A Vietnamese terror group, based in the United States and active in the killing of Vietnamese journalists, was taken to task by a victim’s family member in California.
Nguyen Thanh Tu, the son of a murdered journalist who was also a CIA undercover agent who had penetrated the Vietnam Reform Party in its headquarters in San Jose, urged the American authorities to take action against the group.
Tu, who said his father was the late journalist Dam Phong – who was murdered in front of his home in Texas in 1982 – said Viet Tan has never been officially registered in the United States, has not paid taxes, but has operated as an organisation in the US.
“They said they were representing the Vietnamese American community in the United States… so they used the name to work for what?” asked Nguyen Thanh Tu.
The Vietnamese government last year labelled the group as a terror organisation that has been carrying out terrorist activities to end Communist rule in Vietnam.
Aided by US journalists and the legal support of two big law firms in Washington and New York, Nguyen Thanh Tu said he finally decided to reveal his side of the story on the Viet Tan.
“Viet Tan had used “extremely deceptive” tricks on the Vietnamese community overseas and in the country.
“Again, their actions make it easier for everyone to better understand the vile nature of Viet Tan as they could kill innocents for their own sake,” Tu said.
He emphasised that the murderous nature of Viet Tan should be exposed.
The crimes of the Viet Tan terrorist organisation seem to have been forgotten until Nguyen Thanh Tu’s speech on March 17, 2017, in California.
Viet Tan is accused of a series of sudden deaths among Vietnamese-American journalists which revolved around articles criticising and condemning the operation of this terrorist organisation.
With the killing of his father, Tu became an indirect victim of the movement.
Tu also released that his father was a former CIA agent who had been fighting with Viet Tan since he knew that the terrorist organisation was a fraud on both the US government and the overseas Vietnamese community.
Tu’s approach to justice is about tax issues and with that he meant the US authorities should investigate the actions of the group that has been operating on US soil since the start of its campaign against Vietnam.
He also has former CIA and FBI officers as advisers, he said.
These former US investigators are very supportive of Tu and support the idea that the leaders of Viet Tan must go to jail.
A movie on the murder of the journalists by Viet Tan was produced by Propublica, in cooperation with Frontline and is entitled “Terror in Little Saigon”.
The founder of Viet Tan was Hoang Co Minh ex-vice admiral of Saigon regime before 1975. He established Viet Tan in 1982. The aim was to woo exiled Vietnamese to support the movement against the Communist Party of Vietnam.
Hoang Co Minh and some exiled Vietnamese set up an organization called “National Front for the liberation of Vietnam”.
While some in the West calls it a democratic movement, with the help of some hostile forces, Minh and his followers established “resistance bases” in the mountains of Thailand as a springboard to take weapons and fighters into Vietnam.
In the long run, Viet Tan became a tool of the hostile forces against Vietnam revolutionary during post-war period, launching a “multifaceted sabotage War” and “peace movements” within Vietnam.
Viet Tan also brought counterfeit currency, weapons, drug (cocaine, heroin) into vietnam, in an attempt to corrupt the Vietnamese people. But the schemes failed.
From 1982 to 1989, Viet Tan brought fighters and weapons into Vietnam’s territory, conducted campaigns “Eastward 1”, “Eastward 2”, and “Eastward 3”… through Laos and Cambodia.
However, these plots and plans were soon discovered and stopped by Vietnamese authorities, and Viet Tan could not set up any “secret bases” in Vietnam.
After the mask of the next generation of terrorists like Hoang Co Minh was removed, a number of Viet Tan’s affiliated organizations have been formed such as “Voice, “Viet Labor”, and “Vietnam Human Rights Network”.
Some organizations have been established by Viet Tan acting in the name of civil society organizations such as “Fighters for Democracy”, “Vietnam Blogger Network”, “The Brothers of Democracy”, “Prisoners of Conscience Fund”, and “Mutual Support Society”.
These organizations are formed by Viet Tan with the aim of recruiting people for its movement and more importantly developing projects to raise funds abroad.
However, these organizations have quickly been denounced and warned publicly by the overseas Vietnamese community.