Last Days in Vietnam Page #2

being mobbed by South

Vietnamese soldiers.

You saw ships with

thousands of refugees,

including lots of soldiers.

You saw

out-of-control panic.

Basically any boats, trucks, airplanes,

or anything going south

were besieged by people

wanting to get onboard.

The Americans were gone,

and as a result, the house

of cards began to collapse.

The North Vietnamese

decided to escalate,

escalate, escalate,

escalate at every turn

to see if the United States would react.

In April of '75, I was

with President Gerald Ford,

and we were flying across

the country on Air Force One

when one of the airplane's crew

comes and hands me a note,

and it says, "Da Nang has fallen. "

Ford was bombarded by

questions from the press

after he got off Air Force One.

Around 150,000 to 175,000

well-trained North

Vietnamese regular forces

in violation of the Paris Peace Accords

moved into South Vietnam.

We have objected to that violation.

It's a tragedy unbelievable

in its ramifications.

We are now in a crisis.

We had a wave of humanity:

500,000 refugees rolling,

rolling south towards Saigon,

and 160,000 North Vietnamese

troops moving right behind them.

I had become so concerned,

I decided to pull our

best Vietnamese agents in

out of the woodwork

to try to see what they could tell us

about Communist planning, which

obviously was rapidly evolving.

On the 8th of April,

I met with one of our best agents,

who said, "The Communists

are gonna drive on Saigon.

They're gonna be in there

by Ho Chi Minh's birthday,"

which was May 19th,

literally a month away.

Communist forces in South Vietnam,

already solidly in

control of 11 provinces,

began working on yet

another one today: Binh Dinh.

I kept a map every day

on the progress of the

North Vietnamese onslaught.

By the 5th of April,

the North Vietnamese

had 15, even 16 divisions

heading in the direction of Saigon.

They were bringing SA-2 missiles down

to provide anti-aircraft

cover for their forces.

There were people who were saying,

"Look, we've gotta do some

heavy, heavy planning here

"because depending on how this goes,

and it doesn't look good now,

we may all have to evacuate. "

And Ambassador Martin

wouldn't tolerate or

countenance such thought.

That was defeatism.

That was poisonous to the prospects

of the people we're here to help.

But people could see what was going on

and they started leaving,

especially the Americans.

I'm leaving Vietnam.

Why?

I'm kind of scared,

to be honest with you.

To be perfectly honest

with you, I'm really scared.

I think the situation's a

lot worse than we know about.

There was always a standing

evacuation plan in the embassy.

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