On January 11 [1999] Joseph Ha, a Nike vice president, sent what he thought was a confidential letter to Cu Thi Hau, Vietnam's highest-ranking labor official. In it, Ha blasted a number of human rights and labor groups that have been working to improve labor conditions in Nike's overseas factories and expressed admiration for Vietnam's authoritarian system. "A few U.S. human rights groups, as well as a Vietnamese refugee who is engaged in human rights activities, are not friends of Vietnam," wrote Ha to the Vietnamese official. The "ultimate goal" of these groups, Ha warned, is not to help Vietnamese apparel workers improve their living standards but to turn Vietnam into "a so-called 'democratic' society, modeled after the U.S."--a charge that, as Nike knows, amounts to subversion in Vietnam.