9 

The Fall of Vietnam

MEETING WITH THE PRESIDENT

March 31, 1975

4:50 to 5:30 p.m.

Wilson House [Palm Springs, California]

The President told Kissinger that the failure of Congress to provide funds for South Vietnam is the reason it collapsed. I told the President, after the phone conversation was over, that I didn’t believe that, that I just thought there was a very strong case to the contrary . . . and that we had been providing money for a hell of a long time and that in my view at some point you have to take your hand off the bicycle seat and see if they can ride, and it turns out that they can’t. . . .¹

In his first eight months in office, President Ford faced the issue of the pardon of Richard Nixon, a growing economic crisis, major problems in the intelligence community, a huge loss of Republican congressional seats in the 1974 midterm elections, and predictions of a serious primary challenge from Governor Ronald Reagan. Yet Ford seemed to be enjoying his job as President more every day. “I never wanted to be President, but I’m enjoying it,” he told a small group of us. This was a surprise to some at the time. Many members of the Congress seemed to picture themselves, at least at some point, in the White House. But Gerald Ford never had such ambitions.² But this was also, I realized, in some ways a strength. Not having dreamed (or schemed) throughout his congressional career about someday making it to the White House, Ford hadn’t compromised any of his ideals or principles, nor had he come to the Oval Office with an outsized view of himself. Not having fashioned any presidential agenda or platform before taking office, Ford had to handle issues as they came to him, even as events were unquestionably now becoming more challenging.

In the spring of 1975, the President was faced with the emergency of emergencies: the perilous collapse of an entire nation—a nation of 20 million souls to which the United States of America had devoted its blood and treasure for nearly two decades. The Republic of Vietnam was falling to the Communists, perhaps the worst defeat for Americans in a military conflict in our nation’s history.

While aboard Air Force One en route to California, the President received the dire word that Da Nang—the largest city in central Vietnam—had been taken by the Communists. An upheaval was getting underway. What was entirely unclear—and what would soon be debated in the Situation Room in the White House—was how far south the North Vietnamese forces would push and at what pace.

Though there was no technical reason why the President should not leave Washington, D.C., during such a crisis—he and the National Security Council could handle everything that he conceivably would need to do anywhere—some were aware of the disadvantage of being away in California as the TV networks broadcast images of a key Vietnamese city succumbing to the Communists.

Before we left, the President talked about his trip to Palm Springs, a trip Ford looked forward to. “While there is no reason you should not go,” I said I felt that he had “lost something” during a recent trip to Vail, when he seemed to be relaxing while portions of the world were in crisis.

It was my job as Chief of Staff to raise such concerns. And it was the President’s job to decide how to respond. In this instance, Ford understood keenly a dilemma that faces every President: America’s business never ceases. An administration can try to plan for the future as well as is possible, but what might happen the next week, the next day, the next minute—the unknown unknowns, as one might put it—are a mystery. So, for a president, even the briefest vacation, even the shortest absence from the White House, can involve a risk. If at the moment a crisis breaks out our country’s senior leader is away and seen as being engaged in some leisure activity, his White House risks being castigated as indifferent or irresponsibly uninformed and unprepared. As with a renowned surgeon sporting a stellar record, it takes but a single slip to lessen or even to lose the confidence of patients and colleagues.

Ford disagreed with that view, and rather emphatically. All human beings need to recharge, even the President of the United States. It’s mentally, emotionally, and physically helpful to their day-to-day performance to occasionally get away from the swamps of the Potomac River, to see different scenery, to look at problems from a different perspective, to deal with different people, to breathe fresh air. Yet in this case there was an even more important reason to head to California—it was a very high priority for the President: the health of the First Lady.

Betty Ford had undergone a radical mastectomy and was still a bit frail from the procedure. She had long been suffering from arthritis in her neck. The President believed, indeed he was absolutely convinced, she would benefit from a few days in the Southern California desert sun. He was certain she needed it. Betty was a special person and a source of enormous comfort to the President, and of course he had followed closely her struggles with addiction.³ “She damn near died from alcoholism,” he once confided to me, with heartfelt concern.⁴ In fact, the situation had been so severe that Betty had been hospitalized for a month. Though she’d made “a beautiful recovery,” he didn’t want to ever see that happen again.⁵

As his Chief of Staff, I was still concerned, but enormously sympathetic. “I know, Betty needs to go.”

“That’s right,” the President replied. “It’s important to get her out of here and into the sun.”⁶ And so they went.

