“Here is Pham Xuan An now. All American correspondents evacuated because of Emergency. The office of Time is now manned by Pham Xuan An.”

Pham Xuan An filed three more reports from Saigon before the line went dead, and yet he is the only Time writer not applauded for his work in the letter from the publisher in the May 12 issue of Time — not because he was a spy, but because he was Vietnamese.

 Pham Xuan An was one of the twentieth century’s greatest spies. He was also a correspondent for Time magazine, and had worked for Reuters and The New Yorker during the war in Vietnam. Only after the war ended did other journalists learn that An, acclaimed as the dean of the Saigon Press Corps, was also a general in the North Vietnamese Army. He was awarded sixteen military medals, the last of which was awarded for the final battles of the war that ended with the fall of Saigon. His last deed of the war was arranging the escape of his old patron and enemy of North Vietnam, the South Vietnamese spymaster Tran Kim Tuyen. In Hu Van Es’s photograph of the last helicopter out of Saigon, the final person climbing the ladder is Tuyen. He was put there by An.