Vietnam double-agent Pham Xuan An dies
HANOI - Pham Xuan An, who led a remarkable and perilous double life as a communist spy and a respected reporter for Western news organizations during the Vietnam War, died Wednesday at age 79.
An, who suffered from emphysema, died at a military hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, his son, Pham Xuan Hoang An, told The Associated Press.
An had been in and out of consciousness since being hospitalized in July and fell into a coma days before he died, a doctor at the hospital said. An's wife and four children were at his bedside when he died, his son said.
An had lived in the city, formerly known as Saigon, since South Vietnam fell to North Vietnamese forces on April 30, 1975.
In the history of wartime espionage, few were as successful as An. He straddled two worlds for most of the 15-year war in Indochina as an undercover communist agent while also working as a journalist, first for Reuters news service and later for 10 years as Time magazine's chief Vietnamese reporter - a role that gave him access to military bases and background briefings.
He was so well-known for his sources and insight that many Americans who knew him suspected he worked for the CIA.
Before Saigon fell to the communists, An worked to help friends escape, including South Vietnam's former security chief who feared death if he was found by northern forces. An later revealed his true identity as a Viet Cong commander, but said he never reported any false information or communist propaganda while in his role as a journalist.
In a 2000 interview with The Associated Press, An said he always had warm feelings for his press colleagues and for the United States, where he attended college at Fullerton, Calif. But deep down he remained a "true believer" in the communist cause as the best way to free Vietnam of foreign control.
"I fought for two things - independence and social justice," he said.
An's political and military contacts made him an essential source for other Vietnamese reporters working for foreign news organizations. He was known as the soft-spoken, chain-smoking oracle of "Radio Catinat," as the Saigon rumor mill was called.
But few, if any, suspected he was a communist spy.
Former media colleagues expressed mixed feelings, from bemusement to a sense of betrayal, after An revealed in the 1980s that he had been a spy.
Outside critics vilified An for his role in espionage activities that may have led to the deaths of many Americans and South Vietnamese. But most of An's ex-colleagues refrained from criticizing his deception.
"If ever there was a man caught between two worlds, it was An. It is very hard for anyone who did not serve in Vietnam in those years to understand the complexity," said David Halberstam, who covered the early years of the war for The New York Times.
Stanley Karnow, a former Time-Life correspondent in Asia and author of the seminal 1983 book, "Vietnam; A History," said that despite his secret role, An was always reliable.
"I was struck by how much he knew and was willing to share," Karnow said. "He said later that his function as a spy was not disinformation, it was to gather the best info he could for them (the Viet Cong)."
An, by his own account, was born near Saigon and at age 16 joined a nationalist movement that later became the communist Viet-Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh.
Following Vietnam's independence in 1954, he served as an aide to Col. Edward Lansdale, the U.S. intelligence officer who played an instrumental role in early U.S. support for the fledgling anti-communist regime in Saigon in the late 1950s. Lansdale was believed to be the model for a main character in Graham Greene's novel, "The Quiet American."
An told ex-colleagues in later years that he made secret trips to the jungle to confer with Viet Cong leaders. He said he knew in advance of major communist initiatives, including the 1968 Tet Offensive and North Vietnam's 1972 invasion aimed at destroying the Saigon regime.
An insisted he remained true as a journalist - never planting false or misleading information, realizing this could reveal his clandestine role.
"The truth was that I knew many things that I never told anyone," he said. "And because of this I was able on a couple of occasions to save Time from major embarrassment by telling them that a certain piece of important information was not true."
His greatest risk of exposure might have been in secretly arranging freedom for another Time staffer who had been captured by guerrilla forces in Cambodia in 1970.
Just days before Saigon fell in 1975, An helped his family to escape along with some Vietnamese news assistants and the former South Vietnamese security chief. But he stayed behind, and his relatives eventually returned.
An's Western connections caused senior Hanoi officials to distrust him despite his wartime record. They sent him to a postwar "re-education" school, and in 1997 refused him an exit visa to take part in a Vietnam War symposium in Washington, D.C.
He sometimes spoke candidly of being disillusioned with Vietnam's victorious leaders. In a meeting with three former American press colleagues in Ho Chi Minh City in 2005, An described them as "much more corrupt" than the Saigon officials he knew during the war.
At the same time he was made a brigadier general in retirement and a few years ago was promoted to major general.
Given his familiarity with the French, Viet-Minh, Viet Cong, South Vietnamese and American armies, An said in the 2000 interview, "I told them they should make me a five-star general. I don't think they understood my sense of humor."
By Richard Pyle & Margie Mason - The Associated Press - September 20, 2006.
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