. An politely declined, giving health problems as his reason.

With spies like An, who needed allies in Vietnam?

Larry Berman's book, The Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An is a fascinating read on many levels. First, I believe the book should be considered an indispensable volume in the vast collection of Vietnam War literature. It is more than an intriguing tale of espionage and history of the Viet Nam War, it's an enlightening view into the soul of the American press corps and how they provided cover and legitimacy to North Vietnam's most successful spy. An, working for his communists' masters, successfully deceived and manipulated the foreign press corps as well as U.S. and South Vietnamese security officials for the duration of the war. Truly An was one of the great spies of the Twentieth Century, whose chief enablers were well-known members of the American press corps.

The book unfortunately is colored by the author's desire to make An's treachery something we should accept and forgive, notwithstanding his direct culpability in the deaths of U.S. servicemen and untold numbers of South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. If I had a nickel for every time An was referred to in the book as "charming" or "helpful" I'd have a nice start on my son's college fund. For the most part, these "friends" served as useful idiots to An, who played them like a fiddle. The larger question that remains unanswered is to what degree An succeeded in coloring press stories critical of U.S. policy. The book points out that almost all the newly arrived American correspondents in Viet Nam sought out An because he was a man of uncommon insight and was reputed to have the best sources. An surely fed anti-American or anti-war views to the Viet Nam press corps, many of whom arrived in Viet Nam profoundly opposed to the war. He essentially gave them what they wanted to hear. An's impact on the U.S. press reportage must have been enormous. Despite An's professions of love and friendship for his American press colleagues, he must have been utterly amazed at how easily duped and trusting the anti-war journalists were.

The author quotes Frank McCulloch of Time who said of An, "I can say in retrospect that being a spy never warped his journalism." How could it not? I've never heard a more ridiculous statement and the book is full of quotes by An's former American colleagues that are equally ludicrous. But then they are trying their best to justify their association with this utterly charming and helpful communist spy. Robert Sam Anson was quoted as saying that the "delicious irony was that all the while the empire of Henry Luce, the great Asian anti-Communist, had been paying his (An's) salary." In truth the most delicious irony here is that anti-war journalists like Anson were willing pawns in planting communist slanted stories influenced and/or partially written by a North Vietnamese agent, who successfully manipulated the American press corps for years.

An, like all good spies, was calculating and cold blooded, but above all he was a master at manipulation. How else can one explain the loyalty of his former Time colleagues felt towards An even after they learned he betrayed them and their country. The most extraordinary part of the story is that An was able to continue to manipulate his press friends long after they found out he had duplicitously used them. With very few exceptions, his former war time press friends seemed all too happy to overlook An's treachery to forgive and even praise. This reveals quite a bit about the American Viet Nam press contingent, many of whom have gone on to make a great deal of money criticizing America's involvement in the war. They are eager to forgive enemies, but are less magnanimous when it comes to forgiving Westmoreland and Nixon. Most of these Viet Nam era journalists viewed the U.S. government/military as the main adversary so it is understandable they would be so quick to forgive An.

There is much that An does not share, by the author's own admission, presumably because it would be even too much for his loyal American friends to stomach. An claims that he only provided detailed analysis of events to North Viet Nam leadership. He also admits to helping plan the successful assaults on Saigon during the Tet Offensive (how many Americans and ARVN died in Saigon during Tet?) and to passing to the North Viet Names advanced warning of impending offensives. Despite his denials, An undoubtedly provided lists of anti-communist South Vietnamese officers and officials that would eventually be liquidated by the Viet Cong. It strains credulity that An would not provide such lists. One can only guess what the brutal Viet Cong would do to those found on such a lists. What other murderous acts An conducted on behalf of NVA/VC one can only speculate?

An has quite a bit of blood on his hands, but we should forgive him, according to many sources quoted by the author, because he was a "nationalist" and loved his country. When the war was over, An even had the gall to send his family to the safe confines of America and later even persuaded his former friends at Time to underwrite An's son's education in the United States. It's ironic indeed that these journalists, whose careers were made by their so-called "principled" stand against the Viet Nam War, owe so much to a North Vietnamese spy. Fearing they were being used by the American military, our journalists were oblivious to the spy in the room who helped them write their stories. I highly recommend the book, but one has to read between the lines to understand the true value of the book.