From the day he had unexpectedly become President, Ford and his national security team had been monitoring the storm that was brewing in Southeast Asia. Back in 1975, dealing with the unraveling taking place halfway around the world in “Indochina” would have been a colossal challenge under any circumstances, not least given the absence of our now readily available twenty-first-century communication tools. The National Security staff, divided between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts as it was, moved quickly to see that the key players were engaged to activate the communication tools and systems.⁷

Though Hanoi’s spring offensive struck like a bolt from the blue, the conflict in Vietnam had been a dominant feature of American life for roughly a decade. The war had sharply divided the country, and antiwar protest marches were a staple in Washington, D.C. When I had served in the Nixon administration, at the Office of Economic Opportunity and later at the Economic Stabilization Program as well as in the White House throughout that period, on more than one occasion I had to make my way past antiwar demonstrations near the White House as well as during the President’s domestic travels. The smell of tear gas in the air was not uncommon.

As a Navy veteran of World War II, Gerald Ford knew well the costs of war. He also knew it would take time, considerable time, for our nation to heal from Vietnam, where the jungles, beaches, and plains had experienced the sacrifice of more than fifty-eight thousand Americans. He was wrestling with the challenging question about how to deal with the thousands of eligible young men who had made the decision to evade the draft and avoid military service during that increasingly unpopular war.

Speaking to the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Chicago, Illinois, on August 19, 1974, only ten days after taking office, President Ford addressed that subject head-on. He announced that he had requested Attorney General Bill Saxbe and Defense Secretary Jim Schlesinger to report on the status of the fifty thousand Americans who had been accused of violating the Selective Service Act. As both a former member of Congress and Vice President, President Ford had asserted that “blanket amnesty” for those who had evaded or fled military service would be “wrong.” Yet in his remarks to the veterans gathered in Chicago, “to bind up the nation’s wounds” he stressed the need to offer “young Americans . . . a second chance to contribute their fair share to the rebuilding of peace among ourselves and with all nations.”⁸ Accordingly, on September 16, 1974, in a speech from the White House Cabinet Room, President Gerald Ford extended amnesty to deserters and draft evaders who would agree to serve two years in public service jobs. “I do not want to delay another day in resolving the dilemmas of the past, so that we may all get going on the pressing problems of the present,” Ford said.⁹ Three months later, however, there was reason for Americans to worry that those controversial issues were not in the past, and that those old wounds might be reopened.

On December 13, 1974, the North Vietnamese deployed their Fourth Army Corps for the first time and opened a heavy artillery bombardment against Phuoc Luong near the Cambodian border—effectively shredding the U.S. negotiated Paris Peace Accords. After the capitulation of the province on January 6, 1975—the first province captured by the North Vietnamese in fifteen years—South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu sent a delegation to Washington, D.C., seeking $300 million in military aid, which he argued was the minimum needed to hold off the North Vietnamese. The President, without hesitation, committed himself to meeting that request. The South Vietnamese, he believed, needed and deserved the aid due to their loyalty fighting alongside our troops and holding together what was widely believed to be a vital bulwark against Communism in the region. Loyalty alone, of course, would not have been sufficient justification for many Americans, convinced as they were that their country had already expended too much in the conflict. The President emphasized that an American refusal to help to confront the aggression against our ally would sap our credibility and embolden America’s enemies.

The President was fully ready to approach the Congress for the $300 million in military aid. He was convinced the South Vietnamese needed this support for their defense. He was also certain that Americans, though clearly ready, indeed eager, to wash their hands of the Vietnam conflict, would be deeply disappointed if the Communists ended up achieving a total conquest. At a lunch with journalists at The New York Times, Ford had said just that. Afterward, I discussed with the President that politically it would be unhelpful to him to send up the request for funds if it was reasonably certain he could not win.

“Don,” he said to me, “if South Vietnam goes down the drain, I want a record of having gone up there [to Congress] even if I lose. There’s no way to make a record to the public if you haven’t gone and instead just say, ‘I wish I could but I know I won’t get it, so I didn’t even try.’ ”¹⁰ He believed he might have a reasonable chance to prevail. He was a believer in the tradition—not entirely dead in American politics in those days—that the United States should speak with one voice on foreign policy. At one point in early 1975, it was President Ford’s suggestion that all potential 1976 presidential candidates should meet at Camp David to discuss ways to forge a bipartisan consensus on foreign policy.¹¹ The idea likely would have seemed fanciful to some strong partisans in Washington, D.C., and especially so today, some four-plus decades later, but it was fully consistent with Ford’s belief in the American people and his sincere interest in healing the partisan divisions.

Over the ensuing months, the President would go “up there” to Capitol Hill and meet with members of both parties in the Congress on a number of occasions. And repeatedly his requests would be rejected by the political opposition and by the pundits for trying to get the funds for what many if not most by then believed had become “a lost cause.” Public opinion was sharply against anything that even hinted at expanding American involvement in that increasingly unpopular conflict.

