Pham Xuan An was a communist, a spy and a Time reporter. Despite the conflicting titles, he stayed unshakeably loyal to each of his identities.
In 1963, when news of the Ap Bac uprising reached the United States, Vietnamese troops were torn between two choices: slip away or fight.
An, together with H63, his intelligence network, decided to fight. Guerilla fighters shot down five helicopters and from that moment, the face of the war in Vietnam changed in the eyes of the international press.
“Later he [an American solider] was to recall it as ‘the day the Americans began to learn just how tough these Indochinese rice paddies can be.’” wrote David Halberstam in his 1963 Pulitzer Prize Winning reportage of the American War in Vietnam.
Little did Halberstam know that these tough rice paddies were toughened by one of his associates: Pham Xuan An, whom he later called a man “split right down the middle.”
In an interview with The Contemporaries by Vietnam Television (VTV), An revealed three values he lived by: “Help others. Be honest. Never tell a lie.”
For some, living two lives made that final principle sound paradoxical. For his colleagues on both sides, it sounded like the truth.
From Hai Trung, A Name Unknown…
For American journalists, he was Pham Xuan An. But to the Vietnamese army, he was Hai Trung, one of the most valuable operatives of H63, an intelligence network operated by Vietnam’s military command.
Mai Chí Thọ, a H63 senior figure, said in a VTV documentary: “An divulged the new tactics the Americans were implementing so we could develop retaliation strategies.”
Using An’s report, Vietnamese fighters opened fires from concealed positions. For the first time in history, the world saw how a guerilla force could defeat Saigon Army’s helicopters and armed troops
“One key factor contributing to their success is a highly efficient intelligence network,” wrote a CIA report on April 14, 1963.
Hai Trung quietly built up this intelligence network for 23 years, marked by intense fear and anxiety.
Out of 45 spies of H63, 27 died. Colonel Tu Cang, the network’s leader, lost his right hemisphere and was left with a 62% disability as a result of protecting Hai Trung from disclosure.
Nguyen Van Thuong, also a former H63 spy, who had his legs amputated six times due to not revealing secret information to the US army. Many more countrymen who gave up their lives: about 7.5 million tons of bombs were dropped, in addition to million gallons of herbicides.
Loss and grief notwithstanding, the double-life spy remained steadfast.
To Pham Xuan An, A Times Reporter
An’s Vietnamese identity was inseparable, even through a foreigner's lens. In a New Yorker profile, Thomas A. Bass described the man as “a wispy figure” in rubber sandals, short sleeves, and gray trousers flapping around his legs.
If one leaped onto a time machine to An’s California Dream, when he was studying abroad in the States, they might see an image otherwise: a half naked, lean man in his early 30s, with two white women behind beaming against the camera lens.
Pham Xuan An while studying abroad in California | Source: The Contemporaries by VTV1
This puckish man charmed the Western people with his wit. For one, he “loved America and Americans, democratic values, and objectivity in journalism.”
When asked about how he navigated objectivity and patriotism, his answer, again, was “to be truthful.” “I write about Uncle Ho (Ho Chi Minh) as a Times reporter naturally,” he continued: “Praising a man like him is easy. It’s a matter of how to praise accurately.”
An taught the Vietnamese audience to draw lessons from a dog, a bird, and a fish. Loyal to his organization. Free in his mind. Quiet in his movements.
Even as he lived a double life, An stood on the right side of history. He stood with Vietnamese revolutionaries, and also with Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King Jr., and thousands of young Americans who flooded U.S. streets to denounce the war in Vietnam.
In 1971, The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, exposing the long history of American missteps in Vietnam. While it was a revelation for many, it may have simply been a long awaited vision from An.
Legacy of a Divided Man
Perhaps the perfect spy had calculated the cost of truth along the way. Perhaps, the values An embedded were never mutually exclusive.
As a patriot, An understood that the war in Vietnam should have been bygone long before 1975. The fall of Sai Gon, according to him, was inevitable: “Thieu, we made him so, and if we let him go, he’ll sink.” He continued: “So the Americans can’t put their brains in our hats and that’s been proved.”
As a journalist, An always stayed truthful to other journalists. He met many of his TIME friends as they returned to Vietnam. The former Saigon bureau chief who once called An “the secret weapon” of TIME correspondents, even “chipped in” to help An’s son into college in the U.S.
As Greenway wrote for The New York Times, An never “used his journalism for disinformation.” The access his press card gave him, and the dignity he possessed regardless of which role he was playing, was enough for him to become the unsung hero of his country.
Perhaps, in the end, the man who lived a lie never had to tell one.