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| Author: Larry Berman
Publisher: Collins
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 230592
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 1
ISBN: 0060888393
Dewey Decimal Number: 327
EAN: 9780060888398
ASIN: 0060888393
Publication Date: May 1, 2008
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 6-10 of 10 | | « PREV | | |
Interesting, and Eerie! September 9, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
 Just another Communist propaganda book July 23, 2007
14 out of 26 found this review helpful
It was a good read, but it just followed the line of typical Communist propaganda.
It is laughable for anyone to think An spied for his "country", that he was a "patriot", or a "nationalist" for that matter. An was a Communist through and through. Communist propaganda and the book want you to think that the Vietnam war was about fighting off foreign invaders/aggressors.
Make no mistake. An and his comrades fought for one sole purpose: put the entire country of Vietnam under Communism, and strip the Vietnamese people of freedom and basic human rights.
Hanoi successfully exploited the American involvement to justify their aggression in South Vietnam, and masked their communist proliferation campaign under a "patriotic" theme: war against foreign invaders.
It was Communist activities in South Vietnam that brought in US soldiers, and they made it looked like the American invasion of Vietnam that forced them to start the war to save the country.
An was lying when he implied that he didn't know how bad the Communists were when they took over the country. He fought for a regime that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent land-owners in North Vietnam in the late 50's during the bloody land reform campaign. He fought for a system with outdated economic (communism) theories that turned Vietnam into one of the poorest countries in the world. He fought for a totalitarian state that took away the people's basic freedom and human rights, where free-thinking was not allowed. If An had any doubt during his spying days, he just had to look to the iron curtains of the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Cuba, East Germany, ... where the people were oppressed, and all would leave if they had a chance.
As well informed as he was, An surely must have known how brutal the Communists were, and still chose to be on their side. Instead of helping to promote freedom in Vietnam, he worked hard to crush it. If An was truly disillusioned after the war, then he was a fool to fight for a system that he knew nothing about.
I am shocked and appalled that many freedom-loving Americans failed to see this, and continued to think of An as a patriot, a nationalist, and that they would probably do the same if they were An. Naive Americans.
Also, the book repeatedly mentioned An's American acquaintances admired him for being a spy without injecting any pro-communist ideas onto them. Are you kidding? That's what he was supposed to do to keep his cover. To this day, many Americans still love this guy and be fooled by his deceiving charm, buying into his Communist propaganda line that he was just fighting foreign invaders to save his country. Naive Americans.
An was responsible for thousands of American and hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese deaths during the war. After the war, tens (if not hundreds) of thousands more died in re-education camps, or during their escape journey from Vietnam.
Unification without freedom is worst than death. To this point, An helped kill his fellow Vietnamese and the country. He was a traitor!
 A great read, a great man for his country and a sad commentary of our press corps June 14, 2007
7 out of 13 found this review helpful
As a former Marine sniper with two straight years in the Vietnam War, the early part, I couldnt pass this book up. An, the spy, is the perfect spy and by the end of the book you can see he duped our press, his 'friends', not only in Vietnam during the war, but all the way to his recent death. He certainly played a central part in the demise of our strategy and as one soldier to another, my hat goes off to him. He was good at what he did and so were my fellow Marines and I. He fought for his country in his way and we in ours. An incredible man.
Now for my disdain. The author did an excellent job researching and writing this book. Except for his bias to continue to make the North Vietnamese out the good guys and us the bad. I understand they fought for 'their He continues to this day, forty years later for me, to herald the very pr' country and to get foreigners off their soil. But this author contuess corp that were hopefully duped by An, some probably not. They continues the US press corps position that the people in the south had no right to their way of wanting their country back. The author supports the media in their current dismantling of US efforts in Iraq. I do not believe we should have gone to Iraq, but now that we unraveled their lives, we owe it to them to see it to the end. Yet just as it outlined well in this excellent book, they are undermining US efforts to help a people who strive for freedom like the millions of South Vietnamese that are barely mentioned in this work.
This is an important work on the Vietnam War, which I have studied for my forty years since being there. It tells a compelling story of a proud warrior who did what he had to do for his country. He did it well. And it shows the dispicable US media, lead by Time magazine, and their work which ended up aiding our enemy at the time.
And then they proudly, according to the author, pull out all the stops to bring the son of this perfect spy, back to the US to educate him as we did his father. He continued perfect to the end and his great friends in the media still believe his line. We just never learn.
Excellent read May 1, 2007
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
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.
The spy who duped the Saigon press corps... April 28, 2007
14 out of 16 found this review helpful
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?
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