Pham Xuan An was recruited by the Communist Party in Vietnam and sent to the U.S. in 1957 to learn journalism as a cover - long before the U.S. took a major role in the conflict. An quickly came to admire the U.S., did well in his studies (Orange Coast College) and internships, and was had several attractive offers for permanent work upon their completion. Yet, despite fear that he would be arrested by the South Vietnamese government upon returning to Vietnam, An returned, first reporting French troop actions, then also working for various government military figures (eg. teaching English to future VN spies; helping set up the Vietnamese spying service), and finally for various American publications - Time magazine in particular. Several times the CIA even tried to recruit An, with no success.

Early in his career An risked exposure to save the life of a Time reporter captured by the VietCong in Cambodia because he knew the reporter had saved a number of Vietnamese children's' lives from various Cambodian army massacres. This conflict between his spy role and friendship with Americans continued up to America's last day in Saigon when An helped a Vietnamese friend who had worked for the Americans escape. These actions, however, did not dull An's effectiveness - his insights and reports based on conversations and documents played key roles in VietCong/NVA tactics and strategy development. After the war ended, An was promoted to Maj. General, and collected his ten top-level medals.

An received no formal spy training - instead, he read a number of books by others who were past masters. Communications involving An were almost entirely one-way - towards nearby VietCong and much farther away NVA leaders in Hanoi. His methods were to use melted rice as invisible ink (revealed by pouring iodine over the paper), and secreting both the paper and film rolls in food materials handed off to a vendor.

An's career spanned 30 years - longer than any other spy. Consequently, after the war there was considerable suspicion by the communists that this was due to his having played both sides. He was even forbidden from leaving VN to attend a post-war correspondent's conference in NYC.

Some of the most impactful portions of "Perfect Spy" involved stories about eg. another VietCong spy who pushed the Vietnamese government to move peasants into more defensible self-contained villages. His rationale - he knew this would greatly upset the peasants and turn them against the government. An himself declared several times that the U.S.'s biggest failure was to develop a new cadre of leaders after Diem was deposed. It was also quite jarring to read details from the "other side" about so many areas that I had been to - Nha Trang, Siagon, Ban Me Thuot, Pleiku, Vung Tau, Khe Sanh.

My one wish is that "Perfect Spy" included more planning details from the VietCong and NVA side. Unfortunately, even the author (Larry Berman) sensed several times that An left much more unsaid than revealed.

Bottom Line: I was taken aback by An's working against the U.S. after having made so many friends here, how well the VietCong/NVA infiltrated U.S. planning, and how long ahead their thinking ran. The book also brings an eerie sense of wondering what is happening along these same lines now in Iraq.

I might not be as forgiving as some people, but I certainly would have felt betrayed by this man. He seeks to justify everything by stating that he felt the Americans did not belong in Vietnam. Maybe so. But what he did was so deceiful.To just look at the fact that he often helped those closest and known to him from suffering any harm, neglects the hundreds of thousands who died and were wounded as a result of his actions. To top it all off he sent his family to the US when the Communists came !! No doubt for a better life !!This fellow must have been of fairly limited intellect , or at least uneducated.And don't tell me was educated in the US - they let him do some courses... big deal! Did he really believe the Americans would attempt to rule Vietnam the way the French did ? Yes, they would take advantage of economic opportunities ( who does'nt), but what did he think they would have done if the South succeeded ? A good insight into blind nationalism and deceit by one of the most two faced people I have ever encountered. I still cannot understand his mindset.

When I first went to university in Atlanta, arriving from the North, in the mid-60's, I was struck with the proliferation of car tags with the subject quote, accompanied by the Confederate flag. The same flag was incorporated into numerous flags of the states of the old Confederacy... there were also the ubiquitous statues to "our Confederate dead" in the squares of the small towns throughout the South. It was 100 years after the end of the American Civil War, yet the "lost cause" still had numerous adherents. And I suspect the Vietnam War will be much the same way, with the arguments raging on for a hundred years, a "civil war" within American society. We're more than a third of the way to that 100 year mark now, and the book itself, and Berman's efforts to unravel the truth concerning the enigmatic An is lost, in the partisanship of these reviews. Perhaps it's impossible for any sentient human who lived through that period, or who gave it a subsequent serious examination, to be "non-partisan," certainly myself included.

