Hanoi sending spies with ‘boat people’— paper

Press, 27 August 1979, Page 8

Hanoi sending spies with ‘boat people’— paper

NZPA Chicago i Vietnamese posing as “boat people” have infiltrated the United States and other countries taking in Indo-Chinese refugees as part of a scheme to set up spy networks, the “Chicago Tribune” has reported. The newspaper quotes refugees in camps in Indonesia and European and American intelligence sources as saying Vietnamese infiltrators have been aboard nearly every boat that has left Vietnam in the past six months. Many boat people have identified the agents, and in some cases the agents have revealed their own identity, the newspaper says. But in most cases refugees have feared reprisals if they inform on the spies. The newspaper, in a dispatch from Kija, Indonesia, says that both a doctor in the ; refugee camp at Umggat and a leader of the camp at Kijan told of the alleged plot to de-

ivelop an intelligence net-, work. The newspaper quotes what I it describes as an intelligence i source in Singapore as saying American authorities apparently have decided to let some 200 to 300 agents enter the United States. “The best way to handle this is to let them come in, watch them, and then pick up the whole nation-wide ring,” the source is quoted as saying. “Please warn the American people that every boat coming out of Vietnam has at least one agent on board.” said Hoang Cho Bang, a doctor who spent 30 months in a Communist concentration camp. He was released in early 1978 and fled the country in March after becoming a surgeon at a hospital in Ho Chi Minh City. Mr Bang and a camp leader, Nguyen Kyo Dong, have identified infiltrators in their camps for United States

officials, the newspaper says. Mr Dong said some infiltrators demanded money and sometimes ordered Vietnamese to co-operate with them. .

“People in this camp have come to me with stories about relatives in America who have been told their families in Vietnam will be executed if they don’t do what they are told. “So even though they have risked their lives to escape oppression in Vietnam, they find the oppression has followed them.” The “Tribune” says the leader of a refugee camp at Kawal in . Indonesia, about 160 km south of Singapore, was positively identified by the United States Refugee Office and by Vietnamese refugees as being a Communist agent, but has retained his power by threatening reprisals against relatives of refugees both in the United States and in Vietnam.