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Janet Hoskins jhoskins at usc.edu
Mon Mar 26 09:56:05 PDT 2007
Dear VSGers,
Recently (2/17/2007), an important Caodaist leader in Saigon, Dinh Van De, who I interviewed in 2004 and 2006 gave
an interview to a Hanoi journalist in which he revealed that although he had held a number of important positions in the
Saigon government (including Vice-President of the Lower House from 1967 to 1971, and President of the National
Defense Committee from 1971-75) he was in fact a spy for the National Liberation Front, and reported all the military
information that he received to them. He was one of the delegates who traveled to Washington DC and met Gerald Ford
on March 25, 1973 in the Oval Office, and his published interview concentrates on telling the story of his speech made to
the President and how he crafted it to secretly serve the NLF. (He does appear in photographs taken at that event).
I found lots of documents which verify the fact that he held these various positions, as well as serving as the Mayor of
Dalat and Provincial Chief of Tuyen Duc and Binh Thuan. But since I came to this research to study religious leaders
(and most of my interview with Dinh Van De concerned his role in teaching meditation and Caodai doctrine), I wonder if
scholars more familiar with the period of American involvement in the Second Indochina War could confirm whether he
was in fact perhaps the most highly placed "spy" in the Saigon government at the time?
Since he has decided to tell his story now, 32 years after the events, I am considering including it in the documentary we
are completing on Caodaism, since it does reveal an unexpected side to this religious movement, and suggests why at
least some Caodaist organizations (including the one he heads) were allowed to remain open after 1975 when so many
others were closed down.
I would appreciate any assistance that VSG scholars can provide to help me interpret these events.
Best wishes,
Janet Hoskins
Professor of Anthroplogy
University of Southern California
Dan Duffy dduffy at email.unc.edu
Mon Mar 26 14:43:00 PDT 2007
Hi Janet,
I have only in the last year started to talking to spies on purpose. I
have asked the same questions I habitually use in talking to soldiers
about their military service.
Where did you enter the service? Where did you train and what did you
learn? What equipment did you carry and use? What was your area of
activity? Who did you report to? What were your promotions and
decorations? What operations did you assist with? When and where did
you separate from service?
These ground in bureaucratic reality a narrative that is, in the case of
a soldier, often delivered to engage with family drama, political
sensibility, or historical memory. So you blindside them. It's an
aggressive technique, one I use on people who are fully cooperating or
who are engaging with me in a hostile manner.
Since you can't talk it over with him now, perhaps you can look at the
documents for answers to these questions.
I have found that spies are more sophisticated about my line of
questioning than other soldiers. For a social scientist to talk to a
spy is like a lab scientist observing to magician: we think we're
skeptical but we rely on honesty in a million ways we can't even
remember, and they don't.
But it's still a line of inquiry. In this case it might clarify whether
he is saying he was an intelligence officer, like the famous colonel who
worked in Saigon for the US correspondents, or he is saying that he was
a source worked by an officer, or he is saying that he would cooperate
from time to time with a source or officer who would visit him.
He is saying that he worked for the NLF rather than Ha Noi. Maybe
somebody could tell you what that would imply about his situation if
it's true, and somebody could tell you why he would say exactly that
now, if it's not.
And if he does say who recruited or ran him, or who he recruited and
ran, you could see if they are identified in a document somewhere as
doing that kind of work.
The story about the speech to Gerald Ford would be good to look at hard.
So he was doing disinformation on his own? Or in close dialogue with
some high-level NLF strategist? How, when, where? Or did NLF spies
have the shared vision and improvisatory boldness that so many attribute
to the NLF soldiers?
Maybe Bob Brigham at Vassar or another historian of the foreign policy
of the NLF could say whether what he says about his speech to Ford is
notional, of our time, or reflects some specific goal from the past.
And did counter-intelligence have any ideas about him? There are lots
of intelligence veterans from both US and RVN in CA.
Just brainstorming.
Dan
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