Pham Xuan An did led one of the most incredible lives of the 20th Century. Without any true training in the "arts" of espionage, he was one of the most effective spies of all times. An was loyal to many of his friends, and duplicitous at the same time. He became a trusted friend of General Lansdale who first went to Vietnam on behalf of the CIA in the `50's. It was Lansdale's recommendation that helped An get his visa to study for two years, in Orange Co., CA., the first Vietnamese there, and the place which is now their informal capital, with the influx of refugees after the fall of the South. From Lansdale on, An knew the top leadership of both the South Vietnamese and the Americans, and he was always the essential "go to" source for the American journalists. And all the time he was working for the other side, so effectively that General Giap joked: "We are now in the U.S.'s war room." Overall, despite some caveats below, I believe Professor Berman did an admirable job telling the essentials of this man's story, and interviewing a man who lived a double-life so effectively that he could have been fooling even himself. Berman starts his story, suitably enough, by telling how An, at considerable personal risk to himself, used his influence to save the life of NYT reporter Robert Sam Anson, and ends it with the story of his help to a top South Vietnamese official, Dr. Tran Kim Tuyen, on the last day of evacuations during the fall of Saigon. A "private honor" indeed. On several occasions Berman quotes An as to the motivation for his actions, one that is easy for Americans to understand: he simply did not want Vietnam to be ruled by foreigners, be they French or American. After the American war ended, An was never fully trusted by the Northern leadership--he had been too close to the Americans, and still said injudicious things, and Berman does raise the question: Had he been a double or triple agent? My inclination is to say No.

As for the caveats, I felt there were serious ones of omission. Whether we are talking about Iraq, or Vietnam, given factions will use the argument that this particular action "saved American lives." It is an important consideration, certainly on a personal basis, and wouldn't it have been judicious to include a reasonable speculation on how many lives would have been saved if: 1. When Ho Chi Minh went to Versailles in 1919, before he "turned communist," that Woodrow Wilson meant self-determination for ALL people, and not just white ones; 2. After the Second World War, that the USA supported the only faction in Vietnam who supported us during the war, Ho Chi Minh and his band of partisans, and that we answered the letters that he sent the American government, requesting independence from the French colonialists who had collaborated with the Japanese; 3. Or that after their war of independence against the French, that America actually supported the free elections called for in the Geneva accords of 1954, despite President Eisenhower's estimate that 80% of the population would have voted for Ho Chi Minh. A different course at any of these three junctures might have saved 58,000 plus American lives, and three million Vietnamese. Finally, in terms of speculation, there is that haunting picture at the end of the book, of President George W. Bush standing with An Pham, An's son. Omitted from the book was Bush telling the Vietnamese that one of the most significant "lessons" of the Vietnam War is if we had stayed there long enough, we would have won!! Absolutely mind-boggling. An might have saved innumerable American (and Vietnamese) lives simply by having the war end - finally - in 1975.

There are a few errors of commission too: "the bulk of them ground combat troops," in reference to 540,000 Americans in Vietnam (p24). The "bulk" of our troops in Vietnam were ALWAYS support troops. It was Nui Ba Den, Black Virgin Mountain, not Ba Den, Black Mountain (p77). "fearful of a scenario such as the invasion by the People's Army of Vietnam that had defeated the French in 1954..." (p133). What invasion? It was there country!

I briefly met An in the Majestic Hotel in Saigon in 1994. I was in the company of one of the big name American journalist of the war, unnamed in the book. An was very much still under suspicion for meeting so many Americans, and they had a subsequent private conversation. It was my one and only time in Saigon, despite having spent a year in the country, 1968-69. And that is another point about the book... clearly what happened in Saigon and what was going on in the "field" somewhere in country were related, but they were highly separate worlds, in which journalists feed on the latest rumors, and visited the field from time to time, but rarely saw or experienced the reality that troops in the field did. Completely different versions of the same war.

For those who rate the book a 1-star, demonizing An, and his actions as a "Communist," I wonder what they think about the greatest threat to America today, (still!) "Red" China. It is not the military, but the economic threat that should be of utmost concern: all they have to do is stop buying our debt, and there would be financial panic of the worst sort, or stop manufacturing, and the shelves of so many retailers would be empty. A dependency of our own making.

Overall, Berman is to be commended for telling this important, essential story of one man's remarkable actions during the war. You sensed that he pushed and prodded, gaining as much as he could elicit, before the veil was dropped again: "... we can go no further on that...". Clearly Berman has empathy for An, but wisely does not accept all aspects of the story at face value. This is the only authoritative book we will ever have on Pham Xuan An, and Berman deserves a full 5-stars for his efforts.

I read this book in a single afternoon. I picked it up by chance, intended to browse through the first few pages, then ended up finishing the whole book. This is a fascinating book about a fascinating life. Professor Berman not just details An's life, but also paints a vivid picture of the Saigon foreign press corp during the height of the war, the Tet offensive, the Laos incursion and the North's final push for Saigon. The analysis on the strategic value of An's information to the North is highly illuminating and provides an interesting glimpse on the inner working of the war machines of both sides. For me, a Vietnamese who came of age during the war, the book's passages on the An Bac battle, the Tet's offensive, the last campaign, and the final days of Saigon, though brief, are poignant & effective. It highlights the scale & the brutality of that war. All in all, a good book.

