WHEN HO CHI MINH WAS AN INTELLIGENCE AGENT FOR THE U.S.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100100053-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 2, 2011
• Sequence Number: 53
• Publication Date: March 18, 1973
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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'STAT
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Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/03/02 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100100053-4
WASHINGTON POST PARADE MAGAZINE
18 March 1973
DUBLIN, IRELAND:
harles Fenn, an American intelli-
gence agent who had worked for
` The Associated Press in China and
India, recruited the kind, bearded
old gentleman towards the end of
World War II. Fenn recruited him in
the Indochina cafe on Chin-Pi Street in
Kunming, China, in March, 1945.
The gentleman, then 55, lived in a
small, dank room above a candle shop.
,He wore Chinese-type cotton trousers
and jacket and spent most of his, spare
time in "The American Office of War
Information, where he read everything
from Time magazine to the Encyclo-
pedia Americana."
Fenn gave him the code name Lucius
and agreed to supply him with radio
equipment, a radio operator, arms and
medical supplies.
In return, Lucius and his band of Viet-
nam guerrillas agreed to fight the com-
mon enemy,'Japan, to rescue American
airmen who were shot down in Indo-
china, and to provide the Americans
with the latest intelligence. As part of
the deal Lucius also asked to meet Gen.
Claire Chennault. then commanding
the U.S. 14th Air Force in China.
One photo, six
At the meeting Lucius
dipton,atic and said he
by Lloyd Shearer .
Pistols
was gracious,
%vanted only
one favor from the American general,
an autographed photo. Chennault was
only loo happy to comply. Later, Lucius
asked Charles Fenn (or one further
favor: "Six new Colt .4S automatic pis-
tols in their original wrappings."
With Chennault's autographed photo
and the six .45's, Lucius was able to be-
come the leader of the Vietminh and
to help rescue 17 American airmen.
In August, 1945, when the Americans
dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Lucius wrote a final let-
ter to Charles Fenn.
"The war is finished," he wrote in
English. "it is good for everybody. I
feet only sorry that our American
friends have to leave us so soon. And
their leaving this country means that
relations between you and us will be
more difficult.
"The war is won. But we small Coun-
tries and subject countries have no
,hare, or very small share, we have still
to fight. 1 believe that your sympaty
(sic) and the sympaty of the great Amer-
ican people will always he with its.
"I also remain .sure that sooner or
later, we will attain our aim. because it
is just. And our country get indepen-
dent. I am looking forward for the happy
day of meeting you and our other
American friends in Indochina or in the
U.S.A.!"
Lucius was Ho Chi Minh, the Com-
munist father of Vietnam, who died in
1969 and never lived to see his country
united or at. peace.
Funs artists colony
Fenn, 65, who now runs an artists
colony in Schull, a fishing village of 500
in County Cork, Ireland, tells how he
first recruited "Uncle Flo" into the U.S.
intelli;;cnr:e network, how I to operated
behind the lines, how he was com-
pelled. to fight on against the French
and later, the Americans.
It's all in his worthy, objective, re-
vealing hook, Ho Chi Minh, whit
Scribner's plans to publish within the
next few months.
"The first time I met Ho," Fenn re-
calls, "was on March 17, 1945, in the
Office of War Information in Kunming
China. I kept a diary-extracts ar
printed in my book-which is why I'rT_
so exact about the date.
"Back then I was an agent for OSS,
the Office of Strategic Services. which
was later to become the Central Intel-
ligence Agency. My assignment was to.
work with another intelligence group
operating in Indochina, a group known
as GBT, from the initials of three Allied
civilians, formerly employed by an oil
company in Saigon. These three were
L. L. Gordon,a Canadian; Harry Bernard,
an American, and Frank Tana Chinese-
American. They had superb French con-
tacts and supplied the Allies with the
best intelligence on Vietnam until the
Japanese wiped out their French con-
tacts. I was then ordered to replace
those contacts with a Vietnamese net-
work of agents.
"Kunming in early 1945," Fenn nar-
rates, "was filled with Vietnamese-
they were called Annamites-but we
had been warned not to use them' since
no one seemed to know which of them
were reliable and which were not.
"An officer I knew in AGAS, still another
operational U.S. intelligence agency (Air
Ground Aid Services), told one there was an
old Annamite in Kunming who had rescued
an American pilot downed in, Vietnam, a
Lieut. Shaw, and who also controlled a
rather large political group in Vietnam.
Wanted recogni#:on
"A r6eeting was arranged, and Ho came
with a young associate named Fam. Ho
wasn't at all what I expected. Fle had a sil-
very wisp of a beard, which gave him the ap-
pearance of an elder, but his eyes were
bright and alert and all his movements were
vigorous. We spoke in French. He told me
that what he wanted from the Americans
was recognition of his group, the Vietminh
or the League of Independence, something
which some of our OSS rnen had previously
denied him.
"I remember asking Flo if his Vietminh
group was Communist, and he said the
French called all Vietnamese v:ho wanted
their independence, Communists. I told hire
something about our work and asked if he
would he interested in providing; us with
intelligence on Japanese niovcnsents. He
IF Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/03/02 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100100053-4