When I returned to Vietnam in July of 1973 as special assistant to the ambassador, one of my first acts shortly thereafter was to go back and visit the province in the extreme southern part of the Delta where I had served as a battalion advisor to the Vietnamese army in 1967 and 1968. (clears throat) While I was there, I ah, interviewed the former Vietnamese regimental commander who was then province chief of a nearby province and spoke with him at some length about the problems he was having and the conduct of the war and what his estimate of the situation was.

I came away from that interview very concerned because he indicated to me that the ah, enemy had ah been increasingly aggressive in that ah, area of the Delta during the ah the previous months and that he was not at all conduct, ah confident of their ability to ah provide ah a strong defense in the ensuing months.

I also visited the ah district, excuse me, the province capital of Anh Xuyenwhere my battalion had been based out of and spoke with the American representative, the province representative to Anh Xuyen Province about the situation and he told me that ah it had gotten to the point where the province chief, the Vietnamese province chief was afraid literally to leave his villa unless he was accompanied by a half a platoon of security and that ah the Vietnamese forces had incurred some very serious setbacks, ah within several kilometers of the province capital several months before.

They had taken very severe casualties and since I had left in 1968 after the Tet Offensive at a time where we had at least won a tactical, ah, military victory in that province, I was very concerned because it was apparent that the general security, military security, had eroded in the ensuing years, and that the Vietnamese forces were definitely and distinctly on the defensive. That's it. Cut.

The realization that the South Vietnamese forces...

Excuse me. I think we better start...

The realization that the South Vietnamese forces were not doing well in this particular area of South Vietnam concerned me particularly because, when I had been fighting with the 21st ARVN Division in the '67-68 time frame, one of the distinctive features I thought of the success of that division was that they were operating in an area of Vietnam where there were no other American regular forces.

Ah. We were using certain support ah facilities. Medivac and air support, but fundamentally, we sank or swam on the battlefield on the basis of our own performance. I felt that as a consequence of that the division performed better and was more self reliant. So, to the extent that this particular division was not doing well, that morale was low and that they had not been successful recently was a matter of special concern.

Are you going to give me the question? What is the question?

Graham Martin's mandate as best as you can see...

Ah, yes.

...What was he trying to do?

My personal perception as his special assistant at the time was that Graham Martin came to Vietnam in July of 1973 totally committed to provide an opportunity, if possible, for the South Vietnamese government and people to maintain their independence. All of the decisions that I saw him make, ah, the manner and vigor with which he went about ah exercising his functions as the ambassador I think dearly expressed his total commitment to attempting to achieve that objec—objective with whatever resources were given to him and he had at his disposal, if at all possible.

What kind of dilemmas were there though after he came in? What were the problems with that?

Better cut a second.

The questions was the kind of problems that you saw that made that a difficult post?

Hmm. Ya. I understand.

Okay.

When the ambassador arrived I believe he was faced with several urgent problems that had to be resolved. We had just entered into a so called cease-fire situation. Our regular forces had been pulled out, but we had obviously certain very real responsibilities and commitments which, I'm sure, had been expressed to him very clearly by the president and by the secretary of state.

And, it fell on the ambassador's shoulders, I believe at this point, to clearly define what those objectives were for the US mission, which was at that time, as I recall the largest and most disparate mission in the world.

And, it lacked at that point, definition. Definition in the sense of leadership. Someone who could say, this is why we're here. This is what we're committed to achieving. Regardless of the opposition in the United States, regardless of the in, insecurity ah in terms of the kind of support that we will be able to maintain, the indefiniteness ah in terms of how long that support will be flowing in here – this is what our mission is and this is how we're going to go about accomplishing that.

And, he was, at that point, Ambassador over a ah a series of agencies and organizations including the United States military that needed to have one single figure who was capable of defining its role.

Okay.

In terms of the South Vietnamese peoples' perception of the importance of what was taking place in Washington that ah the president and the administration because of the Watergate scandal had been under attack for several months, that their position was weakening. I recall in August of 1974 while I was on an inspection trip of one of the provinces in the central highlands region talking to our province representative there who related a story to me in which he had been talking to a rice paddy farmer, coincidentally, while on one of his trips to the province, who had expressed very grave concern about President Nixon's position and considerable interest in the outcome.

