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Biography
Vũ Ngọc Nhạ (Thái Bình, 3 March 1928 - Ho Chi Minh City, 7 August 2002) was a Vietnamese communist spy who served as an advisor to South Vietnamese presidents Ngô Đình Diệm and Nguyễn Văn Thiệu.
Nhạ served with the Viet Minh during French-Indochina War, and transferred South after the Geneva Accord in 1954. In Vũng Tàu, Nhạ met Hoàng Quyền, an anti-communist priest who recommended him to the Ngo brothers. He served on the presidential staff from 1957 until 1969. In 1968, Nha warned the communists that the U.S. planned to curtail the annual Tết ceasefire. During the Tet offensive he opened presidential wine cellar so that the palace guards would become drunk. Assuming that the wine was distributed to improve morale, Thieu commended Nha when he returned to the palace a few days later. In 1969, a probe by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency exposed Nha as a spy. He was handed over to North Vietnam in 1973 as part of a prisoner exchange. His story received little attention at the time and is known mainly from the book Ông cố vấn (The Advisor) by Hữu Mai, which was published in 1989.