In January, Ford’s legislative staff was evaluating whether a military aid request to the Congress would have a better chance as part of an omnibus bill or as a stand-alone supplemental.¹² The President decided on the latter and scheduled a special message to the Congress for January 28, 1975. A day before Ford was to speak, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the brilliant Harvard sociologist and former aide to President Nixon, who was then serving as U.S. Ambassador to India, ominously cautioned the White House staff that the two previous Presidents—Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon—had been consumed and destroyed by Asian foreign policy.¹³

“It is the minimum needed to prevent serious reversals,” Ford asserted to the Congress on January 28, referring to the $522 million total (which included $222 million to aid the Cambodian government then being overrun by the Communist Pol Pot regime). North Vietnam, Ford declared, had 289,000 troops in South Vietnam along with tanks, heavy artillery, and antiaircraft weapons “by the hundreds.” The U.S. assistance, he continued, was essential to protecting our allies as well as preserving America’s credibility and national security. “All Americans want to end the U.S. role in Vietnam,” he said. “So do I. I believe, however, that we must end it in a way that will enhance the chances of world peace and sustain the purposes for which we have sacrificed so much.”¹⁴

Ford, as President, wanted one shot to try to set things right. Taking charge in the Oval Office had infused him with fresh optimism about the possibility of a negotiated peace and a managed U.S. military withdrawal from Vietnam. That bubble was burst with a vengeance. The American people were more than ready to cut our ties to Vietnam. The so-called Watergate Babies of the newly elected Ninety-fourth Congress especially—along with some Republicans—were not willing to accept the President’s arguments. Some branded the aid request irresponsible, pointing to inflation. Others labeled it insensitive, pointing to poverty in the urban slums of New York City, Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Even the South Vietnamese government, Defense Secretary Schlesinger reported, was pessimistic it would get the $300 million from its American ally.¹⁵

Two days after the President’s request to Congress, I visited Richard Heffner, a New Jersey professor of communications and public policy at Rutgers University, the prominent editor of Alexis de Tocqueville’s book Democracy in America, and a longtime acquaintance, in New Brunswick. He was closely attuned to the public mood. It’s true, he said, the current generation of undergraduates had seen most of the war in Vietnam wind down and most of their countrymen return home. They were not, like their predecessors, interested in riots and demonstrations. But their interest was aroused by a sense that President Ford was getting into a fight with the Congress over Vietnam. And unfortunately for the President, the details of the public disagreement, such as his explicit promise to provide no additional U.S. troops, were escaping them. Heffner expected that Ford, not the Congress, would wind up being seen as the villain.¹⁶ The President’s still young administration seemed to be moving into a lose-lose situation. The military aid request was ill-fated, yet the President believed he should pursue it. Ford held to his course valiantly and with determination for one reason only: He believed deeply, regardless of the politics, that it was the right thing to do.

After some wrangling, the Congress allowed a bipartisan congressional delegation to travel to Vietnam and Cambodia to make a fresh assessment prior to the vote on Ford’s $522 million request.¹⁷ It was his only chance. If the members of the delegation viewed the desperate situation with their own eyes, Ford felt, they might be swayed to support the assistance he was proposing. The White House staff tried to see that at least some potential supporters were appointed, but the delegation of eight ended up with a number of opponents. Included was California Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey (R-CA), who in 1972 had challenged President Nixon for the Republican nomination for President running on an antiwar platform.

The congressional delegation left Washington, D.C., the last week of February 1975, and returned on March 2. Some members made the case that the aid was essential. Newly elected U.S. Representative John Murtha (D-PA), for example, avowed our country’s allies should at the very least be given a chance to succeed. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Murtha wisely predicted a bloodbath in Cambodia if the Khmer Rouge came to power.¹⁸ McCloskey, however, stormed Capitol Hill and delivered a far different message. What the U.S. had “done” to Vietnam, he alleged, “is greater evil than we have done to any country in the world, and wholly without reason.”¹⁹ The House Democratic Caucus gathered on March 12 and voted 189–49 against the proposed military assistance for Cambodia. The following day, the Senate Democratic Caucus voted to oppose military aid to Cambodia by 38–5 and against aid to Vietnam by 34–6.

*  *  *

As the voting in Congress was taking place, the President of South Vietnam, Nguyen Van Thieu, was forced to order the evacuation of the Central Highlands, thereby abandoning the northern two-thirds of the country of South Vietnam. The Communists were shelling and marching south almost unimpeded. The U.S., despite its considerable in-country military and intelligence resources, had been caught off-guard.