And I concluded from that, ah I was surprised, exceedingly surprised, that there was that level of political appreciation at that low a level within the country. But I think there was an increasing, I deduced that there was an increasing concern about the president's ah, success in Washington and a realization that President Nixon was the firm backer and sup—principal supporter in the United States for continued support to South Vietnam, that they were feeling vulnerable. I don't know how widespread that was, but I can at least tell you this one story.

The Ambassador expressed to me in a private discussion we had shortly after we arrived his own philosophy about corruption and its significance in terms of South Vietnam and its military force. I was concerned and expressed that concern to him about the role the corruption might play, and told him that I thought corruption was significant to the extent that it was impairing the South Vietnamese military's ability to fight, to wage war, to protect and defend the country.

And he agreed that in his viewpoint that was also the point at which one had to be concerned about corruption. Subsequently, and I don't recall exactly how much ah, how much time later, I was aware that the Ambassador had given instructions to the Central Intelligence Agency that he was not encouraging their aggressive pursuit of instances of corruption within ah, the Vietnamese military and within the Vietnamese political structure. I guess that's all I've got to say on that.

Just a moment...okay.

I myself, when I became a political officer in the Embassy, realized that we were not being encouraged to expend our time and energies focusing on instances of corruption, and the Ambassador I think, had clearly defined his concern about ah, the Embassy's approach to reporting on corruption when he said that he was concerned lest we devote our time focusing excessively on the ah, sins of the Vietnamese body politic with reference to corruption.

I, myself, personally, ah, subsequently deduced that (clears throat) there was a concern lest our reporting on corruption end up being distorted ah, through the process of reporting back to the State Department and subsequently passed to ah, the press and to Capitol Hill.

That they, I believe that the Ambassador was very concerned that since corruption had played such an important part in the attack of critics of our policy in Vietnam in the past, that he did not want that to play a critical role at a time when we were desperately attempting to maintain our support in Washington and in terms of the aid that we were dependent upon, the government was dependent upon, in Capitol Hill.

Cut.

Wait for the announcement to end and for me to settle down. Camera's ready.

In the fall of 1974, when I was political military reports officer in our consulate General in Nha Trang, in military region two of Vietnam, I decided to make an inspection trip up to Kon Tum City to attempt to determine the facts behind the loss at one of the major South Vietnamese military outposts to the northwest of Kon Tum City in Kon Tum Province. There had been a series of losses of outposts in that region in the preceding months, and I was particularly concerned ah, that this was a precursor of an erosion of the South Vietnamese military ability to defend himself in that very key corridor in military region two — the Kon Tum-Pleiku Corridor.

I went up to Kon Tum City and with an interpreter was able to ah, locate two of the officers that had actually fought in that battle the company commander and a platoon leader. And I personally interviewed them at some length about their experiences.

Ah, they were obviously tremendously demoralized, ah, still wounded, and had indicated to me that a number of military mistakes had been made ammunition had not been properly stockpiled, it was ah, faulty, ah, there had been an intelligence penetration apparently of the unit, such that the enemy knew exactly what their capabilities and limitations were. And that in general it had been a first class military fiasco.

Totally aside from that, however, was the, at least my recognition, that ah, as a result of that outpost, and as a result of the kind of military force that ah, President Thieu had been able or willing to devote to that area, ah, even up to the time that the outpost was knocked off, that they were very limited in ability to protect themselves militarily in that area. As a consequence, they were obviously militarily quite vulnerable.

As to why the South Vietnamese military's withdrawal strategic withdrawal from the Central Highlands was such an unmitigated disaster, in my own opinion, I...First, you have to look at the fact that they had just suffered a significant military reversal in Ban Me Thuot when the better part of a division of forces were chewed up in in several days in a dramatic ah, and extremely forceful ah, offensive by the North Vietnamese.

