Tiger in the Barbed Wire

The author was one of the few Americans whose career in Saigon spanned the French and American eras; he served first as a press officer with the U.S. Information Agency, then as press adviser to South Vietnamese ?/fine.gs premier Ngo Dinh Diem and prime minister Nguyen Khanh. With verve, wit and an engaging readiness to admit mistakes, he evokes the exotic pre-Westmoreland years and the growing French resentment of the muscling-in Amerloques' ``dangerous tendency toward criminal naivete.'' Simpson visited the French fortress of Dien Bien Phu before it fell to the Vietminh, toured villages with Khanh (the inhabitants, he reports, were ``alternately wooed and punished'' by the Saigon government and the Vietcong) and became part of the seething intrigue that characterized the difficult transition from the French to the American ``military assistance command'' mission. His memoir sheds new light on the inner workings of the Joint U.S. Public Affairs Office, which was essentially the American ministry of information and propaganda in Saigon. Simpson retired from the foreign service in 1971 to become a novelist ( The Jumpmaster ), returning to Vietnam in 1991 as a journalist to obtain an unusually revealing interview with the legendary North Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap, which is included here. (May)