Ẩn's father was a high-level engineer of the Public Administration Department, but his family's service to France did not earn them French citizenship.
[3] When the August Revolution began against the French government, Ẩn left school and joined the Volunteer Youth Organisation.
When the United States entered the Vietnam War, Ẩn was hired as a journalist and correspondent for Time, Reuters and the New York Herald Tribune, stationed in Saigon.
[4] During the fall of Saigon evacuations, Ẩn obtained transport for his wife and four children to the United States; it was provided by Time.
He claimed to have passed information periodically through secret meetings in the Ho Bo Woods near Saigon during the Vietnam War and said that only a handful of NLF fighters knew about his identity as a spy.
Safer writes that Ẩn was close with such noted journalists as Charles Mohr, Frank McCulloch, David Greenway, Richard Clurman, Bob Shaplen, and Nguyen Hung Vuong.
Safer noted Arnaud de Borchgrave testified in 1981 before Senator Jeremiah Denton's subcommittee that Ẩn had a "mission" to "disinform the Western press".
Ẩn also described his opinion of the "paternalism and a discredited economy theory" being used by the Vietnamese leadership that had led to the failure of the revolution to help "the people.