Apologies if my snarky tone led you to interpret it in that fashion. My main intent was to mock Moyar's unironic belief in the effectiveness of Madam Nhu's Social Purification Law, of a piece with his generally unskeptical attitude toward many of Diem's policies.
Moyar says that Pham influenced journalists like Karnow, Halberstam, and Sheehan, whom he largely blames for Diem's downfall, in an anti-Diem direction without providing any evidence except that Pham was a Communist agent. That Pham might have acted in the opposite direction to preserve his more important mission as intel operative and analyst is not credited or discussed. See pg. 215 of Moyar.Because his main mission was not as a propoganda officer, you think Moyar should take his communications at face value? Where does Moyar say that Pham behaved stupidly enough that SVN intelligence should have suspected him?
Skimming over a bit more of pg. 215, I also see that Moyar apparently believes that Confucianism is a religion, that being a member of the Confucian "religion" means one cannot be a Buddhist or harbor Buddhist beliefs, and that Vietnamese peasants approved of governments that crushed public demonstrations with force.
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