As a consequence, ah, they were already no doubt demoralized having just lost the better part of their mainline units in the cen—in military region two. Their retreat to the South was blocked off and they were forced to attempt to withdraw all of their military forces – artillery, armored, all of them – from the Pleiku-Kon Tum region under tremendous pressure, along ah, one very narrow corridor that led ah, from the mountains to the coast.

In military terms, one of the most difficult maneuvers, under any circumstances, is a strategic withdrawal under pressure. Ah, many modern and very efficient armies have had difficulty ah, performing successfully that maneuver. In this case, you've got a demoralized force, attempting to withdraw under tremendous pressure ah, over a very difficult route.

In addition, ah, I think that ah, that what happened reflected in large measure a basic lack of confidence that the individual soldiers and the lower and middle grade officers had with the judgment ah, of their military superiors arid the kind of support that they could expect. I think they basically lacked confidence.

As a consequence, during the withdrawal, and under tremendous military pressure, the units ah, literally fell apart. The ah, armored forces were quarreling with the artillery, the Air Force obviously was using their airplanes to get out ah, any way they could. Ah, in addition, individual units even began to fall apart.

Mixed in with all of this, as if it wasn't complicated enough, was the panic stricken flight of tens of thousands of civilians and dependents. In many instances, the military forces up there had their own families living with them in in Kon Tum-Pleiku area.

That meant that they had to be extremely concerned about the survival of their own family – the protection and survival of their own family, at a time when they were attempting to to ah, successfully retreat, whatever their forces were remaining hack to the coast. And mixed in with the military units attempting to ah, to move down the highway were these tens of thousands of people bringing whatever personal belongings they could, and they were being slaughtered along with the military forces.

Wait for my signal please. Don't lower your mike any further. Go ahead.

I believe that an underlying factor in the demoralization of the Vietnamese forces in Military Region Two after the attack on Ban Me Thuot was that the United States had not sent in the B-52s. Unlike in the 1972 offensive, when the B-52s had been the critical difference in their ability to maintain their defensive positions in that area, we had not sent in our our ah, air support after Ban Me Thuot fell, and we were not in a position to do it. And they knew that.

After...hummmm.

Go ahead.

After Da Nang fell, I had the opportunity to speak with one of our senior officers that had been in the Consulate at the time, and had participated in the evacuation of the Consulate, and was intimately involved in what had actually had happened there...He told me that (clears throat) upon returning to the Embassy he'd had a personal conversation (clears throat) with the Ambassador over exactly what had happened.

He had related to him in some detail the full extent of the debacle that the military forces on the South Vietnamese side had disintegrated and that the entire city including the military forces there had retreated in in total panic. He told me that after his interview with the Ambassador he concluded that the Ambassador found it almost impossible to accept that the defeat had been as extensive in that area as it actually had been.

Cut. I wonder if we could do that again.

Okay.

I was at the Embassy in Saigon when Da Nang fell. And I was subsequently told that the Ambassador found it very difficult, perhaps impossible, to accept the full extent of our military reversal there. The full extent or the setback that the ARVN forces had in fact disintegrated, and there was no further capability to defend military Region One.

Okay.

Ambassador Martin had, what I would describe as, essentially a reclusive style of leadership. Which is to say that he believed that he could understand well the environment in which he worked based on (clears throat) receiving reports and most of the time raw information about the developments in the battlefield, about political developments, and which he felt he was completely capable of analyzing, assessing, and drawing conclusions from on his own.

He did not curry, ah, develop relationships with the Vietnamese, and to the best of my knowledge never made an inspection trip to any of the Consulate Generals, personally. Which is to say that he stayed in the Embassy in Saigon and officials from the Consulates would come to him, reports would come to him, information would come to him. And, he reached his decisions and conclusions based on that interaction.

My position at the time in the Embassy in April of 1975 required me to maintain quite close contact with our military analyst in order to be completely up to date on what the assessment was of the conditions in the battlefield. How was the war going? I became increasingly concerned because it was clearly evident, at least to me, that the South Vietnamese military had an extremely limited capability to reorganize and defend themselves.

As a consequence, I concluded that in a very short time, and it was difficult to say how short a time that was, but it was within a matter of weeks, I estimated, the North Vietnamese were going to he closing in on Saigon. Cut for a second, because what what do you want to take...

