--- description: Pham Xuan An was a respected reporter—but the information he brought TIME was going to the North Vietnamese as well title: Surprising Tale of Pham Xuan An, a Spy on TIME's Staff During Vietnam image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfea4ede3fa7c02c2/6987ed02e53abae8994db87b/pxa.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [History](/section/history/) ## History Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [Media](/tag/media/) ## Media Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # The Surprising Story of the Spy who Worked for TIME  by [Lily Rothman](/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Apr 29, 2015 10:00 AM CUT  Pham Xuan An holds up his press card from 1965 at his home in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on April 26, 2000 Pham Xuan An holds up his press card from 1965 at his home in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on April 26, 2000Charles Dharapak—AP  by [Lily Rothman](/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Apr 29, 2015 10:00 AM CUT In early 1972, Stanley Cloud, who was then TIME’s bureau chief in Saigon, wrote a short piece for the company’s internal newsletter, _F.Y.I_. The piece—headlined “Right, An”—was a profile of a man named Pham Xuam An, who had been working for TIME in Vietnam since 1966 and had been officially hired to the magazine’s staff in 1969\. He was the first Vietnamese person to become a full-fledged staff member for a major American news outlet covering the war. “Perhaps it is letting the cat out of the bag, but I suppose that it is safe to say that Pham Xuan An has been no less than the secret weapon of a long line of correspondents who have traipsed in and out of Saigon—the incumbent crew conspicuously included,” Cloud wrote. “Although he rarely files himself, his dogged research and legwork, his remarkable knowledge and background, play an important part in virtually every file produced by a staff correspondent.” An continued to work for TIME through the end of the war. When TIME’s staff was evacuated before the April 30, 1975, fall of Saigon, he was the one who stayed behind. An issue of _F.Y.I._ from that May noted that, a few hours after the evacuation was complete, the following message came over the Telex machine: “Here is Pham Xuan An now. All American correspondents evacuated because of emergency. The office of TIME is now manned by Pham Xuan An.” Years later, in 2006, when An died at 79, Cloud [memorialized](http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1537630,00.html "undefined") him as a first-class journalist with an easy laugh. Cloud wasn’t the only one who was fond of An. “He was an intellectual, dog-lover, bird-lover, chain-smoker, super smart guy, and we thought a great reporter,” says Peter Ross Range, 73, who was TIME’s Saigon Bureau Chief in 1975\. “But An was also a little strange. He would disappear for days at a time and nobody had any idea where he was. Now of course we know where he was at least part of that time.” An, it turned out, had been more than a journalist. Before, during and after working for TIME, he was an intelligence officer for the Communist North Vietnam. The dogged research he conducted for his magazine American employers also went to the group the United States was fighting against. That’s not the whole surprise, either. What’s perhaps just as striking in the story of Pham Xuan An is the good will his former colleagues still feel toward him. His story was a complicated one: An began his association with the Viet Minh in the 1940s. Though he did intelligence work for both the South Vietnamese Army and the Central Intelligence Agency, he continued his allegiance to that anti-occupation group the whole time. He studied journalism in the United States in the 1950s and was an intern at the Sacramento _Bee_ before returning to Vietnam, where he began to work for American outlets almost immediately. “Journalism is a splendid cover for a spy,” notes Thomas Bass, author of 2009’s _The Spy Who Loved Us_, a book about An. Though his four children and wife evacuated to the United States at the end of the war, he soon summoned them to come home; around that time, suspicions began to arise among his American friends. By the 1980s, those suspicions had been publicly confirmed. An was honored in his homeland as a national hero. ### The Last 48 Hours of the Vietnam War in Photos  A CIA employee helps Vietnamese evacuees onto an Air America helicopter from the top of 22 Gia Long Street, a half mile from the U.S. Embassy. Corbis  Helicopter-transported U.S. Marines running, arriving at Tan Son Nhut air base to secure area around Defense Attaché Office compound for evacuation of the last Americans