Six days prior to the thirty-third anniversary of the Fall of Sai Gon, author and scholar Larry Berman’s latest book, The Perfect Spy will be on sale to the public on April 24, 2007.

The “spy” in Berman’s book is Pham Xuan An, a Time Magazine reporter and Vietnamese Communist agent who recently passed away last September. Berman set out to reveal this remarkable story about a Vietnamese man who led essentially a double-life by working as a very well-respected and trusted American journalist while gathering intelligence and information as a Communist agent during the Viet Nam War.

Berman met Pham in 2001 over dinner at Song Ngu seafood restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City’s lively Suong Nguyet Anh street. The double agent broke the ice with Berman by sharing his affection and nostalgia for California, where he apparently described having consciously the happiest two years of his life while attending Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa. As a double agent, to consciously live happily seems almost a paradox, and Berman sets out in his book to uncover the truth of this mysterious man.

After that fateful night, they quickly became friends, where Berman made more than a dozen trips to Viet Nam to interview Pham. In 2005, the University of California, Davis professor also had the privilege and honor bestowed upon him as the unofficial biographer of the Vietnamese man who led a dual life.

The double agent intrigued Berman more and more each time he met with him in Viet Nam. Pham eventually trusted in Berman to peruse through his personal belongings, including photographs and books he read and was influenced by. At a coffee shop in Ho Chí Minh City where the author frequently visited for his interviews and meetings with the double agent, Berman waited for Phaïm’s arrival where he was always greeted by a few friends working nearby. The coffee shop was one of the places they rendezvoused and where Berman listened to the stories of a real-life double agent who at first, seemed to hold a little of himself back, but later implicitly gave the California professor his blessings for his quest to find out who Pham really was and shed light on who he truly worked for.

The former Time Magazine reporter and Communist agent befriended several American journalists and scholars alike during and after the war. Throughout The Perfect Spy, Berman outlines not only the story of Pham as a Time Magazine journalist, but also exposed the numerous occasions where Pham secretly met with his corresponding agent and revealed the secretive communication and signals they had for one another. It has been uncovered that Pham was responsible for scores of thousands of Americans’ deaths during the Viet Nam War. However, he had also saved the lives of fellow American journalists, who have remained loyal friends to each other long after the war ended.

The Perfect Spy attempts to not only recount Pham’s life as a double agent in a biographical format, but it also brings to light the side in which Pham was truly on. With that said, it is highly probably that he was not loyal and truly an agent for one side more than the other, but he was loyal to his beliefs, which were what he considered in his home country’s best interests. His patriotism and personal beliefs appear to have developed even before the Viet Nam War while the French were still occupying his country. Conversely, the meaning of Berman’s latest book on Viet Nam remains in the eyes of the readers.

The book is just under 300 pages organized within seven chapters, a prologue and an epilogue. Berman will kickoff his book’s launch in April with a party in Washington, D.C. and follow-up with book signing tours, including cities with large Vietnamese American communities such as Newport Beach and the Bay Area this spring.

---

Berman is a political science professor and works at the University of California, Davis and the University of California, Washington, D.C. Center. He is the author of three books about Vietnam, including No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger and Betrayal in Viet Nam. He has been featured on C-SPAN’s Book TV and the History Channel.

[end]