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The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to be plausible.
Pham Xuan An was the man every reporter knew in wartime Saigon. From his favorite coffee house, the Givral, An had a deep network of sources at the highest levels of the government, and a talent for explaining the complexities of Vietnamese politics to American reporters. He wrote under his own name for Time, and checked the work of a decade of legendary journalists. At the same time, he was also the focal point of Intelligence Network H.63, a lone agent providing top level strategic intelligence to the Viet Cong, three times Hero of the People's Armed Forces, and a Colonel (later General) in the Communist intelligence system.
Berman focuses his biography on two major topics. An's Vietnamese patriotism contrasted against his love of America and Americans (An regarded the best years of his life as the ones he spent at Orange Coast College in California in 1958 and 59), and his ongoing relationships with his friends after the war ended and he shed his cover. The relentless justification of An as a good man can be somewhat wearying--and I agree with the assessment that he was essentially a good person. He told the truth to both Americans and Vietnamese, and his strategic intelligence was about the direction of American strategy and the personal qualities of ARVN commanders rather than tactical intelligence that would lead directly to Americans getting killed. (With one notably exception of An personally reconnoitering Saigon for the 1968 Tet Offensive). General Giap put it best, due to An it was as if the Communists were in the American War room. There was no such insight on the American/GVN side. Intelligence didn't shift who died, or why, but it made those deaths matter for strategic ends.
The Fall of Saigon was the most fraught time for An. He sent his family out of the country on a Time plane, and helped his old friend Tran Kim Tuyen, head of counter-intelligence for Diem, escape on the last helicopter out of Saigon. Resolutely American in his style of thought, An didn't thrive under the hard-edged North Vietnamese Cadres who ruled the united Vietnam. He escaped the worst of the re-education camps due to his service, and brought his family back in 1979 ("The worst decision of my life", An says), but never reclaimed his contacts or position of influence.
I wish Berman had done a better teasing apart the similarities and differences of being a reporter and a spy, and gone a little bit more into the actual business of intelligence work. But I can also sympathize with difficulty of pinning down a subject who spent his whole life living with two loyalties, or really driving the question home on an old friend and old man dying of emphysema. This book didn't grab me as much as I wish it had, but it's a fascinating picture of who really won and lost the Vietnam War.
Pham Xuan An was the man every reporter knew in wartime Saigon. From his favorite coffee house, the Givral, An had a deep network of sources at the highest levels of the government, and a talent for explaining the complexities of Vietnamese politics to American reporters. He wrote under his own name for Time, and checked the work of a decade of legendary journalists. At the same time, he was also the focal point of Intelligence Network H.63, a lone agent providing top level strategic intelligence to the Viet Cong, three times Hero of the People's Armed Forces, and a Colonel (later General) in the Communist intelligence system.
Berman focuses his biography on two major topics. An's Vietnamese patriotism contrasted against his love of America and Americans (An regarded the best years of his life as the ones he spent at Orange Coast College in California in 1958 and 59), and his ongoing relationships with his friends after the war ended and he shed his cover. The relentless justification of An as a good man can be somewhat wearying--and I agree with the assessment that he was essentially a good person. He told the truth to both Americans and Vietnamese, and his strategic intelligence was about the direction of American strategy and the personal qualities of ARVN commanders rather than tactical intelligence that would lead directly to Americans getting killed. (With one notably exception of An personally reconnoitering Saigon for the 1968 Tet Offensive). General Giap put it best, due to An it was as if the Communists were in the American War room. There was no such insight on the American/GVN side. Intelligence didn't shift who died, or why, but it made those deaths matter for strategic ends.
The Fall of Saigon was the most fraught time for An. He sent his family out of the country on a Time plane, and helped his old friend Tran Kim Tuyen, head of counter-intelligence for Diem, escape on the last helicopter out of Saigon. Resolutely American in his style of thought, An didn't thrive under the hard-edged North Vietnamese Cadres who ruled the united Vietnam. He escaped the worst of the re-education camps due to his service, and brought his family back in 1979 ("The worst decision of my life", An says), but never reclaimed his contacts or position of influence.
I wish Berman had done a better teasing apart the similarities and differences of being a reporter and a spy, and gone a little bit more into the actual business of intelligence work. But I can also sympathize with difficulty of pinning down a subject who spent his whole life living with two loyalties, or really driving the question home on an old friend and old man dying of emphysema. This book didn't grab me as much as I wish it had, but it's a fascinating picture of who really won and lost the Vietnam War.