The National Security Council—historically has been the executive branch’s principal forum for dealing with key international policy issues—was less than effective as a deliberating body providing a full range of views and counsel to the Commander in Chief. At this moment, however, Henry Kissinger was still serving both as the President’s National Security Advisor and as the Secretary of State. As a result, the White House lacked a functioning intermediary between State, Defense, the CIA, and other key national security elements. “For all practical purposes,” I cautioned the President on April 1, “you don’t have a National Security Council staff.”²⁰ The Nixon administration had convened eighty-seven NSC meetings between January 21, 1969, and June 20, 1974.²¹ Between August 1974 and March 1975, the Ford administration had convened three or four, and those had been organized by the NSC at the last minute. In fact, March 28, 1975, was the first time Vietnam had appeared on an NSC agenda—almost two months after North Vietnamese General Van Tien Dung had moved into South Vietnam to personally command what became the final offensive.

On February 25, 1975, I learned that the NSC was turning down requests by reporters such as my friend Pierre Salinger (who was then working as a reporter for France’s L’Express) to conduct interviews with the President. When I asked why they were being denied, I received the response from the lower levels of the NSC, such as, “Henry is in the middle of sensitive negotiations and therefore the President shouldn’t mess in foreign affairs.” I had no doubt Kissinger’s team was acting in the country’s best interests but was concerned that the President might have a different view.

Frankly, I said to Ford, I think keeping the President from talking to reporters on such issues is demeaning to the office. There was no reason why Gerald Ford couldn’t meet with people from the foreign press. I urged the President not to acquiesce on such questions.

The president replied, “Let’s go ahead and do it.” Then he added with a laugh, “If I can’t handle a conversation with reporters, I can’t handle anything.”²²

A few months later, Press Secretary Ron Nessen was sent out to the press in error with inaccurate information from a lower-level aide at the NSC. When Nessen discovered the inaccuracies, he went to Brent Scowcroft, who advised the President’s Press Secretary to “let it sit.” I told Nessen not to let it sit. The White House had misinformed the press on an issue and we weren’t going to let that go just so the NSC could avoid embarrassment. I suggested Nessen call Kissinger and inform him that he was going to put out a statement to correct the misinformation. Kissinger immediately agreed to the statement and the matter was settled.

“If I were Ron,” I told Ford, “I would be madder than hell.”²³ If the NSC didn’t have time to brief the President’s Press Secretary on national security matters before he said something that might embarrass the administration, then there was something wrong.

“You have a problem,” I told the President. “If you go into Scowcroft’s office, there are eight stacks [of paper] . . . on his desk. Each one is red tagged.”²⁴

The original Nixon appointees to the NSC staff, some of whom represented the best minds on foreign policy—such as Lawrence Eagleburger, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, William Hyland, and Winston Lord—had moved to the Department of State. Those who remained on the NSC staff were carrying a heavy burden with limited staff. Henry’s involvement at State sometimes left the rest of the NSC out of the loop, including Defense Secretary Jim Schlesinger. Schlesinger and the President had an uncomfortable relationship, with Schlesinger sometimes seeming to be lecturing and patronizing in meetings. Kissinger, who also had a strained relationship with the Defense Secretary, at one point apologized to Ford over a disagreement he had had with Schlesinger, and was taken aback by the President’s revealing response. “Jim’s problem isn’t with you; it’s with me,” Ford told Kissinger. “He thinks I’m a dummy.”²⁵

None of these were ingredients for an effective National Security Council process. Due to Henry’s dual-hatted status and Ford’s increasing discomfort with the Defense Secretary, I noted that Henry could “get the instructions he [wanted] at the last minute before he left Washington, D.C., to negotiate on SALT and MBFR [Mutual Balanced Force Reductions].”²⁶ I was concerned to learn during a meeting with the President that he had instructed Kissinger in person before even talking to Schlesinger on a matter involving a SALT negotiation. I was also concerned when Ford offered to bring Schlesinger up to speed over the phone rather than convening a meeting with him face-to-face to learn the views of the Department of Defense.²⁷

Kissinger also had a habit of periodically threatening to resign when he sensed opposition to his views or that Ford might come down on a different side of an issue. White House photographer David Hume Kennerly caught the fallout one evening when he was upstairs in the family residence. “Yes, Henry,” David heard the President say to Kissinger over the line. “Oh, sorry about that.” Ford hung up and turned to David, “Henry just called about another Evans and Novak thing. He’s really mad and says he wants to resign.” David responded, “You know what you should do, Mr. President? You should accept his resignation and I bet he never does it again.”²⁸

Stress on Kissinger and the national security team was understandably high with the Vietnam War coming to an inglorious end. An open question was where the blame would fall— on the series of Presidents who through Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon had steadily committed more American blood and treasure to the conflict,²⁹ or the Congress for withholding support for the additional military aid Ford had proposed. There was concern that the Congress’s obstinacy encouraged North Vietnam “to go all out, in flagrant violation of the Paris Accords,” the peace process Kissinger had negotiated under Nixon, which had been designed to bring about a gradual end to the war.

