Vietnamese Shooting Victim Thinks Attack Was Political; Police Unsure

A former South Vietnam official, shot twice near his Westminster real estate office Tuesday night, told detectives he thinks the attack was politically motivated, police said Thursday.

Tran Khanh Van, 40, of Santa Ana told investigators during a hospital interview Wednesday night that “he felt (the attack) was political over what he said,” said Westminster Police Sgt. Bob Burnett. Van “said he thought he knew why it was done but not who.”

Various Possible Motives

Detectives have not ruled out the possibility that Van was shot by someone outraged over his statements in a Jan. 5 Los Angeles Times Magazine article in which he advocated normalization of relations with Hanoi. But Burnett said police also have not dismissed other motives, such as robbery or a personal argument.

“Right now I’m looking at a street criminal,” Burnett said, “someone whose basic livelihood is from robbing and extorting and assaulting people--not a hit man.”

Four Asian youths linked to a car seen in the area were taken into custody Wednesday night for questioning, Burnett said. But Van could not identify any of them from pictures, and they were released.

Van, who was shot in the stomach and shoulder, was moved out of the intensive care unit at Fountain Valley Regional Hospital on Thursday. Security guards kept all but his family away, and Van allowed only calls from police and relatives.

“He’s scared to death they’ll try to get him again,” Burnett said.

Members of Orange County’s Vietnamese community have said they feel certain that Van, former director general of housing in Saigon, was shot by someone outraged by his statements. But many suggest the attacker was a fanatic and not part of any extremist Vietnamese group.

The incident has focused interest on a group of which Van says he is a member.

In the magazine article, Van said he and 300 other California Vietnamese, most graduates of American universities, had formed the Reconstruction Development Study Group to help establish a working relationship with Hanoi officials.

Van indicated that the group had prepared two computer programs for the Vietnamese government, one tracking cash flow at the National Bank and another interpreting changes in the weather and the resulting effect on crops.

But several Vietnamese spokesmen say they have never heard of the group.

Nguyen Xuan Phac, who publishes the Dan Toc newspaper in San Jose, said: “Someone has mentioned it to me, once, but that is all I have heard about it. Someone said there may be 300 people involved. But what it does, who its members are, where they meet, I know nothing about this.”

Such secrecy is not surprising, because Vietnamese emigres sympathetic to Hanoi or interested in resuming working relations with the Vietnamese government can be subject to violent reprisals from other Vietnamese, said Douglas Pike, who works with the East Asian Institute in Berkeley.

Pike, who has compiled a file on Vietnamese emigre groups in the United States, said he has never heard of the Reconstruction Development Study Group.

“I . . . question whether there is in fact an underground group of 300 college-educated ethnic Vietnamese in California with such a position,” he said.

If such a group exists, Pike said, its members and other Vietnamese like them “are very hard to get to know. Some of these guys have been firebombed . . . they may have been shot several times. I wouldn’t want to sit next to them on a platform.

“The woods are full of former South Vietnamese paratroopers who think people like this are the chief reason they lost the war, and they won’t hesitate to go after them.”

Burnett, one of two detectives who investigate crime in Westminster’s Vietnamese community, said: “I’ve run across some groups that have a name but don’t even exist. It’s not uncommon for them to come up with a name that adds credence or legitimacy or prestige to what they’re saying, but the group or at least the numbers they boast, don’t (exist).”

Van reportedly disagreed with parts of the magazine article, but that did not mollify members of the Orange County refugee community, who were outraged that Van “suggested cooperation with the Marxist government” of Vietnam, one Vietnamese newspaper editor said. Some local Vietnamese newspapers denounced Van as being a traitor, the editor said.

Change in Comments

Burnett said Wednesday that Van “had not indicated” he knew his attacker or that he believed the shooting was politically motivated. However, the sergeant said Thursday that, in fact, Van’s “initial statement” to police on the night of the shooting “was that he felt it was political over what he said. . . . He said his statement in the article may have had something to do with it, that it was political.” Burnett said he himself may have “screwed up because I was tired” after being up through the previous night.

Klaaske Cooperman, widow of the Cal State Fullerton physics professor who was slain in his office by a Vietnamese student, said Van had met frequently with her husband to discuss their shared interest in “stabilizing” relations between Vietnam and the United States. She said Van approached Edward Lee Cooperman because both were interested in delivering humanitarian aid and technology to the Communist country.

Minh Van Lam was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the 1984 shooting of Cooperman, but Cooperman’s family and friends still maintain he was assassinated in a plot by right-wing Vietnamese refugees vehemently opposed to any dealing with the Vietnamese government. During Lam’s trial, she and Van became friends, Klaaske Cooperman said.

A mutual friend tried to visit Van on Thursday morning and was turned away, she added.

Cooperman had launched an organization called the Scientific Committee for Vietnam through which he delivered medical aid and computers to the country to help with rice and other crop projections, his widow said.

Offered to Testify

According to Klaaske Cooperman and close friends of her late husband, Van offered to testify for the prosecution during Lam’s trial regarding his knowledge of the committee and the dangers involved in their efforts but was never called.

“Right now I still haven’t found any connection with that shooting and the attack on Van,” Burnett said Thursday. “I’m trying to find a suspect in an attempted murder investigation. I’m working on another angle. I’m not even looking at it.”

Burnett said Van was not robbed nor had he been the victim of extortion attempts. He also said that, despite Van’s beliefs, he does not believe the shooting was political.

“The man is too normal. He’s a real estate broker, he doesn’t live high on the hog, he doesn’t get involved in politics; except he has some views that some of the community doesn’t agree with,” Burnett said. “I think anyone who made the statements he did might make (himself) a target, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case with this man,” Burnett said. “He might have expressed an opinion that someone did not agree with, and they did this; that’s what (Van) thinks. I think if anything it was a couple of people upset but not a group,” Burnett said.

Finding the gunman, he added, is going to be a slow process and perhaps a matter of “luck.”

“The problem is trying to develop information to do something, and it’s not just this case, it’s any case we work on in the Vietnamese community--the language problems but mainly there is still a lack of trust in police and Americans.”