M.P.s ‘misled’ by Hanoi, says spy-trial cable

Press, 5 June 1978, Page 7

M.P.s ‘misled’ by Hanoi, says spy-trial cable

NZPA staff correspondent Washington

Two National M.P.s who visited Hanoi last year “more or less accepted as fact” what the Vietnamese told them, according to a confidential cablegram to the State Department from the United States Ambassador to Thailand (Mr C. S. Whitehouse). The cablegram, on the visit by Messrs W. F. Birch (Franklin) and B. E. Brill (Kapiti), and two others on the same subject from the United States Embassy in Wellington, were part of the Federal Government’s evidence in an espionage and conspiracy trial against two men in Washington recently. Ronald Humphrey and David Truong were convicted of charges of spying for the Communist Government of Vietnam.

The cablegrams on Messrs Birch and Brill were among documents passed to the Vietnamese by Humphrey and Truong.

A sentencing date for the two men has not yet been set but defence attorneys have said that they will appeal against the verdict. Humphrey, aged 42, is a former United States Information Service employee. Truong, aged 32, is a Vietnamese student.

It is believed that the New Zealand Government was aware that the cablegrams about Messrs Birch and Brill were to be used as evidence but it is not known whether it tried to dissuade American authorities from using them. The cablegrams contain nothing particularly sensitive but reveal the'sort of material American Foreign Service officers abroad file on conversations with New Zealanders. They also disclose that New Zealand’s Ambassador in Bangkok (Mr R. B. Taylor) was concerned enough about what Messrs Birch and Brill had been told in Hanoi to arrange a meeting for them with the Thai Foreign Minister (Mr Uppadit Pachariyangkun >. The two members of Parliament were in the Hanoi area from February 7 to 12, 1977.

In his cablegram to Washington, also sent to American posts in Hong Kong, Paris, Peking, Vientiane, Wellington and to the Commander in Chief

United States Forces, Honolulu, Mr Whitehouse said that the New Zealand Ambassador had “arranged meeting out of concern over Vietnamese remarks about renewed American military presence in Thailand.” After the M.P.s had described their conversations in Hanoi Uppadit apparently quickly diss abused them of the talk that American troops had returned (“outdated nonsense”).

The M.P. had passed on Vietnamese assurances that Vietnam had no ambitions to exercise hegemony and would not use military resources to assist insurgents.

Uppadit replied by citing areas of Vietnamese support of the Thai insurgents which he said was hardly a good-neighbour policy ...

When the M.P. had observed that the West might play a greater role in Vietnamese reconstruction, Mr Uppadit had said with “some vehemence” that such aid should not be at the expense of aid to Thailand and other A.S.E.A.N. nations.

I f Vietnam was strengthened economically it would pose an even greater military threat to neighbours.

“When first the New Zealand Ambassador and then Uppadit informed them that they had been misled concerning American presence in Thailand they were genuinely surprised if not shaken, according to New Zealand Embassy personnel, to the extent that, by the time they departed here, their confidence that they had been told the truth in Hanoi on other matters was finished,” said Mr Whitehouse. An account by the United States Ambassador to New Zealand (Mr A. Selden) of talks with Messrs Birch and Brill on February 23 contained no reference to a renewed American military presence in Thailand. Mr Selden said that the most noteworthy information from the two men was a statement to the New Zealanders in Hanoi that Vietnam would welcome an American Ambassador in Hanoi “tomorrow.”

“This statement was in line with a general impression Birch picked up

from numerous conversations in Vietnam that the Government is uneasy about having a lopsided Communist presence in the country. “A countervailing Western presence (to the Soviet, Chinese, Cuban and other Communist diplomats) would make the North Vietnamese Government more comfortable.”

In Wellington, Mr Birch said that he and Mr Brill had simply reported to the New Zealand Ambassador in Bangkok what they had been told by senior Vietnamese officials. “We were the first Western parliamentary delegation to visit Vietnam since the war and so there was quite a lot of interest in our visit.

“We did not make any judgment on what we had been told, and I distinctly recall saying that Only time will tell whether what we were told would prove true.” The background to the United States Government’s case in the spy trial was that Humphrey met and fell in love with a woman named Kim in Vietnam and became obsessed with getting her and her children out of the country after the Saigon regime’ fell.

Humphrey met Truong, an activist in Washington for reconciliation between the United States and the Communist Vietnamese governments, while he was working at the United States Information Service, with access to classified files.

The Federal Court jury heard evidence that Truong helped Humphrey in his attempts to rescue his ‘‘second family” and that Humphrey began giving Truong copies of classified cablegrams. The prosecution charged that Truong had prepared packages of the cablegrams and other documents and had sent them to Vietnamese intelligence officers in Paris by a female Vietnamese ctfurier named Dung Krall.

Krall turned out to be working for the C.I.A. and showed al] the cablegrams to the F. 8.1. before they were taken to Paris.

The F. 8.1. was given permission by President Carter and the AttorneyGeneral (Mr G. Bell) to tap Truong’s telephone, bug his apartment and search some of the packages without warrant.