There are factual errors in all of the Senator's statements, but that is only part of the story. To understand Senator's Ngo's public statements we have to look beyond the simple factual errors.
The Senator is an educated man who worked as a press attache for the Saigon military government. He is very good at crafting statements that convey desired political messages in an artful and compact manner.
Today he is still playing that role -- as spokesperson for the Saigon political and military elite. All of his public statements are made entirely from the perspective --- as a member of and spokesperson for that elite group.
To do his job, he has to address three different audiences with three different messages. He demonstrates great skill in crafting statements that simultaneously convey different messages to each of the audiences.
His three audiences are:
Canadian politicians, who he must convince to recognize the legitimacy and benevolence of the Saigon government.
ARVN associates, to whom he must demonstrate that he is having success with the Canadian government and gaining government support for the ARVN.
The Vietnamese Canadian community who, in order to accomplish his other two goals, he must convince that they have no legitimate right to be represented.
The Senator's skill is demonstrated in the fact that he is accomplishing all three goals.
He has only one central message: The legitimate refugees came from Saigon, implying that they were all on the same side in the Vietnam war. Anyone else is less than legitimate.
We have chosen only a few of the Senator's statements for analysis. Because there is so much consistency in his statements, more analysis would be repetitive.
We have also chosen statements that he has made in parliament because reliable transcripts are available and because the statements, being given under strict time constraints, are compressed.
A "fact check" more often that not consists of filling in what the Senator did not say because he was leaving it to his various audiences to each make their own interpretation. He gives them clues as to what they are do fill in, and only occasionally makes an outright error of fact.
The Senator organizes many other sorts of communications activities, and we have covered those elsewhere on the web site (we will itemize them here shortly).