Before the review, a preface. Let's face it, any book on the Vietnam war will find a polarizing reception, for obvious reasons that the death and destruction of that war are recent and still with many. In choosing a book to read, the general tone of 5-star or 1-star reviews should not be a guide; nor should one's agreement with the author's general point of view (easy enough to determine before reading). Rather, a basic question, how much new material will the book cover?

I have been interested in the intelligence aspect of Vietnam operations, and in fact wrote a thesis in college on Edward Landsdale and the CIA involvement in the 1950s. Pham Xuan An's major intelligence contributions mostly cover the 1960-1975 period. In addition, the book covers the "making of the spy" - the strategic decision to send An to the US in 1950's and a somewhat poignant post-1975 chapter. My general conclusion is that the book contains plenty of original research (obviously interviews with An are the bulk of new material) and is a must read (accompanied by a general history of the Vietnam for a context).

I am not a researcher and I cannot really evaluate the quality of historical scholarship, so in general I accept factual claims made by Berman, though not all the interpretations. Here are several questions to ponder (which are addressed but not fully resolved in the book).

- How can a spy be so successful for so many years at such high level of access? Berman's answer is that one must truly live one's cover, but if that is so, did Pham Xuan An have to sacrifice some of his comrades to prove his effectiveness to his sources in S. Vietnamese govt and CIA?
- What was the true value of Pham Xuan An to his bosses in the "jungle"? Berman insists it is the analysis of the American and S. Vietnamese intentions. To me it appears that the lion's share of his contribution was passing on the information basically verbatim, whether overheard reports, or photographed documents. In addition, every American journalist claims they were not influenced by An, but simply came to see the war in much the way he saw it. I have some doubts there...
- Was An a nationalist or Communist? I actually agree with Berman on the blurring of the two identities and being more first than second, but I can certainly see merits to the opposing view: An was a staunch Communist and everything else was just melodrama.

I give the book 4 stars rather than 5 for two main reasons:
- It's annoying that some periods are skipped over--e.g., there seems little going on between 1968 and 1974.
- Some unnecessary lionizing pieces on N. Vietnamese (Ho as father of nation, Dung as clever general) which do not seem to fit into the context of the narrative about Pham Xuan An and give an easy target to portray the book as leftist propaganda piece. Instead, I'd rather have more info on the Vietnamese intelligence agents that worked (and are buried) alongside An...

But overall, a fascinating read!

PERFECT SPY; The Incredible Double Life of PHAM XUAN AN by Larry Berman is a superb in depth biographical study of a very unique and rather unusual individual. This is the amazing story of a Vietnamese Communist Agent who worked for Time Magazine as a star reporter during the Vietnam War. Pham An was North Vietnams answer to Russia's Richard Sorge, Kim Philby, and just about anyone else in the "Who's Who" of the Intelligence community.
In fact, it appears that AN was probably Vietnam's deepest imbed spy of the entire war. An was recruited in the 50's shortly after the French expulsion (defeat at Dien Ben Phu), and then... as a Communist agent was sent abroad to California to study the American culture; it's language, it's people, and...it's political course into the future of Vietnam.
Berman argues that although "An" was a top spy against the Americans (Agent X-6), he also genuinely liked Americans, and on two or three occasions proved this by saving some of them ( reporters), from certain death through secret communications with his superiors.
This is a very good book, and Berman should be applauded for his writing style, and for tackling such a controversial subject and complex individual as Pham Xuan An.
As a Vietnam veteran myself, I had some problems and hurdles to master before I could read this book without injecting my own prejudices into the mix. Once I was able to look at this story more objectively it opened up a great panorama of reading enjoyment.
A book you should not miss...."no matter which side you believed in."

Larry Berman's trace and insights into this master spy, An, forces one to confront the arrogance and amateurishness of Americans who touted their professionalism at war. The complexities of the Vietnamese people, their culture, history, hopes and dreams, all as unknown to Americans of 1955-1975 as their language, provide the means to understand why we lost and now the South Vietnamese nationalists were betrayed by the communist party of the North.

Not a book for those who want to see that time, or this, as a set of clearly defined opposing choices, or the "less developed" nations of the world as simple, backward or unenlightened.

His subject is a sophisticated, complex individual who understands he was ultimately used.

This book is very informative with info I'd never heard elsewhere yet it is so important for our country's safety in the future.