Nguyễn Tiến Hưng

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dr. Nguyễn Tiến Hưng (born 1935 in Thanh Hoa, Vietnam), was Minister of Economic Development and Planning of Republic of Vietnam and one of President Nguyen Van Thieu's closest advisers. Now he is Professor of Economics at Howard University in Washington D.C. and director of the Indochina Center at George Mason University in Virginia.

Together with Jerrold L. Schecter, Time magazine's White House correspondent and then its diplomatic editor from 1971 to 1975, Nguyen wrote best seller The Palace File (Illustrated. 542 pp. New York: Harper & Row, 1986), provides significant new data on United States relations with South Vietnam from 1968 to 1975 during the Vietnam war.

In 2005, he wrote the following book in vietnamese : Khi Dong Minh Thao Chay ("When your ally cuts and runs").

[edit] Reviews

From Library Journal

This book (The Palace File) offers a fresh perspective on the Vietnam War and strikingly new documentation, both of which derive from co-author Hung's unique vantage point. A U.S.-trained economist, Hung served as special assistant to South Vietnamese President Thieu. In that capacity he gained access to a file of 31 letters from Presidents Nixon and Ford to the Vietnamese leader. Schecter, a Time editor, has assisted Hung in using this "palace file" of previously unpublished documents as the basis of a powerful critique of U.S. policy, especially the failure of the United States to live up to commitments to sustain South Vietnam after the Paris Peace Accords. Absorbing reading for a scholarly audience and informed laypersons; this will become a standard, if controversial, source. John H. Boyle, History Dept., California State Univ., Chico, Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New York Times

Curiously, friends of America are more apt to take him at his word than enemies, who hope for a repudiation of his position.

The Palace File by Nguyen Thieu Hung and Jerrold L. Schecter dramatically demonstrates this situation. In 1973, President Nixon gave the most explicit -and sincere - assurances to President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam that the United States would react with full force if North Vietnam violated the peace treaty that Mr. Nixon was forcing Mr. Thieu to accept. But in the next trial of strength, Hanoi's full-scale invasion of 1975, the American bombers did not fly and American logistics were withheld. A new President was in office, a new Congress had been elected, and the American people had turned against the war. Summer Reading; Read and Run: A Cram Course for the Presidency, The New York Times, June 5, 1988.