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

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

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.

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.

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.

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?