Despite his outside appearance as a sloppy, weird and strange unstable man, there is evidence that Ky Ngo, that perennial protestor against everything, knows what he’s doing and knows how to do it right.

When he was leading the protests against Nguoi Viet Daily News, Ky Ngo for all his vulgarities cleverly managed to stay just on this side of the line. It was neophyte Trong Doan, the man with no known history, who was prosecuted for assault and pleaded guilty — not Ngo.

And as soon as he lost the lawsuit filed by Nguoi Viet, Ngo knew enough not to violate the injunction, despite the name-calling (coward, traitor, etc.) by fellow Red baiters.

And now here’s another piece of evidence that Ky Ngo knows how to take care of business.

See that car above? That’s one of his 3 cars. For many months – more than a year now - it’s been parked across the street from Viet Herald, a Vietnamese daily newspaper in Westminster. And the reason the car is there, is because at one time a columnist at Viet Herald said something unflattering about South Vietnam’s former president Nguyen Van Thieu.

The picture was taken several months ago. That banner’s gone now. Only the car remains.

But, look at this. Even though the car is as good as abandoned, Ky Ngo still cares enough to pay its registration, and get it new tag to last until January of next year.

Presumably, if Ky Ngo had wanted the car towed he would have said so.

That’s a far fall for a man who came out of nowhere to become a leader of two major protest campaigns, and who even was convicted of assault and battery for the cause.

Apparently that was then and this is, well, not then.

Back then, Trong Doan led the protest against the Viet Weekly magazine, and moved on to lead the protest against Nguoi Viet Daily News. He was one of three defendants named in a lawsuit by Nguoi Viet, which he lost, and which made him now subject of a permanent injunction against messing with the newspaper.

He was also the defendant in a criminal case arising out of pushing and shoving a Nguoi Viet reporter (now an editor at Viet Herald).

But that was all history. The protestors against Viet Weekly capitulated, and several of the protest leaders, including Assemblyman Van Tran‘s henchman Hung Phuong Nguyen and Trong Doan, now work for Viet Weekly.

The protest against Nguoi Viet fizzled out, and in fact of the three named defendants in the lawsuit, Doan was the second to stop showing up.

It is in Doan’s current position as Viet Weekly reporter that his former friends boycotted him.

They accused him of coming to events and asking questions that exploit personal conflicts blah blah – in general, off-topic and weird. Which is what he does. All the time. But apparently they’ve only now noticed.

What they were most pissed about, though, was that Doan supported the concert they were protesting.

And we all know that if you’re not with the protestors, then you’re a commie. So now Mr. Big Shot Red-baiter is a commie.

Officially, the protest organizers on Thursday called on all community groups to boycott Trong Doan (plus two others, including one Nguoi Viet reporter) and have no contact, no interviews, no advertising, no photos, and no admission into their events.

Read the statement in two pages of Vietnamese, dated the day before it’s proclaimed, here and here.

Well, Doan is still as mysterious as ever, but now he’s also just plain weird.

The Bolsavik has been told about it before – that Doan would show up at some community event, and if the event doesn’t involve protesting, he’d wait for the Q&A session, come up to the microphone, say something totally strange, totally bizarre, and then leave.

That’s what the Bolsavik has been told, but didn’t witness it until last Saturday.

So the scene is the Bowers Museum, and the Vietnamese Strategic Venture Network was having a film event.

The VSVN is an association of entrepreneurs and business people, and they had put together a panel of filmmakers to discuss the business of making movies.

Apparently, VSVN does things like this all the time, looking into new areas of investment and such.

(BTW, in the photo above, that’s Cung Le the MMA champion standing there with the mike; that’s also his picture in the poster to the right.)

So they had their event and Trong Doan got in by using his credentials as a reporter for Viet Weekly.

When the time came for Q&A, sure enough Doan went up and said two strange things.

First, he complained that he, as a member of the press, was not “invited” (his word) to the event.

And then, seeing actress Kieu Chinh (Joy Luck Club, Journey from the Fall) on the panel, Doan tossed an insult at her. He said, “Why’s Kieu Chinh in every Vietnamese film? Don’t we have any other talent? Why Kieu Chinh all the time?”

And then he left.

As the Bolsavik said – this Trong Doan character sure is weird.

