But one thing can certainly sharpen the pain he still feels: to be called a communist sympathizer.

That is just what the former Saigon police officer has been labeled by protesters who have picketed the South Philadelphia office of his 5,000-circulation weekly, Doi Moi, a colorful magazine heavy on advertising for food and nail salons with features often plucked from the Internet.

When pickets showed up outside the office two months ago, alleging that Le, 63, was a "communist sympathizer" because an article briefly mentioned Ho Chi Minh, his first thought was that "they are nuts" and sent by his chief competitor, Viet My magazine, to harass him.

Viet My editor and publisher David Vo said he had backed the protest not to thwart competition but because "this is politics, and [Le] put communist articles in his magazine."

One protester, 52-year-old Thuy Nguyen, said she was unimpressed by Le's incarceration.

"That he was in prison doesn't mean anything," she said. "Anybody can be bought by a communist."

In the tight-knit world of Vietnamese immigrants in America, allegations of communist sympathies are a familiar story.

"What happened in Philadelphia is not unusual," said Truong N. Phuong, a member of Gov. Rendell's Advisory Commission on Asian American Affairs. "You see it happening in Virginia; Washington, D.C.; California; Texas - wherever you have a Vietnamese community."

Of roughly two million Vietnamese in the United States, an estimated 80,000 live in Pennsylvania, including 35,000 in Philadelphia.

Even though many of these immigrants are now U.S. citizens, Phuong said, "they still think about the past, about their roots. And whoever is branded a communist is like an untouchable."

As the nationalist government of South Vietnam was falling to the communist North in 1975, President Gerald Ford ordered a helicopter airlift to evacuate Vietnamese who had collaborated with the United States during the war.

About 130,000 Vietnamese got out to waiting ships of the Navy and were eventually flown to in the United States in that first wave. Their arrival was facilitated through four military bases, including Fort Indiantown Gap, in Lebanon County; it processed 23,000 refugees, including many who would settle in Philadelphia.

From 1978 to 1981, the era of the Boat People, refugees set out from Vietnam in rickety boats and often were rescued by the Seventh Fleet under orders from President Jimmy Carter. The United States took in more than half a million Vietnamese in those years.

In 1988, President Ronald Regan negotiated with the North Vietnamese for the release of political prisoners under the Humanitarian Operation program. Through HO and a successor program, an additional 200,000 Vietnamese were resettled in the United States.

"The social adjustment varies with the individual. Some of them adjust quite well," Phuong said. "But the most difficult group came through the HO program because many of them suffered terrible treatment in the communist camps. They came here angry, very angry. They lost their families. Their houses were confiscated. Many were sick from bad conditions and disgusted emotionally."

That anger bubbled to the surface in Philadelphia in February after Doi Moi reprinted an article about female sexuality from the Vietnamese online service VN Express.

At the end of the article, which talked about traditional ways to maintain health, the author wrote: "Ho Chi Minh has taught us that the most valuable wealth we have are the teachings of our ancestors."

The next week, Viet My slammed Doi Moi and Le as communist sympathizers.

The week after that, in a front-page article, Doi Moi apologized, saying: "We will be more careful in what we publish. It won't happen again."

The offending article had been chosen by Le's partner, Thi Nguyen, who said in an interview that she had been "careless" and hadn't read the article to the end.

"We recognized the mistake. We overlooked. That is my fault, and you have to accept my apology," she said.

Complicating matters, Le has sued several of his antagonists for libel. The case, heard last month by Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Gary Glazer, is under advisement. Le also is involved in an escalating war of words between rival civic associations, each claiming to be the authentic voice of the Vietnamese in the Philadelphia region.

For the most part, said Hung Cam Thai, a sociologist at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., and an expert on the Vietnamese diaspora, these disputes over communism are a generational phenomenon more common in the United States than in other parts of the world where Vietnamese have relocated.

"It is a past that some Vietnamese, particularly Vietnamese Americans, adhere to," he said. "But I think the second generation" - the U.S.-born children of these immigrants - "doesn't even know what it means."