Larry Berman

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 show more 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. show less

It'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 show more 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. show less

A good book showing how South Vietnam was betrayed by the United States. It shows the forces aligned against the Nixon Presidency and how they wanted a quick exit from Vietnam, no matter what it cost South Vietnam. It shows how North Vietnam knew it was negotiating from a position of strength and it shows how close South Vietnam came to saying no to the Peace treaty. A good look behind the scenes at the treaty negotiations and the politics. No Peace, No Honor, sums it up really.

This is a great story about General Pham who is a great soldier. Above all, he is a human-being. Being stuck in the war, brutal, he was still able to live up to the core of humanity. I'm proud of him for that. At the end, while there were winners in the war, there were many lives lost on both sides.