Soon-to-be placed in “round black filing system”

The Nguoi Viet lawsuit never went into its damages phase because the protestors threw in the towel.

On Wednesday morning when the damages phase was supposed to begin, Ky Ngo, Trong Doan and Cung Tran (in Vietnamese: Ngô Kỷ, Đoàn Trọng, Trần Thế Cung) resumed settlement talk instead of having to hear evidence of how destructive they’ve been.

The parties arrived at a stipulated judgment whereby the protestors promised they would pack up and go home.

This is not at all surprising to the Bolsavik, who has said at least twice before (here and here) that Ky Ngo and his gang are showing signs of fatigue.

It seems that the protestors would rather be found liable, so they can say “We were oppressed” and conveniently go home without looking like they’ve surrendered.

No more Ky Ngo.

No more yellow trucks.

The Bolsavik is missing them already.

Ky Ngo, Trong Doan and Cung The Tran (in Vietnamese: Ngô Kỷ, Đoàn Trọng, Trần Thế Cung) — all of whom deny being the leaders of what they term the “spontaneous” protest, were found liable after just a few hours of jury deliberation. (Ky Ngo, in particular, uses the term “spontaneous protest” – “biểu tình tự phát” in Vietnamese – so often that he even takes to employing the abbreviation ”BTTP” in his emails.)

Ngo, Doan and Tran were all found liable for interference with business and for nuisance. Ngo and Doan were in addition found liable for trespass.

For the first few days of trial, Cung The Tran came to court on crutches. Perhaps expecting a favorable outcome, Tran walked in unaided today to the jury’s verdict reading.

The Bolsavik’s query: Which of the three yellow-painted cars will Ky Ngo claim exemption from seizure resulting from the judgment?

Proving that it too can game the proposed pedestrian bridge across Bolsa Avenue, the Westminster City Council last night voted 4-0 to “receive and file” the county’s proposal, thus effectively killing it, as OC Supervisor Janet Nguyen has stated that the money would go to the next project on the list if the proposal is not acted on before, well, today.

Now, why were there only 4 votes? Because Councilman Tri Ta dodged the bullet again. As the county’s proposal states only generally that the bridge is to be located on Bolsa, between Magnolia and Bushard, Ta was able to recuse himself. State law provides that city council members are not to participate or vote on any project within 500 feet from their home, and Ta lives within a few hundred feet of the corner of Bolsa and Bushard.

But what proves the City Council of Westminster is too smart by half, is that they never put the bridge proposal to a vote — which would have produced four NO’s. Nope, that would be bad. Instead, they made a motion to “receive and file” the proposal (the parliamentarian way of saying, “thank you for stopping by; we’ll let you know” – which in turn is the business way of mumbling ”yeah yeah” while still watching TV).

With that motion, the council happily produced four “YES” votes, which confused the heck out of the pro-”Freedom Bridge” crowd, which applauded and left the room all giddy and never realized what they didn’t get until they were already in the parking lot.

But what’s interesting was that last night’s council meeting attracted the cream of the crop of Bolsavikland newsmakers of 2008. Look who was there:

* The organizer of the protests against Viet Weekly was there.

* As were two lead protesters against Nguoi Viet.

Assemblyman Van Tran‘s PR man Hung Phuong Nguyen was in the audience (photo left). Hung Nguyen is the controlling figure in the Committee Against Resolution 36 (in Vietnamese: Lien Uy Ban Chong Nghi Quyet 36), the entity that started and led the year-long protest in Garden Grove. For ending that protest, Hung received a plaque from the city, which he proudly emailed to every Joe and his brother.

Hung was at the Westminster City Council meeting to receive another plaque for the Tet parade along Bolsa and left afterwards, but not before giving the Bolsavik a copy of a letter he had sent to the City Council outlining 8 reasons why he opposes the Bolsa Bridge.

And who else was there but Cung The Tran and Trong Doan (read more about him here), two of the lead protesters against Nguoi Viet and, together with Ky Ngo, defendants in the civil suit filed by the paper.

That would be Cung The Tran in the far-right photo, Trong Doan in the other one.

Trong Doan signed up to speak, and he gave a big long laundry list of all the reasons he thought the bridge was a bad idea.

But, Doan said, he’s “not opposed to or supporting the bridge.” Just complaining about how wrong it is.

Right.

Nobody really wants to go on the record as opposing the bridge.