I had been following the developing situation in the battlefield very closely in my position in the Embassy during March and early April of 1975. Increasingly, I became convinced and to me it was an inevitable conclusion, that given the extent of the military reversals which the military forces of South Vietnam had suffered, that it would be virtually impossible for them to effectively re-group and defend the country.

During that same period of time I observed with ah, again with increasing alarm that no apparent active plans were being made and even less implemented to initiate an evacuation. I was aware that there were still considerations within the Embassy that the South Vietnamese would be capable of reorganizing them—themselves militarily, and initially considerable effort was made to assist and to do that. But I didn't believe that that was feasible.

I also understood that there was consideration of some sort of negotiated settlement. I personally, based on my experiences having fought with the South Vietnamese, and my reading of what had taken place the tremendous demoralization and defeat that they had suffered that that was not feasible. That it was highly unlikely that the North Vietnamese would be interested in giving away at the conference table what they had already, ah, after such a very hard and long fight, won on the battlefield.

It was not unreasonable to suspect that Saigon itself, once the evacuation began, would be inflicted by the same panic that had set in (clears throat) previously in Da Nang, in and in Nha Trang. Although we in fact ultimately evacuated people for ten days prior to the day in which we departed successfully without panic setting in, I believe that panic had to be at least seriously considered as one possibility once we began any sort of an evacuation.

The circumstances were somewhat different perhaps in the case of Saigon. Because Saigon was militarily isolated from the battlefield and had been for several years, to an extent that other cities had not been. Ah, military units and even soldiers were not permitted in the city, and because of the history of coups in South Vietnam, no military units ah, were going to be, particularly during this period of time, permitted access to the city.

So we weren't subject in any event to the kind of military panic – armed people within the city, ah, looting, rioting – to the extent ah, initially as the other cities were. Nonetheless, panic had to he seriously considered in our planning.

Cut.

Right. I'm framing this so you can [inaudible]. Thank you.

The possibility of panic setting in in Saigon, once an evacuation commenced, had to be seriously considered in the planning process. Obviously and already serious panic had set in before in Da Nang, in Hue and in Nha Trang. And we had been very fortunate in ah, even extricating our own American personnel there.

The situation was slightly different in the case of Saigon because for some several years military soldiers had ah, not been permitted in the city it was a security measure. And of course because of the threat of a coup d'état, it was unlikely that any military units ah, would be permitted access to Saigon. Hmm.

Once a decision was made to begin evacuation by fixed wing aircraft at Tan Son Nhut Air Force Base, it was then necessary to have some sort of consular evacuation screening system. At that time I had been released from my previous responsibilities and was available.

And I volunteered. I wanted to participate in evacuation, and if possible get to a position where I could make some sort of difference in terms of the outcome. I was not at that time a career consular official, and although I was given the appropriate ah, legal documents to give visas, nonetheless ah, perhaps in that sense I was expendable, and not perhaps as accountable as some of my colleagues might have been.

In addition, I had had some previous experience at least, in organization and management and at the modest level of our organization perhaps was a little quicker to seize the initiative.

Cut.

Just a moment. Okay.

When I was charged with the responsibility of going out and ah, beginning the consular screening I really didn't have any concept of what I would be facing. I'm not sure in fact that there was any way that I, or anyone else, could have known exactly what we would have been involved with.

I arrived out at the Air Base, walked into the theater, there were ah, hundreds, maybe ah, several thousands of Vietnamese ah, there, and ah, at that point of course we'd been charged with the evacuation of American dependents. That was the only mandate that I had at the time. I had my consular seal and my—and myself and ah, this very narrowly ah, circumscribed ah, mandate to evacuate ah, Americans and their immediate dependents.

As soon as I arrived, ah, there was a palpable sense of ah, hysteria in the air. Ah, these were people that, ah, and I'm talking about the Vietnamese dependents, um, who realized that there was a very real threat, that their days were numbered. And they were extremely anxious to get out.

