Tom Quach, a Vietnamese who parachuted into North Vietnam as a commando for the CIA, evaded capture for three months and then survived almost 19 years of harsh imprisonment as a spy, died Wednesday in Chamblee, Ga. He was 65.
The cause was lymphoma, said his lawyer, John C. Mattes.
Mr. Quach’s years of imprisonment in North Vietnam under hard labor, starvation and torture were followed by more years of grinding poverty as he and other commandos tried to win U.S. acknowledgment of their services and permission to migrate to the United States.
At the time of his death, he had spent just one year in the United States, living among his countrymen in a small Vietnamese enclave in Chamblee. He was getting closer to receiving payment for his time in prison as a U.S. agent.
Sedgwick Tourison, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who has written about the Vietnamese commandos, said Mr. Quach was recruited into a South Vietnamese commando unit in 1965 and the next year, as a sergeant, was assigned as deputy commander of a team that was parachuted into North Vietnam by the CIA.
The team was assigned to disrupt infiltration by the North Vietnamese into the South, but, Tourison said, “The North Vietnamese Army was aware of the drop and security forces hunted for them.”
Mr. Quach stayed on the run for almost three months in hostile territory before being captured and imprisoned.
Last year, newly declassified United States documents showed that the U.S. had lied to the wives of the commandos and declared them dead.
Tourison is among a small group of Americans who have been trying to get recognition and compensation for the Vietnamese who worked for the United States.
After his release from prison, Mr. Quach “lived in desperate poverty in hovels,” Mattes said.
Mattes has sued in federal courts for compensation for the commandos and has lobbied Congress and the White House for a law that would provide the money. The law has been passed and Mattes is now pressing for the government to carry out its provisions before commandos like Mr. Quach die.
