O.C. Vietnamese Split on FBI Call to Aid Spy Hunt

Chau Carey read the advertisement with rapt interest. In an effort to staunch the “proliferation of Vietnamese Communist intelligence,” the notice in a Vietnamese-language newspaper said, the FBI is seeking emigres’ help in reporting suspected spies to the bureau.

Carey immediately called the FBI and left a message accusing a well-known activist of espionage. “I have no proof, of course,” the Garden Grove woman said in an interview. “But I’m sure his activism is just a cover-up for his supporting the Communist regime.”

Such actions concern civil libertarians, who denounced the ads placed in newspapers in California--home to the largest Vietnamese emigre community--and Houston as a throwback to McCarthyism. The ad has run in the Westminster-based Nguoi Viet Daily newspaper, the largest nationally circulated Vietnamese-language publication, and has been broadcasted on Little Saigon Radio and Television.

The FBI said Friday that it has received about 200 calls since the ad began appearing last month. The agency said it is pursuing many leads, but no one has been arrested or questioned.

FBI spokesman George Grotz said the bureau is “sensitive to the issue” that the advertisement could be interpreted as a witch hunt. Agents will analyze each call to determine its legitimacy, he added.

But the bureau has no plans to pull or change the ads, which officials defended as an efficient way to gather information in the fight against escalating spying by Hanoi.

“We’re not into the business of seeking out some wholesale number here,” Grotz said. “We [realize] the potential significant personal harm here, but that happens all the time in criminal cases and foreign intelligence.”

But some in and outside the Vietnamese American community said the FBI’s actions infringe on a citizen’s 1st Amendment rights and breed suspicion and rancor.

*

Sympathy for communism “is a perfectly legal 1st Amendment right,” said Stewart Kwoh, executive director of the Asian-Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California. “If [the ad] inhibits political expression, that is at least inappropriate, if not something worse.”

Many leaders in the Vietnamese American community said they generally support the advertisement; it has been long suspected among emigres that some report to the government of Vietnam.

Although supportive of the idea of the FBI looking for spies, many leaders said they believe the ad casts too wide a net.

“The FBI needs to clearly identify its position” as to why it has taken this action, said Nghia Tran, executive director of a social service agency in Santa Ana. “Right now, it’s giving carte blanche for anyone to report on anyone.”

The ad in Thursday’s issue of Nguoi Viet Daily asked newly arrived emigres to help “the government of the United States and Vietnamese exiled compatriots . . . destroy the activities, threat and intimidation . . . of the underground Communist spies.”

Grotz said agents have recorded a flurry of espionage activities by people they suspect as Communist provocateurs since the United States and its former enemy reestablished diplomatic ties last July 20 years after the end of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.

“There have been numerous complexities with this normalization process,” Grotz said. “We know that in addition to the [Vietnamese] government’s legitimate pursuit for economic assistance and development of economic ties, unfortunately, there are those who would attempt to see classified and proprietary information.”

Grotz cited copyright violations of American property committed in Vietnam as one example of economic espionage allegedly committed with the help of spies. He declined to elaborate on other activities.

*

A spokesman with the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington said Friday that the ads have deeply disturbed the government.

“We find this action of the FBI odd because it doesn’t correspond with the continuous development of U.S.-Vietnam diplomatic relations,” said the spokesman, Chi Pham. “This runs counter to efforts aimed at broadening mutual understanding and promoting cooperation.”

Twenty years after the Communist government took over Vietnam and sent more than 1 million Vietnamese into voluntary exile, the memory is still fresh and painful among emigres who identify themselves as nationalists.

Before the removal of U.S. economic sanctions against Vietnam in 1994 and last year’s restoration of diplomatic ties, dissidents led countless protests against the regime. In earlier years, the emigres branded as Communist anyone who supported diplomacy between the two countries.

The FBI advertisement magnifies the rifts between the community’s major factions: those who believe there should be no communication whatsoever with Vietnam and those who believe that economic changes in their homeland would eventually topple Communism.

Many moderates view the ad as a double-edged sword. They say that on the one hand it might help show new emigres that they should disassociate themselves from the Communist regime, but it also might invite extremists to attack those who disagree with their political views.

“This notice could become a denunciation of people who have nothing to do with spying, but will inadvertently become the victims because someone doesn’t like them,” Westminster Councilman Tony Lam said.

Some anti-Communists, however, see the advertisement as an official stamp of encouragement of their fervor. Indeed, publications and radio stations established for the sole purpose of denouncing communism have taken the liberty of running and airing the ad without consulting the FBI.

“The FBI announcement has been a positive influence in the community,” said Dien Ton, president of the Vietnam Political Detainees Mutual Assn., a support group for former political prisoners. “We feel safer now that the U.S. government has paid attention to the concerns of our community.”

Ton labeled criticism of the advertisement as being “baseless and ridiculous.” People doing so, he added, “must be Communist sympathizers.”