Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter & Vietnamese Communist Agent (review)

Some books fit a niche that few realized even existed. This is one. While there are many studies on the relevance, or not, of human intelligence for war they are usually at the grand campaign level. Otherwise, there are studies of individual spies or their captors. Despite the rather lurid title, this book is an important contribution to the relevance of human intelligence collection during the Vietnam War. It is one of the best examples I have read of the ambiguity of human intelligence both in the way that field affects war and in the way it affects personal relationships. While somewhat in the genre of spy stories, it offers far more and Dr. Larry Berman ably weaves together history, personality, politics, and biography throughout the book.

This book is a well written description of General Pham Xuan An's activities as a communist agent in South Vietnam from the 1940s through 1975 and afterwards. It is a biography of a young nationalist disillusioned by the Japanese occupation, disgusted by the French reoccupation, and drawn into the communist fight against all comers. It documents the journey of one man to understand the enemy. It is a journey that takes a trained intelligence operative to a small southern California college to study journalism, through internships at an American newspaper and the United Nations, positions with the government of the Republic of Viet Nam, a job with Time Magazine and close personal relationships with senior Vietnamese and American journalists, military officers, and intelligence agents. And all of this was at the direction and for the benefit of communist efforts. At the end, this is a story of a very capable, complicated man who, as the author deftly describes, personifies the complicated and conflicted history of his country.

Through this biography, we see pivotal players in U.S. and Vietnamese history in a different way. People such as Edward Lansdale, William Colby, Nguyen Cao Ky, Stanley Karnow, David Halberstam, Frances FitzGerald, just to name a few, are shown in a new perspective. This book describes the view of one man whose hidden goal was to report the public and private thoughts of as many of the enemy as he could. After reading this book we may, or may not, question anew how we view our history in Vietnam.

Most significantly, from this reviewer's point of view, the book provides a fascinating insight into the effects of a highly placed agent. It is one of the best examples of the wilderness of mirrors often used to describe the world of intelligence. Behind the narrative lie a host of questions suggesting that many policy makers did not know what they thought they knew. At the same time, the book shows that South Vietnamese or U.S. policy makers did not know their deliberations and plans were soon in their adversaries' hands. The author's claims regarding the importance of An's reporting and effect on specific battles, such as Ap Bac, or campaigns or negotiating tactics deserve further evaluation.

The author does a good job of checking, and quoting, sources who corroborate An's unique stories and accomplishments. These sources include both current Vietnamese, past South Vietnamese, and U.S. government people, journalists, and others. Nonetheless, this reviewer was left with a feeling of disquiet. Rather than describing those concerns, I recommend readers evaluate the book on their own with the following questions in mind. How do we evaluate the claims of someone who spent his whole life dissembling to others? How do we value the observations of someone whose job it was to influence people with a particular outcome in mind? How trusted are our sources?