Praise Now Muted for Refugee Who Staged 1-Man Invasion of Vietnam

They don’t call him Vietnam’s James Bond for nothing.

Six years ago, Vietnamese refugee Ly Tong literally leaped to fame over Ho Chi Minh City’s skies. Flying from Bangkok to Vietnam, he amiably summoned a flight attendant as they neared the former Saigon. Then he slung a rope around her neck, declared he had a bomb (a bluff) and forced the pilot to fly low above the city. Flinging 50,000 leaflets ahead of him, Tong wriggled through the cockpit window and parachuted into Vietnam. The leaflets that rained around him said he meant to vanquish communism.

Things didn’t happen quite as Tong planned. True, among U.S. emigres, he became an instant folk hero. On the ground in Vietnam, though, police snared him within hours. Tried before the People’s Supreme Court, he was sentenced to two decades in prison. Then, in September, under an amnesty officially honoring Vietnam’s national holiday, Tong and thousands of other prisoners were suddenly freed.

A Penchant for the Theatrical

Last month--thinner, more mellow, but still theatrical--Ly Tong came home. Taking a victory lap across the United States, he’s now visiting Vietnamese enclaves from Orange County to New York, thanking them for their support. But something has changed. In Orange County, an adoring audience of more than 600 turned out to see him. But in Houston and New Orleans, where he now lives, the crowds, word of mouth and buzz in emigre papers were muffled.

Tong’s reception mirrors the growing political complexity in the Vietnamese American community, estimated at 1 million people. For many who arrived here after the 1975 fall of Saigon, Tong always will be a legend. In the interim, though, a younger, less politicized generation has come of age for whom he is irrelevant. Many of their parents also have mellowed; years in the West and the demands of surviving a new culture have helped dull the passion to retake Vietnam.

“I think people are beginning to have a more clear picture about Ly Tong,” says Yen Do, editor of the Westminster newspaper Nguoi Viet. “It’s of a mixed personality: both a hero and, at the same time, a troublemaker.”

Feted recently at a New Orleans restaurant, the lanky, debonair Tong hardly looks like he just spent years in prison. Surrounded by South Vietnamese air force veterans, he’s in his element: center stage, petitioned constantly for handshakes. At 50, Tong seems much younger than his cohorts. His inky hair is bound into a ponytail; his pale, close-shaven skin appears to glow. He is the only man tonight whose jacket is casually unbuttoned.

Like nearly everyone at the restaurant, Tong is a former air force pilot. Patriotism ran in his family: His father, a prosperous landowner and resistance leader, was killed during the war for independence against the French when Tong was 2. Tong’s mother, a beauty who married three times, died in 1979. Tong himself is single and nurtures a Lothario image, detailing numerous romances in his autobiography, “‘Black Eagle.”

That book also outlined his first moment of fame: a 1980 breakout from a Vietnamese labor camp where he was imprisoned just at the war’s end. After a 17-month odyssey, Tong reached Malaysia, where he swam the Johore Strait to Singapore. There, still dripping, he caught a cab to the U.S. Embassy and gained asylum.

The tale brought Tong his first sip of celebrity. Once in the United States, though, he had to start again. Working as a security guard, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of New Orleans, using English polished during pilot training in the United States. But professors deemed his doctoral thesis in political science unready for defense and sent it back for revision.

That was the year Tong planned his one-man invasion. He hoped, he says, to lead an uprising. Instead, Vietnamese authorities caught him almost immediately and threw him in prison.

Tong says the ponytail he wears symbolizes his rebellion at that time. “The regulations in the communist prison camp said no mustache, no long hair. I refused to cut my hair, a protest. The chief of the prison came to see me. He said, ‘The barber I sent to you, maybe you don’t think he’s good enough. Maybe I can do it better.’

“I told him, ‘You can cut my neck, but you cannot cut my ponytail!’ ” The prison chief, Tong says, let him keep the hair, probably because authorities had no wish for a celebrity-martyr. True or not, the ponytail episode is the signature of Tong’s return. At his lectures, audiences receive complimentary Ly Tong portraits, long hair flying. At the bottom they read: “You can cut my neck, but you can never cut my hair.”