in Saigon. Dirck Halstead—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images  Mobs of South Vietnamese civilians scale the 14-foot wall of the U.S. Embassy trying to reach evacuation helicopters as the last Americans departed from Vietnam. AP  Civilians waiting in front of the U.S. Embassy. Getty Images  Citizens scale the wall of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, trying to get to the helicopter pickup zone. Neal Ulevich—AP  U.S. Marines' helicopter evacuation. Frances Starner—AP  The last U.S. citizens, including some journalists, gathered to leave the city by noon. Getty Images  Right after the U.S. Embassy security guards were evacuated, South Vietnamese civilians moved into the embassy and began looting. Even though a 24-hour curfew had been imposed on the city, the streets were filled with people carrying off all they could steal. Nguyen Khao—Bettmann/Corbis  Vietnamese women clutch boxes of food looted from U.S. installation after the evacuation of Saigon. AP  A crippled South Vietnamese war veteran limps away on crutch with food looted from abandoned U.S. installations after the evacuation of Saigon. AP  U.S. Marines hit the deck of the USS Blue Ridge to dodge flying metal from a South Vietnamese helicopter that crashed on the deck of the ship. One pilot had dropped his helicopter on the blade of another, and chunks of metal ripped through the air. The top helicopter, with its load of women and children, nearly toppled into the sea, but they were rescued without injury. AP  U.S. Navy personnel aboard the USS Blue Ridge push a helicopter into the sea off the coast of Vietnam in order to make room for more evacuation flights from Saigon. The helicopter had carried Vietnamese fleeing Saigon as North Vietnamese forces closed in on the capital. AP  U.S. Marine helicopter crewmen carry Vietnamese civilians to safety aboard the USS Blue Ridge, after their evacuation helicopter crashed on the deck of the amphibious command ship. AP  A weeping South Vietnamese mother and her three children are plucked out of Saigon by U.S. Marine helicopters in Vietnam. AP  The last Vietnamese evacuees by boat from Saigon waterfront, as troops close in. Matt Franjola—AP  North Vietnamese tanks cross Saigon on the way to Độc Lập Palace. Getty Images  A North Vietnamese tank rolls through the gate of the Presidential Palace in Saigon, signifying the fall of South Vietnam. AP An never told a lie, Bass says, so he was able to keep his own story straight. He was also able to maintain the respect of his colleagues. Many of his TIME friends met with him on return trips to Vietnam, and several—including Stanley Cloud—later chipped in to help send An’s son to college in the U.S. “He was a great man. A great man,” Cloud, 78, says, reflecting on that period. “\[When I found out\] I was surprised but I wasn’t astonished, if you know what I mean.” “I don’t think he ever purposely gave us misinformation. That’s how he survived. He’d have been killed if he did,” echoes Roy Rowan, now 95, a long-time TIME and LIFE staffer who worked in Saigon for the magazine at the end of the war. Rowan recalls a three-hour-long, highly emotional conversation during which he tried to convince An to save his own life by evacuating with the rest of the staff. An maintained he was staying behind to care for his ailing mother. His biographers have also been unable to find evidence that he spread falsehoods. “I was hoping to find evidence that the stories had been slanted, but I couldn’t find it,” says Larry Berman, author of the biography _Perfect Spy_, who notes that An’s story is currently being turned into a 32-part Vietnamese television series. In fact, it seems more likely that having a spy on the staff helped TIME cover the war more accurately. Cloud recalls a time during the Paris Peace Accord negotiations when _Newsweek_’s Saigon bureau chief bragged about having the details of the peace plan; TIME asked An to see what he could find so that the magazine wouldn’t get scooped. An brought back the outline of the plan. The story that TIME ran that week, Cloud recalls, was more accurate than _Newsweek_’s. An was not without his detractors. Cloud recalls, for example, that Murray Gart, then TIME’s chief of correspondents, felt absolutely betrayed by An. (Gart died in 2004.) Berman says that his book has been criticized by those who feel he’s too sympathetic. At the heart of the matter is the fact that even though An appeared to have been careful not to endanger his colleagues—he intervened in at least one case to keep a TIME correspondent safe—the information he was able to provide to the North was not without military value. “Could his information have led directly to the deaths of American