McGeorge Bundy, who had served as the National Security Advisor to both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and who had counseled the escalation of U.S. ground troops during the war’s most intense years, thoughtfully phoned me, concerned about President Ford’s reputation and standing with the Congress and the country and believing it was in our country’s interest to keep President Ford as “unscarred” by the war as possible. He suggested that he and his former colleagues from the previous two administrations should be the ones to take the heat, not President Ford.³⁰ It was an enormously thoughtful, gracious, and notably unselfish suggestion, which was appreciated greatly. Gerald Ford, someone who didn’t want to spend time casting blame, considered the idea of taking Bundy up on his offer as out of the question. U.S. Senator Stuart Symington, a Democrat from Missouri—and former Secretary of the U.S. Air Force in the late 1940s—pointed his finger at the military. In Hawaii, he had seen the Army Chief of Staff train the Twenty-fifth Infantry Division, which had fought the North Vietnamese in the “Iron Triangle.” He claimed that since 1967 he had been telling those involved, including President Johnson, that their approach to combat was “wrong.”³¹

Soon even former President Nixon weighed in. From San Clemente, he relayed his advice through his former aide Frank Gannon, who passed it along to White House aide Dick Cheney. Nixon suggested that Ford not blame anyone—not even the North Vietnamese. “[T]hink of the China experience,” he said. “Think in terms of history. Do what he believes is right. It will be justified.” He advised that Ford’s status as a world leader will be enhanced if he takes the difficult course before him and, in the long term, it will be the best politics.³² President Nixon was close to being right on the mark. In order to move forward, it was best not to assign blame to others, but simply to understand that America had done everything possible for Vietnam. “In my view, at some point,” I mentioned to President Ford, “you have to take your hand off the bicycle seat and see if they [the Vietnamese] can ride. And it turns out that they can’t.”³³ It was a hard truth to face, but one that we had spent more than a decade coming to grips with.

Ultimately, President Ford informed journalists he was “not assessing blame on anyone.” But he added pointedly that the Congress had not helped matters by reducing the amount of military equipment he had said was needed for South Vietnam in fiscal year 1974 and that it had failed to deliver the full amount appropriated for the following year. “I think historians in the future will write who was to blame in this tragic situation,” he said during a press conference on April 3. “But the American people ought to know the facts. And the facts are as I have indicated.”³⁴

The war in Vietnam was coming to an end. The only questions were precisely when and how. White House photographer David Hume Kennerly, who had accompanied General Weyand on his fact-finding trip to Vietnam, had gone on to Cambodia. “Cambodia is gone,” he reported back to President Ford when he returned, “and I don’t care what the generals tell you.”³⁵

*  *  *

Over the month of March, Vietnam had evolved from a military conflict to an increasingly challenging rescue operation. After Da Nang fell on March 29, 1975, U.S. Boeing 727s and 747 cargo planes evacuated many thousands of Vietnamese refugees who had been supporters of the U.S. effort. U.S. military and civilian personnel were evacuated to U.S. Navy ships and contract vessels. Thousands more fled from the South Central Coast on April 2 as North Vietnamese troops moved south. Saigon was bombarded on April 3. The President, seeking to protect the most vulnerable, ordered the evacuation of some orphans the following day. Although the Congress was on its Easter recess, he followed the War Powers Act, which had provisions in the event a President decided to introduce U.S. military forces “into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances.” We were aboard Air Force One en route to San Francisco at the time.

To provide the resources urgently needed to carry out the evacuation, the President had to notify the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Carl Albert (D-OK), who, as it happened, was at the time in the People’s Republic of China, the country that was supplying the arms for the North Vietnamese forces. “It’s either like [Kafka] or Allen Drury; I’m not sure which,” I noted in a memo.³⁶ The President and the White House staff went to considerable lengths to contact members of the Congress since few were in Washington, D.C. It was a race against the clock to save lives, yet Ford wasn’t going to risk accusations that he was ignoring his former colleagues in the legislative branch or that he was violating the War Powers Act. My memo on April 1st read:

MEETING WITH THE PRESIDENT

April 1, 1975

8:02 to 9:08 a.m.

He [the President] then gave me a report on his phone call with [Secretary of Defense] Schlesinger. He said that Schlesinger was concerned about the evacuation that there are still 300 Americans in Natrang. [U.S. Ambassador] Graham Martin is inclined to hold out till the very end, and that the President and Jim kind of felt that they shouldn’t hold out till the very end. . . . He told Jim to call Brent Scowcroft and tell him if the margin is close they want to go ahead and start moving US people out. Schlesinger is pessimistic. He says the regime can hold out for at most 60 to 90 days; he is afraid of a panic. . . .³⁷

What became known as “Operation Babylift” started on April 4, but began with a tragedy. The very first flight, which was carrying 314 passengers, crashed shortly after takeoff. The locks on the rear cargo door of the C-5A Galaxy had failed, blowing off parts of the plane and damaging the flight controls on the tail section. One hundred thirty-eight died. In total, between April 3 and September 3, 1975 Operation “New Life” evacuated more than 110,000 refugees from South Vietnam.