The ‘Black Eagle’s’ Image Soars, Dives

With its theater and symbolism, the whole invasion saga still enthralls many Vietnamese immigrants. “If one person lights a fire in a very dark night, at least somebody can see it,” explains Cao My Nguyen, a leader in Houston’s Vietnamese community. “People may say that the first person who builds the fire is crazy--a small fire can go out very quickly. But at least you have somebody who built the fire.”

For others, though, Tong’s quest for attention only grates.

In part, explains Quang Nguyen, publisher of Santa Ana’s Far Eastern Daily, it’s because Vietnamese traditionally prize privacy and disdain self-promotion.

“He always had to do things differently from the way normal people did things,” one contemporary recalls sourly. “When we were in school and we’d have parties, we would run out of money. He’d show up and throw $500 on the table.”

Tong inspired similar ire and admiration back in 1992. Then, however, “Ly Tong fever” overpowered the criticism. Vietnamese in Houston still recall the magazine that devoted a whole issue to Ly Tong odes. In California, a radio station scheduled daily readings from “Black Eagle.”

As Tong meets his countrymen this fall, though, the mixed feelings are clear. On one hand, during his visit to Orange County, he seemed more popular than ever, Do says. Do thinks it’s because “California is the land of Hollywood, the land of imagination,” and more receptive to a cinematic figure like Tong.

But in Houston and New Orleans, the crowds were more sparse. Only about 50 people turned out at his New Orleans lecture.

Though few speak out publicly, Gulf Coast Vietnamese say gripes and rumors--about everything from Tong’s finances to doubts about what he really achieved--have flourished in the region. “I think a lot of people are questioning, not his motives, but the results,” Houston therapist Hanh Vo says. “When they found it was just a solo act, and he was by himself with no backup, once again they had their hopes aroused and all of that was deflated.”

The world is different, too, since Ly Tong flew off. In 1995, the United States normalized relations with Vietnam. The rapprochement, and Vietnam’s push for increased trade with the United States, probably sparked the amnesty under which Tong was released.

Though not everybody knows it, Tong has also changed. Tentatively, he admits when questioned that he supports normalization. “At first I opposed it, because legalizing the Communist regime is a bad thing. But later on I see there’s some good,” because the United States now can effectively press Vietnam to change.

Regardless of the reasons, Tong seems exquisitely aware of changes in his image. He can’t stop mentioning, for instance, a former professor who recently called him a terrorist. “I’m not a terrorist; I am a freedom fighter,” he insists.

His Future a Mystery

People should know, he says, that he brought the flight attendant flowers when he saw her at his trial. And before hurling himself from the plane, Tong wrote a note apologizing extravagantly for the disruption. These are stories he will repeat coast to coast until February. His travel financed by the communities he’s visiting, Tong reckons he’ll be on the road once a week. In his downtime, he plans to update his thesis and write a book, living off loans and gifts.

After that? “I don’t know at this time,” he says. “I am strong enough physically, intellectually and spiritually that I can do something to fight against the enemy of my people.”

To air force veteran Lang Pham, Tong’s brand of activism belongs to the past. Pham, who recently visited his family in Vietnam, says, “I may be wrong, but this is the impression I got: It looked normal to me. People over there were hurt so badly, they have to rest. I don’t want to start another war.”

Nevertheless, Pham, a New Orleans plane mechanic, takes the night off to welcome Tong home. Near midnight, ballads playing over the stereo, Pham signs his name and “$50” to a list of no-strings-attached gifts for Tong.

As Tong, still center stage, waltzes slowly on the dance floor with one of the few female guests, Pham explains why he came despite ambivalence--and why he gave. Tong represents an identity many immigrants still crave, Pham thinks--daring, unencumbered, a traveler to the unquiet past.

“A lot of people here still want to do something” to retake Vietnam, Pham says. “It’s locked into them like a computer. But life here is so different. We have to make a living, educate ourselves, take care of our families.”