Vietnam unfurled a massive
celebration on Thursday to mark the 40th anniversary of the end of its
long war with the United States. Thousands of soldiers, sailors, police,
firefighters and students marched through the streets of Ho Chi Minh
City, formerly Saigon, brandishing flags and flowers. On the steps of
Reunification Palace, once the grandiose home of South Vietnam’s
U.S.-backed president, honors were bestowed on aging “heroes of the
revolution.”
One of the missing heroes was Pham Chuyen, a little-known
but key player in the “American war,” as the Vietnamese call it. The old
Communist spy died peacefully in his bed last November at the age of
93. Pham’s death, in his ramshackle home southeast of Hanoi, passed
without fanfare outside Vietnam, unlike those of some of his more
illustrious comrades who managed to infiltrate the highest levels of the
South Vietnamese government.
Yet according to a four-part series published in an obscure
Hanoi military journal in April, Pham was a key double agent in an
operation that led to the capture or deaths of scores of CIA and U.S.
military–controlled spies for nearly a decade during the war. A
translation of the series was provided to Newsweek by Merle
Pribbenow, a 27-year CIA veteran who has spent his post-agency years
translating Vietnamese Communist materials for the Woodrow Wilson Center
for International Scholars in Washington, D.C.
More @ Newsweek
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