A Vietcong Memoir

ABOUT THE AUTHORS TRLIONG NHU TANG. a founder of the National Liberation Front and Minister of Justice in the Vietcong's Provisional Revolutionary Government, was one of the most determined adversaries of the United States during the war. Living a double, at times a triple, life in Saigon, he was a high-level economics official for the South Vietnamese govemment who simultaneously worked as one of the revolution's most effective urban organizers. Captured and tortured by the Thieu police. in 1968 he was traded in a secret U.S. r-Vict Cong prisoner exchange and spent the rest of the war in the resistance strongholds on the Cambodian border. A revolutionary for almost thirty years. after liberation Tang fought a losing battle on behalf of the policy of national reconciliation and concord which he had helped design. In the end, profoundly disillusioned by the massive political repression and economic chaos the new government brought with it, he carried out a dramatic escape by boat to a UN. refugee camp in the South China Sea. He now lives in exile in Paris, France. DOAN VAN TOAI. a visiting scholar at the University of California‘s Institute for East Asian Studies. is the author of The Vietnamese Gulag. He has written extensively on southeast Asian affairs for such publications as The New York Times Magazine. The New Republic, Encounter and The Washington Quarterly. DAVID CHANOFF is an educator and writer whose published work includes essays on literature, biography and education, as well as numerous articles on Vietnam. He has collaborated with Doan Van Toai on The Vietnamese Gulag and the ??? Portrait of the Enemy.