I am amused by the oddest things

[redbird]

The headline on this obituary reads Pham Xuan An, spy, reporter. For the last ten years of the Vietnam War, An was Time magazine's chief Vietnamese reporter, and "so well-known for his sources and insight that many Americans who knew him suspected he worked for the CIA." Right game, wrong team: he was a Communist spy.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

The difference is subtler than it might appear.

B

[redbird]

As I said, same game: but a CIA agent wouldn't have been as interested in finding out things about the American military bases to tell his bosses. I also suspect a CIA agent would have made less of a point, then or later, about not putting his agency's propaganda in the stories--not for ethical reasons, but because it wouldn't have looked suspect and possibly gotten him caught.

Either that, or you know something about the CIA's role in the war or the Viet Cong that I'm missing.