The task was to get our fellow citizens safely out. In mid-April, the estimate was that there were about six thousand Americans still in and around Saigon. Secretary Schlesinger was in favor of launching an evacuation. His estimate that the South Vietnamese government would not last more than sixty or ninety more days was considered by some to be a pessimistic forecast. Ambassador Martin argued to hold out longer. Everyone was aware that initiation of an evacuation effort could well trigger a panic and jeopardize additional lives. The President carefully weighed the views of Ambassador Martin and of Secretaries Kissinger and Schlesinger. The challenge would be to present the right message and move at exactly the right pace—quickly enough to save lives, but not so quickly as to create panic and damage the critical extraction efforts. There were concerns by a few that some embittered South Vietnamese soldiers might even turn on the departing Americans. “If you want out and said the situation was hopeless and we were pulling Americans out, that would trigger it,” the President advised at a Joint Congressional Leadership Meeting. “If they think we have given up, that will set them off.”³⁸

As the evacuation of Americans began, U.S. Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, a senior and respected Democrat from the state of Washington, threw the White House for a loop on April 8, 1975. On the floor of the U.S. Senate, Senator Jackson alleged that the Nixon administration had worked out “secret agreements” with South Vietnam that promised future military assistance, and surprisingly suggested that the administration could be leaving Americans in Saigon as hostages to squeeze the Congress for military aid and to effectively reignite the war as part of the secret agreement. Jackson, almost always a solid, thoughtful Senator, didn’t name a source or provide any details of his imagined theory. But the charge, as inaccurate as it was, was serious coming from the man who was then leading in the Gallup poll for the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination.³⁹ The Ford White House and NSC was completely in the dark as to what Senator Jackson might be referring to, as were the American people. “The issue was ‘were there secret commitments made?’ ” White House Press Secretary Ron Nessen asked the question in a memo, adding, “I know of none. The President knows of none. The Secretary of State, who was intimately involved, asserts knowledgeably that there was none. What more can one ask?”⁴⁰

The situation in South Vietnam continued to deteriorate. President Ford, wishing to speed up the evacuation, set an address before a joint session of the Congress for April 10, 1975. Some twenty divisions, virtually the entire North Vietnamese army, had by then moved into South Vietnam. In January, Ford had asked the Congress for the $522 million in military aid. This round he wanted to request $722 million—an amount that had been recommended by General Weyand—plus $250 million for economic and humanitarian assistance. Kissinger didn’t think the Congress would agree. Ford was pessimistic as well, but believed, or at least hoped, that by having the U.S. display steadiness of purpose, the situation might stabilize at least temporarily and ease the risks of the ongoing evacuations. That was the best case. His entreaties for more military and humanitarian aid were so unpopular that he was advised that he might be booed on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives—something previously unthinkable during a presidential address to the Congress on foreign policy. He said, characteristically, he would work through any boos.⁴¹

“Fundamental decency,” the President said to the joint session of the Congress that evening, “requires that we do everything in our power to ease the misery and the pain of the monumental human crisis which has befallen the people of South Vietnam.” His address encountered even more resistance than expected. Beyond some boos, two freshman Democrats, U.S. Representatives Toby Moffett of Connecticut and George Miller of California, stood up, turned around, and walked out of the chamber, in a notable breach of decorum. The opposition continued in the days after, when, in an unusual step, the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee requested a face-to-face meeting with the President. “I will give you large sums for evacuation, but not one nickel for military aid,” said New York Republican Senator Jacob Javits.⁴² The President explained it wasn’t that simple. “It’s a two-way street,” he said, reiterating that American lives would be endangered without the aid.⁴³

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee in turn proposed a $200 million “emergency fund” with inflexible language and some notably unhelpful caveats. “My judgment is that amount is as bad as nothing,” the President said in a Cabinet meeting. “If the Congress sticks to its indicated attitude, it could lead to dire circumstances. We must be consistent. We asked for the right program. I hope the Congress comes through.”⁴⁴ Adding to the tensions, the Communist insurgent forces in Cambodia, known as the Khmer Rouge, stormed into Phnom Penh and seized control of the country on April 17, 1975. In a daring feat, eighty-two Americans were evacuated, most by helicopters, to the carrier USS Hancock and the assault ship USS Okinawa.

