The spy who loved us

Two books have been written about Pham Xuan An, the former Reuters reporter who was a top Viet Cong intelligence officer: The Perfect Spy by Larry Berman and The Spy Who Loved Us by Thomas Bass.  What they don't mention is that An helped get the Reuters Saigon nameplate out of Vietnam and onto the wall of the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents' Club.

The nameplate was brought out of Vietnam by former Saigon Office Manager Pham Ngoc Dinh in 1980, five years after the Viet Cong took the South Vietnamese capital.  Before he died in 2003 Dinh visited London and told me that An, a well-connected journalist with whom we had both worked in the 1960s, had helped him obtain an exit permit to migrate to Australia and take the Reuters nameplate with him.

Dinh started out as an office messenger in the 1960s. On his motorbike he would rush our stories to the Post Office for transmission to Singapore and collect our mail.  Adept at obtaining exit visas and permits, he became known as Mr Fixit, not only for Reuters, but for other foreign correspondents. All he asked for in return were foreign calendars at Christmas to hand out to his contacts in the new year.

(Photo: Dinh outside the Reuters office) 

In 1968 the Viet Cong overran parts of Saigon and two Reuters correspondents, Bruce Pigott and Ron Laramy, went missing.  Risking his life, Dinh went looking for them and recovered their bodies.

After the fall of Saigon, Dinh stayed for five years until he was allowed to leave for Australia, sponsored by the Australian Associated Press, which gave him a job in Sydney.

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