Even Councilman Andy Quach, who recited his own litany of reasons, would end each one by saying “but I’m not opposed to the bridge.”

Alin Hamade, a Westminster Traffic Commissioner and candidate for council, in fact happily announced publicly his support for the bridge. And, really — why not pander to a community who claims to be conservative but in fact loves pork? Whatcha got to lose?

Which makes the public opposition expressed by Dina Nguyen (who was also present in the audience; photo left) and the no vote by Truong Diep in the Traffic Commission almost unique.

Talk about who was and wasn’t at the meeting: Janet’s advisor Nick Lecong wasn’t in the meeting and only showed up just when the whole thing was over. Janet’s policy advisor Matthew Harper, however, sat through the entire proceeding.

It’s been a while since the Bolsavik bothered with what’s left of the protests outside of Nguoi Viet Daily News. (Read collected entries here.) So here’s a brief update:

Ky Ngo and Trong Doan are still there. Mostly Ky Ngo, though. The times the Bolsavik came by the site, he saw Ky Ngo but not Trong Doan (who, btw, got fined $500 on the assault charge for shoving Nguoi Viet’s reproter). Maybe they work in shifts or something.

Anyway, so now the protesters have two trucks all decked out with flags and posters and slogans. Nguoi Viet, on the other hand, figured that two can play the flag-wrapping game, and erected three spanking new flag poles.

Now the whole scenery, with the flag poles and the trucks and signs and whatnot, look like everyone belong together. As if the whole flag poles / protest thing is all intended to be found together in fate by the mystic laws of the universe.

Kumbaya….

So. About the trucks.

The picture on top is the truck on the left; the one below is the truck on the right (“left”/”right” as you head toward the NV offices). The protesters come and go, but the trucks are there 24/7. Please excuse the quality of the photos; they were taken by cell phone. There’s a smudge probably from the Bolsavik’s car window.

What you don’t see when you just drive by, though, is that the truck on the left also features an altar on which are placed the portraits of five generals of the South Vietnamese armed forces who committed suicide when Saigon fell in 1975.

That’s the altar where the commie Garden Grove Mayor Bill Dalton and OC Supervisor Janet Nguyen paid their respect to, here.

The inappropriate (and unauthorized) use of the images of these generals has not gone unnoticed.

In the past several weeks, there were words that the brother of one of the five, Major General Nguyen Khoa Nam, has approached Vietnamese-language media asking for someone to speak out against the placement of his late brother’s portrait on Ky Ngo’s altar.

Sensing an opening, Nguoi Viet published an editorial (here, in Vietnamese) demanding that the portraits be taken down. The editorial is purportedly signed by a reader who allegedly served under 3 of the 5 generals. There are claims that it too was ghost-written by Nguoi Viet – probably true given who it was who made the assertion. But, hey, that’s irrelevant.

The point is, Ky Ngo and his band are finally being called on the things they do. They no longer intimidate. It would be nice if Nguoi Viet could speak out openly, but if they could borrow (or invent) someone’s name, that’s fine too. It would be even nicer if a supposed leader of the community could actually affect some leadership, but that may be too much to ask for.

The OC Register’s Deepa Bharath just had this in-depth look at Trong Doan, (pictured, by the Reg’s Eugene Garcia) one of the lead protesters against Nguoi Viet Daily News, here.

Deepa was trying to find out more about Doan, who was nowhere in the community before the visit to the U.S. by Vietnam’s President Nguyen Minh Triet, and is now everywhere.

She did find people who knew Doan from Boston. But a lot of other information Doan provided about himself could not be verified. The man seemed to be quite adept at making claims that cannot be easily proven one way or another.

Most intriguing in Deepa’s story is this assertion by Doan, a very young-looking 59-year-old (see Westminster PD’s press release here):

Between 1970 and 1975, Doan says he worked as a liaison for the U.S. Embassy in Vietnam. His job was also to research and procure new equipment for the navy, he said.

That means he was working at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon between the ages of 21 and 26. Doing procurement, so probably working for the military attache. Not impossible. Just, well, intriguing.

Click here for all Bolsavik entries about Trong Doan. By the way, the page that Doan posted on that tree trunk was taken from Nguoi Viet’s filing in its civil lawsuit against protesters Doan, Ky Ngo and Cung The Tran. It’s a list of alleged unlawful acts by the protesters.