soliders? And if so, should we be rethinking our love for Pham Xuan An?” asks Range. “Personally, \[he was\] a great guy—but he’s out creating situations which could have killed young men from our side and of course that’s what he was supposed to do. And if that’s what he was doing, you need to think about that.” Still Range stands by An. When he learned the truth about his former colleague, he felt “disbelief, shock, but not anger,” he says. “Everything was upside-down. So the fact that this turned out to be upside-down seemed like another one of the strange anomalies of the time.” Berman says that it’s not surprising that, 40 years later, the story of Pham Xuan An is not seen by former friends as a tale of betrayal. An loved America, appreciated the free press, was respected by his colleagues—but he loved his own country more, and wanted it to be independent. Today, Berman says, most Americans see the war the way that An did, agreeing with him that it would have been better for the Americans to go home. “An thought, naively, that when the war was over it would be just like the end of the American Civil war, where Lincoln said ‘with malice toward none,’” Berman says. “People hold onto him as symbol of war, but really he’s a symbol of peace.” ### Photographic Memories of a Vietnam Veteran  Infusion, 1967: "Soldiers of the 9th Infantry Division (red, white and blue unit patches) based at Bearcat (Camp Martin Cox) are trucked to a waiting Caribou aircraft for the flight to their new units." All quotes in this caption and the ones that follow come from photographer Christopher Gaynor Christopher Gaynor  Mama San, 1967: "A term used by GIs in Vietnam for any older Vietnamese woman. In this case she was supervising 'sandbag dollies,' younger Vietnamese women who were working at the base camp in Dau Tieng." Christopher Gaynor  Floating Poker Game, 1967: "My buddy and fellow Team Chief, Sgt. Dick Jackson (holding beer can) separates the troops from their pay." Christopher Gaynor  Kiwis and Aussies, 1967 Christopher Gaynor  Change Up, 1967: "'Mummy' at bat while my buddy Perry (back to camera) looks on." Christopher Gaynor  Convoy, 1967: "My buddy Sgt. Dick Jackson (with glasses and camera) checks out the crush of villagers as our convoy slows to a crawl. Anyone in this crowd (including children) might toss a grenade into a truck." Christopher Gaynor  Bunker, 1967: "Troops of the 77th Field Artillery, 25th Infantry Division hunker down in a partially completed bunker to escape the mayhem of 3,600 of our own 105mm Howitzer rounds light off at knee level in all directions. The enemy was watching all this, but could not attack us." Christopher Gaynor  The Odd Couple, 1967: "My buddies Lynch and Cork share a morning ritual at Camp Bearcat (Camp Martin Cox)." Christopher Gaynor  LZ, 1967: "Bell UH-1 Iroquois (Huey “Slick”) helicopter makes a quick troop drop at a Fire Support Base near the Cambodian border without touching down." Christopher Gaynor  Operation, 1967: "2nd Battalion, 77th Field Artillery, 25th Infantry Division assembles at the Dau Tieng airfield in preparation for a major combat operation near the Cambodian border." Christopher Gaynor  The Wasteland, 1967: "9th Infantry Division soldier burns the remaining twigs after our Bearcat Base Camp was sprayed heavily with Agent Orange to kill the jungle vegetation and then bulldozed into a desert wasteland." Christopher Gaynor  Triple Deuce, 1967: "Troops of the 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment (mechanized) get squared away to move on a Search and Destroy mission into “The Rubber” (the Michelin Plantation)." Christopher Gaynor  Richard Thomas Jackson, 1967: "My ‘brother’, my buddy, my friend. Dick was killed in action January 6, 1968, he was just 20 years old." Christopher Gaynor  Núi Bà Đen, 1967: "The Black Virgin Mountain looms in the background as our convoy of the 2nd Battalion, 77th Field Artillery Regiment, 4th Infantry Division crosses the Saigon River heading North West to Loc Ninh to support our infantry units from an artillery Fire Support Base." Christopher Gaynor  Caribou, 1967: "Troops of the 9th Infantry Division prepare to board a C-7 Caribou at Camp Bearcat for the flight to Dau Tieng base camp in III Corps." Christopher Gaynor ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3836522/pham-xuan-an-1975/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3836522/pham-xuan-an-1975/"},"headline":"The Surprising Story of the Spy who Worked for TIME","datePublished":"2015-04-29T10:00:11.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:04:22.572Z","description":"Pham Xuan An was a respected reporter based in Saigon during the Vietnam War. 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