Posted on 06/02/2007 9:56:42 AM PDT by 68skylark
SACRAMENTO -- Larry Berman, a political science professor at the University of California at Davis, is in the middle of a hectic publicity schedule for the launch of his new book, "Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An."
An, who died in 2006, was a longtime spy for the Communist Party in Vietnam and is credited with playing a major role in Vietnam's victory over the United States. A gifted conversationalist, An worked for Time magazine in Vietnam, befriending many of the era's leading journalists. But before that, he went to college in California and had a brief internship at The Sacramento Bee where, among other stories, he wrote a first-person account of his purported crusade against Communist propaganda. The piece made him a local celebrity and solidified his cover for years to come.
Berman, 56, sat down recently to talk about the book.
Question: How did Pham Xuan An become so successful as a spy?
Answer: He spent a lot of time developing his cover. All the people I interviewed for the book said they liked him because he could fit in. He could joke with people. He spoke English. He liked to joke. He really went to school studying the Americans. He studied how the CIA interacted with people, how college coeds interacted in Orange County.
He came to California to go to college in the late 1950s on assignment? He was developing as a spy?
He had no choice. He did not want to go, but his party ordered him to do it. This is what is the most interesting thing to me historically about his whole life, the foresight of the Communist Vietnamese. In 1955, to recognize that the United States was slowly but surely coming ... the Vietnamese would not be allowed to determine their future.
(Excerpt) Read more at fresnobee.com ...
Only a highly trained and well-indoctrinated liberal journalist would think to ask a question like that.
In this same anti-American vein:
1. TheMSM admiration for Fidel.
2. The refusal to recognize the Rosenburgs as traitors even aften proof positive was discovered in Russian archives.
3. The continued antipathy toward McCarthy’s hunt for spies in gvt. and Holywood.
4. Refusal to brand Algier Hiss a traitor after proof from Russian archives and continued hate for Whitaker Chambers (ex-Communist who also worked for Time)for testifying against Hiss.
5. Continued fawning over Jane Fonda, US traitor and accused (by former POWs)murdererss of POWs.
These are just some of the more egregiious items. One could go on for pages.
God bless America and God help us to continue to fight the good fight against her destroyers.
vaudine
If the article hadn’t stated he died, I’d say he’s currently employed at the New York Times.
I guess there were quite a few Vietnamese who fell in with communism because the communists seemed to offer the best path to independence. But it was a bad bargain for them and their country, and we shouldn't white-wash that fact today like the left in the U.S. does.
How many Islmo-wackos you suppose work for AOLTimeWarnerCNN right now? We know that many work more or less openly for Al Reuters and AP. They only get fired when they get caught in blatant fabrications, not just when their reportage is blatantly biased.
And I bet he was a "contributor" to the stories which made Tet out to be a Victory for the VC and NVA. Which it most assuredly was not, except on SEE-BS, in Time, Life, etc, and of course in the halls of Congress.
Journalism in America has developed into a forum for Treason and Sedition. That has been obvious since the Korean War.
Well you could say the same thing about a very large number of journalists during the Revolutionary War (Royalists), the quasi-war with France (anti-Federalists), the War of 1812 (nearly all of New England, especially early in the war), the War with Mexico (lots of folks), and especially the Civil War (Copperheads), not to mention anti-imperalists during the Spanish-American war. Hostile reporters are not a new phenomenon.
*****
Those earlier cases were different. The Civil War, for example, did not have Americans opting to turn the country over to the Barbary pirates. Both sides in the Civil War were fighting for home and country. That is much different from simply being on the enemy side.
We had rather few outright traitors in WWII, except for some communists working under cover in the FDR administration. Later on, things changed. Today, much of the media is on the other side, and are plainly anti-American.
bump
His country was Vietnam. He spied for his ideology, not his country. He worked to ensure that his country would be a slave state, which it remains, more or less, to this day.
You make several good points -- our challenges today are indeed different to what Americans faced in the past.
I was just trying to say that we shouldn't kid ourselves about some golden age in the past when the press supported the military and our military missions -- there are lots of examples from history where that wasn't true.
Overall, freepers sometimes seem to feel that our challenges today are especially difficult, and that people had it easier in a rosy past. I think just the opposite -- compared to the past, the present looks pretty rosy to me.
Wanna bet he doesn't find the same nobility in an Erwin Rommel, or Robert E. Lee?
That was true of lots of German soldiers after both WW-I, and WW-II.
But what this guy did was different, in the nature of a false flag operations, which IIRC is a violation of the law of war, but then again such niceties rarely bother communists or jihadies.
i know, “my country right or wrong?” I think not.
the msm are guerrillas who hide behind the first amendment as they snipe.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.