On April 21, President Nguyen Van Thieu resigned his post after ten years and fled South Vietnam. “The Americans have asked us to do an impossible thing,” he said in his final public appearance. “You have asked us to do something you failed to do, with half a million powerful troops and skilled commanders.” He added as a parting shot: “Are U.S. commitments still valid?”⁴⁵ With perhaps an answer to Thieu’s haunting question, the U.S. Senate rejected President Ford’s appeal for $722 million and appropriated $200 million to be used strictly for evacuation and humanitarian purposes. The almost unfailingly even-tempered and understanding Gerald Ford was as angry as I had ever seen him over the decade-plus we had worked together. He exclaimed, “Those bastards.” He added that “just a relatively small American commitment” could have met “any military challenges.”⁴⁶

The President accepted that our country’s only remaining mission in that conflict was the evacuation of Americans and of the South Vietnamese who had assisted us and to whom the U.S. had “a moral commitment.”⁴⁷ This message was clearly set forth in the President’s speech at Tulane University on April 23. “Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam,” Ford said to the more than forty-five hundred people gathered at the campus field house. “But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned. As I see it, the time has come to look forward to an agenda for the future, to unify, to bind up the nation’s wounds, and to restore its health and its optimistic self-confidence.”⁴⁸ The speech had its intended effect: persuading the American people that the discussion over their country’s involvement in Vietnam was over. His remarks were greeted with, as The New York Times reported, “prolonged and enthusiastic applause.”⁴⁹

But even that small success was tainted by controversy. Returning from New Orleans aboard Air Force One, the President went to the back of the plane and spoke with the traveling press pool. He was asked if Henry Kissinger had been involved in the preparation of the President’s speech. Ford replied that he had not. Contrary to standard practice, the President’s speech on foreign policy had not been properly staffed out. It had been crafted virtually overnight from an earlier draft by speechwriter Milton Friedman, which had not even mentioned Vietnam. Contrary to the standard White House policy, apparently no one other than President Ford had seen anything other than the original draft, which had been significantly revised personally by the President. The President’s response created a stir in the press and led some to conclude quite inaccurately that Kissinger’s influence in the administration was waning.⁵⁰

Even comedy writers would have been hard pressed to conceive what happened next. When Kissinger had been asked in parallel about his hand in the Tulane speech, he responded that he had played a role and had discussed it at great length with the President. And, of course, Henry was absolutely correct in saying that. He had most certainly discussed all of the subjects in the speech extensively with the President in a great many meetings over many weeks. But in this instance Henry had apparently assumed the journalists were asking about a different speech, which the President gave the same day to the Navy League at the Fairmont Hotel in New Orleans.⁵¹

The confusion from these two seemingly conflicting interviews led to a discussion over how to untangle the misunderstanding. Needless to say, the President was notably unhappy with the speechwriting team for their failure to fully coordinate the speech with Kissinger. Henry pushed for Nessen to indicate he had in fact played a major role in the development of the Tulane speech, which in a sense he had, given Henry’s numerous discussions with and advice to the President. But in another sense, he hadn’t actually seen the speech itself. In an attempt to untangle the mess without being dishonest with the press corps, the President asked Nessen to approach the press and “emphasize that Kissinger and the President are in agreement with respect to Southeast Asia and that Kissinger supports the President’s policies.”⁵²

Four days later, General Duong Van Minh was sworn in as the new president of South Vietnam. He lasted only two days. With North Vietnamese rockets and artillery shells pounding the runways at Tan Son Nhut, the Saigon airfield, helicopter evacuation was the only remaining option. And that led to yet one last uncomfortable moment in a conflict that had had so many.

MEETING WITH THE PRESIDENT

April 30, 1975

I told [the President] that there had been a bit of a flap last night that I thought he ought to be aware of. I showed him the full report pointing out that they were still evacuating Marines some 2 hrs. after the Secretary of State had said that all Americans had been removed. Therefore it was clear we had to do something.⁵³

On April 29, 1975, Henry Kissinger had issued a statement announcing that all Americans in Vietnam had been evacuated, finally bringing U.S. involvement in the conflict to an end. The problem was that late that evening, Jim Schlesinger called saying, “You shouldn’t really have put that statement out—it’s not accurate.” I was surprised and asked him in what respects. He said, “Well, in the first sentence it says that it was based on reports that all Americans were out. There were no such reports.”

He said that elements of the U.S. military advised Secretary Kissinger that Ambassador Martin was airborne. According to Schlesinger, Kissinger had been told that Martin would be the last one out. But, according to Schlesinger, he wasn’t. I said to the President that I really didn’t know what the facts were but it was an awkward situation. Kissinger felt that he knew what his end of the phone conversation was and felt that the mistake had been at Defense. Schlesinger felt that Defense knew what their side of the phone conversation had been and that the mistake was made at State. I said there was no paper that passed anywhere so there is no way to prove anything.

