FRESNO — The FBI will investigate the attempted assassination of Vietnamese author Doan Van Toai, who reportedly had received death threats at his home several weeks after writing a controversial magazine article that called for the United States to establish diplomatic ties with Vietnam.
Toai, who was shot three times as he was walking home Saturday, had informed the FBI about threats including a mailed warning accompanied by a bullet, sources within the Fresno Vietnamese community said.
A Fresno County Sheriff's Department spokesman declined Sunday to comment on reports of recent death threats but said the FBI decided to intervene in the case at the request of the family.
Toai, who remained in serious condition Sunday at Valley Medical Center in Fresno, has long been a controversial figure because of his actions during the Vietnam War and his writing since.
Through his books "The Vietnamese Gulag" and "Portrait of the Enemy," co-written with David Chanoff, and his magazine, Toai in recent years has advocated restoring ties with Vietnam to deliver humanitarian aid to the people. In a 1986 interview with The Times, he said that an article he wrote exposing alleged fraud by an anti-Communist group provoked death threats.
Family Threatened
"I wrote an article in the Los Angeles Times saying these people who want to fight the Communist government are collecting money for that cause but are actually using the money for themselves," Toai said then. "The group that I wrote about in 1982 was overwhelmingly supported by the refugee community in Los Angeles.
"The group threatened to kill my whole family after the story ran," Toai said.
An associate blamed the attempt on Toai's life on a mistranslation of something Toai had written recently in his newsletter about reeducation camps and resettlement. "Due to that mistranslation we received a lot of tension, the community (became) upset," said the associate, Vinh Ngo.
Fresno police said Toai was shot about half a mile from his home in an upper-middle-class section of northern Fresno. He had dropped his car off shortly before 9 a.m. at a service station, shopped and was walking home when he was intercepted.
He was hit three times--once in the head and twice in the body--at close range by gunfire from an automatic pistol, authorities said. Witnesses told police the shots came from a dirty brown Pontiac station wagon carrying two Asian men.
