Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent
By Larry Berman
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About this ebook
During the Vietnam War, Time reporter Pham Xuan An befriended everyone who was anyone in Saigon, including American journalists such as David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan, the CIA's William Colby, and the legendary Colonel Edward Lansdale—not to mention the most influential members of the South Vietnamese government and army. None of them ever guessed that he was also providing strategic intelligence to Hanoi, smuggling invisible ink messages into the jungle inside egg rolls. His early reports were so accurate that General Giap joked, "We are now in the U.S. war room."
In Perfect Spy, Larry Berman, who An considered his official American biographer, chronicles the extraordinary life of one of the twentieth century's most fascinating spies.
Larry Berman
Larry Berman has written four previous books on the war in Vietnam: Planning a Tragedy: The Americanization of the War in Vietnam; Lyndon Johnson's War: The Road To Stalemate in Vietnam; No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger and Betrayal in Vietnam and Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent. He has been featured on C-SPAN Book TV, Bill Moyers' The Public Mind and David McCullough's American Experience. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow in residence at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He received the Bernath Lecture Prize for contributions to our understanding of foreign relations and the Department of the Navy Vice Admiral Edwin B. Hooper Research Grant. Berman is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Davis and Founding Dean of the Honors College at Georgia State University. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
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Reviews for Perfect Spy
13 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It's always a strange story when a former enemy tries to write about a former enemy. Pham Xuan An was a Communist spy in Saigon during the Vietnam War. However he was also a journalist for Time magazine and he cultivated contacts with both South Vietnamese and Americans. He also got away with it, he was a very good spy. The book seeks to answer how he succeeded and for so long. I think it does provide answers to these questions. The author very much liked his subject and that colours the entire book. I'm not sure if it hurts or helps the book. It very much reads not as history but as a tribute to a dear friend, who it just so happens was an enemy spy. The author asks who is the real Pham Xuan An, I'm happy with the answers presented in the book. A much harder question to answer is why so many of those he betrayed are so ready to forgive.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fascinating story. I had never heard of this guy. It's an entirely different slant on the familiar story of the disaster in Viet Nam.