Nguyen Xuan Nghia: "My interview was distorted"

Webmaster's note: “Terror in Little Saigon” featured an interview with economist Nguyen Xuan Nghia, a former ranking member of “the Front.” Several snippets of Nghia speaking are aired on the program, with A.C. Thompson concluding: “Nghia was hard to pin down, but by now I’d seen enough documents and interviewed enough former Front members to know the group had a death squad.”

The webstory published on the websites of Frontline and ProPublica claims that Nghia acknowledged off camera that he “had participated in a Front meeting during which members discussed a plan to assassinate a well-known newspaper editor in Orange County.”

Nguyen Xuan Nghia has strongly disputed the way he was portrayed and quoted by A.C. Thompson. Below is a translation of his interview with Ha Giang, Assistant Editor-in-Chief of Nguoi Viet Daily News, the largest Vietnamese-language newspaper published overseas.

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Nguyen Xuan Nghia: We continue to be victims of American mainstream media

Published Friday, November 6, 2015 on Nguoi Viet

Ha Giang (NV): Can you confirm if your statements in the documentary "Terror in Little Saigon, an Old War comes to a New Country" and the webstory featured on Frontline's website, released on November 3, were accurate?

Nguyen Xuan Nghia: This is U.S. media bull***. It’s distorted and dishonest.

NV: Can you explain further what you mean by distorted and dishonest?

Nguyen Xuan Nghia: They interviewed me three times for a total of four hours. Yet they only featured one minute in the documentary that supported their narrative to deliberately cause misunderstanding. Before the documentary aired, they released a web story with 12,000 words totaling 72 pages in length, and provided some specifically selected images with clearly malicious intentions. For example, my interview cited in the webstory was completely fabricated. This is both unethical and unprofessional.

NV: Just for clarification, did you speak off camera with AC Thompson and his crew stating that you “had participated in a Front meeting during which members discussed a plan to assassinate a well-known newspaper editor in Orange County” as reported in the webstory of "Terror in Little Saigon, an Old War comes to a New Country?"

Nguyen Xuan Nghia: I never said anything about participating in a meeting of the Front where members discussed assassinating the editor of a popular newspaper in Orange County, both during filming and when the camera was off.

NV: Why is there such a discrepancy; and why did they have to meet with you three times for the interview?

Nguyen Xuan Nghia: The reason I said they are unethical and unprofessional is because during our first meeting, AC Thompson said he wanted to produce a documentary about the Vietnamese community after 40 years (since the end of the Vietnam War) that will be aired on PBS in September 2015. After a few minutes of talking, I realized that AC Thompson did not have the intention to ask about our community’s activities; he was more interested in asking me about the Front being suspected of murdering Vietnamese journalists. I reversed the questions and presented bigger unsolved issues, asking why they did not investigate other things like who in the Kennedy administration decided on the fate of President Diem? Who really killed Kennedy or Rev. Martin Luther King? What about the massacres during the Tet Offensive?

The results of that interview must not have satisfied “the required goal,” as the saying goes from people in Hanoi.

NV: And then what happened, Mr. Nghia?

Nguyen Xuan Nghia: So during the second interview, in September, A.C. requested to meet me again to specifically talk about the Front. I agreed, knowing that I have nothing to hide. I explained in depth about the structure of the organization when I was in the Front, discussed how Pham Van Lieu was in charge of overseas activities while Hoang Co Minh was in charge of the resistance base. I spent an hour explaining the role of Pham Van Lieu as head of the Department of Overseas Affairs and its relation to the K9 (webmaster’s note: abbreviation of Khu 9, translated as Region 9) of the Front, which AC Thompson did not use at all in the documentary, nor mention the name of Mr. Lieu. I also talked a lot about Hoang Co Minh, but A.C. Thompson did not use any of this information because what I said did not match with the goal of his film.

NV: What did you say about Hoang Co Minh that they did not use?

Nguyen Xuan Nghia: I talked about Mr. Minh as a person and how he stressed that "when the war is over and there is no army, we should not think in terms of war and armed conflict, but we have to think in terms of a people’s struggle." I also recounted the conversation I had when I first met Mr. Minh, and told the reporter that if there is any part you want to quote me it should be this part: "I asked Mr. Minh in 1984: Do you believe that you will succeed at the work you are doing, and in five years where will you be, what will you be doing? He responded: ‘I do not think I will see Vietnam be free from the Communist regime in my lifetime. But I'd rather die in the jungle for what I believe in than live a life where I have lost my country, exiled and seeking refuge in a foreign land.’ And this was the response that motivated and shaped my cause. So needless to say, regardless of having 10,000 people in the resistance base or even with only three people, I would go with him to the end.”

NV: During your third interview, what did you discuss with the reporter?

Nguyen Xuan Nghia: Let me be clear. My second interview was on September 11, when they suggested I interview "incognito" or "anonymous" - with my face covered and voice distorted - I agreed and said the same thing about Mr. Minh, Mr. Lieu, and the USA, in front of the film crew! Then the day after, A.C. Thompson said his boss was unsatisfied and therefore he had to delay his flight to interview me for the third time on September 13. Once again, I agreed to be interviewed and clearly answered the same as before. However, they didn't use my last two interviews, and only used images and my statements from our very first interview, recorded at my house shortly after the Lunar New Year, at the end of January. They were not happy because I would not bear false witness so they humiliated me.

NV: When you said "It was a dark chapter in my life," what did you mean?

Nguyen Xuan Nghia: When I said, "It was a dark chapter in my life," I was referring to the loss of my country, my life as a refugee, my emotions during that time, my unemployment status, my reasons for joining the Front and all the resistance efforts against the Chinese and the French that failed. But A.C. Thompson twisted my responses and wrote it in a way that misled the readers into thinking I was ashamed of my activism in the Front.

NV: What did you learn from this experience working with the "Terror in Little Saigon” crew?

Nguyen Xuan Nghia: After reading the 72-page web story and watching the film, I conclude that A.C. Thompson is a reporter that lacks professional integrity and his story has ill intentions towards the Vietnamese American community. In the past, the Vietnam War was misrepresented by the American mainstream media, now the entire Vietnamese American community continues to be a victim of the American mainstream media.

NV: Thank you, sir.