Considering his respective relationships with his Secretaries of State and Defense, it came as no surprise that the President was inclined to accept Kissinger’s view of events. And in a stressful situation such as this one, it was also not a surprise that we saw a flash of the President’s rare temper. “I was damn mad about it,” Ford told me. “All I know is that Kissinger was told the evacuation was over and it was verified that it was over.”

“No, sir,” I replied, “you don’t know that. All you know is that Kissinger told you he was told it was over, and he may very sincerely believe that but it may or may not be a fact.”⁵⁴

While a few of those considering the situation wanted the administration not to issue a correction to the press, I disagreed. “This war has been marked by so many lies and evasions,” I said, “that it is not right to have the war end with one last lie.”⁵⁵ The President ultimately agreed with that position, and a correction was made.

In any event, at 5:00 a.m. the next day, the last U.S. helicopter left, taking off from the roof of the U.S. Embassy on Thong Nhat Boulevard in Saigon, and the government of South Vietnam surrendered.

MEETING WITH THE PRESIDENT

April 30, 1975

10:00 to l0:25 a.m. Cabinet Rm.

Meeting with the Egyptian Parliamentarians

It was a very warm meeting. I left early. During the course of the meeting Kissinger came over to me and said, “Don, I want you to know that I believe you handled the matter last night just right. Had you not checked with Schlesinger and had we put that story out we would have ended up in a peeing match within the government and we don’t need it. He said I owed you that and wanted you to know it. . . .⁵⁶

President Ford believed that America’s commitment to South Vietnam extended beyond the successful evacuation. It was a notably unpopular position. “There is no political support for it in this country,” U.S. Senate Majority Whip Robert Byrd, a Democrat from West Virginia, warned.⁵⁷ Meeting with a group of influential Senators, Ford repeatedly tried to sway them with what he believed deeply was our country’s moral responsibility to help refugees fleeing persecution. Repeatedly, a number of Senate Democrats dissented, including the young outspoken Senator Joe Biden (D-DE). In the heat of the discussion, I detected a difference in the attitudes of some members of Congress toward the Vietnamese.⁵⁸

MEETING WITH THE PRESIDENT

April 14, 1975

Senator Biden of Delaware then spoke up and got back again on the delays in getting Americans out. He also expressed hostility towards the idea of bringing out any South Vietnamese. [Senator] Claiborne Pell [D-RI] then made a pitch for Borneo. He said ten years ago he and [Senator] Javits introduced a resolution recommending that we get a truce in Vietnam and evacuate all those who do not want to live under communism and then let the north have it. He said Borneo is only 400 miles away and he wants it considered as a site for relocation of Vietnamese refugees.⁵⁹

In the face of this attitude toward refugees, the President was at his most eloquent and persuasive. These were not just any refugees; they were allies of the United States government who faced severe repression and persecution if they stayed under the Communist regime. He reminded the members of Congress that when the Soviet military invaded Hungary in 1956, the Eisenhower administration, with the support of Congress, gave asylum to thousands of Hungarians fleeing Communist persecution. Ford said we had an obligation to treat the Vietnamese the same way. He made a strong statement that they deserved exactly the same treatment anyone else did and that it was in the best American tradition to handle it that way.⁶⁰

Opposition in the Congress to the resettlement of Vietnamese refugees mounted through April. Some from Texas and California especially were increasingly vocal against permitting the Vietnamese into the country. Recommendations starting flowing in that refugees should be resettled in the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, or elsewhere outside the continental U.S.⁶¹ The President forcefully dismissed them. America owed the South Vietnamese a special obligation for having determinedly fought for decades against Communism. On April 30, Ford asked the Congress to approve a bill that would provide $507 million for the transportation and care of South Vietnamese refugees. The House rejected his request on May 1. “Unbelievable!” Ford wrote in his memoir. “To ignore the refugees in their hour of need would be to repudiate the values we cherish as a nation of immigrants, and I was not about to let Congress do that.” Undeterred, the President went around government, and with the help of citizens and volunteer organizations, some 120,000 Vietnamese—about half of whom were children—found a new life in America.⁶²

*  *  *

By the time the Vietnam War had ended, the United States had lost fifty-eight thousand Americans. More than one hundred thousand others had suffered injuries. The war had cost well over $100 billion. And America was without a well-thought-out post-Vietnam foreign policy. I discussed this with the President in the Oval Office on May 1.

“What about the last part of the foreign policy address to the Congress?” Ford said, referring to the April 10 address before the joint session. “That laid it out.”

“No, sir—it didn’t,” I suggested. “It was a laundry list.”

I posed a scenario. If trouble broke out in the next thirty days—for example, in Korea—the American people could claim, and not entirely without justification, that their country’s adversaries had been emboldened.⁶³ As it happened, trouble broke out eleven days later, not in Korea, but just off the coast of Cambodia.