This tension, this hysteria built up of course during the, during the ensuing days. I sat down at a little desk and ah, tried to get people in some semblance of lines with the assistance of the ah, military personnel that were there, and began screening. And almost immediately I came to realize that most of the people I was facing did not fit into any neat package of American or his immediate dependant. That in many cases there was no legal basis for the relationship.

Ah, there were Americans there who had ah, common law wives of four or five years duration, with children, with the children of (clears throat) the ah, ah other members of the family, there were even some Vietnamese military officials, there were ah, Vietnamese who had had a relationship with us of some sort in the past they had worked for us in some capacity.

They had been trained by us, and who believed fervently that their lives were in danger, and that we were responsible for them, and that we would help them. They believed that. This put me into a definite ah, emotional, if not professional quandary as to how to go about resolving these problems. I had already concluded, based on my...

Just a moment. Okay.

At first I attempted to play by the rules, or at least the rules as they had been defined for me. If you were an American dependent, ah, you could leave. You had a passport, you had ah, the adequate documentation to to identify yourself then you could leave. And if you were legally married you could leave.

I would ah, provide ah, the appropriate consular seal and you'd be on your way. But I couldn't maintain that position for very long. (clears throat) There were just too many exceptions to the rule.

At first I sent people away, and then shortly, and even I recall the same day I started, I was discovering that people were going downtown attempting to get married, to adopt their children, what have you, and discovered that ah, the cumbersome bureaucracy was not set up to accommodate them. That ah, it was highly likely they would be there when the war was over still attempting to get their papers.

In addition, the black market rate for expediting the process was going up dramatically. And at that point I was not eager to pour any more of our money into the local coffers since it was obviously a lost cause.

So, I attempted to devise my own paperwork ah, which essentially was a signed statement ah, from the individuals saying that they were married to their wife. And that the papers had been lost in the evacuation from Da Nang, which they may very well have been, for all I knew. Considering that many of these people ah, that were flowing into Saigon...

Whoa.

Camera's ready.

At first when people came to me without having the appropriate documentation, I sent them away. I soon discovered that it was impossible for them to easily get the cooperation of the Vietnamese authorities downtown. They couldn't get married readily, they couldn't adopt their children readily it was a long and exhausting process.

And then of course ah, the price to have your paperwork expedited went up. The Black market price on ah, adoption papers and marriage certificates was going up dramatically, faster ah, than ah, the Vietnamese piastre was declining in value.

At that point I decided to take the initiative. And I created paperwork that essentially said that I am married to such and such a woman. And these are my my lawful children – our documentation was lost. In fact in many cases that was, that was true. Many of the people that were flowing into Saigon during this period had already been evacuated from some other part of the country.

In any event, I don't know how many marriages that were consummated and kids adopted, but that was the mechanism that I used to cope with that immediate problem. Well I don't recall exactly at what point, within several days, we...and I had to explain to the Embassy downtown, the problems, the magnitude of the problems that I was facing and the variety of problems. And that it was very difficult to get people to fit into the the neat criteria of American or his dependant.

In any event, the decision was made by the Secretary of State that we would expand the criteria to include Americans, ah, their dependents, and the immediate families of these dependents – the fathers, the mothers, etc., etc., which helped somewhat. Ah, unfortunately in the process of designing and devising this criteria, it had escaped someone that the concept of family in Vietnam was singularly different than our concept of immediate family.

As far as they were, they were concerned, the aunts and the uncles, and the great aunts and great uncles and cousins were in effect members of the same family. They even lived under the same roof, they they were dependent upon the same breadwinner. And they believed that...they emotionally believed they were part or the same family.

And I had families coming to me wanting to be evacuated under these circumstances and...I attempted to design some formula to cope with the problem. Initially, I again held the line and said, "No, it's only dependents and their immediate families." But I realized that this, that was not going to work.

And so increasingly, I decided that I would ask them to determine who in their family should go, based on the criteria of a breadwinner, a nucleus of the family, staying behind to take care of those who would not be evacuated. And at times I recall facing forty and fifty people in the same family.

And given the fact that we had, I felt, I believed, a finite period of time in order to evacuate these people, if I evacuated a family of fifty, um I was, I was cutting down the opportunities or chances that many other people, maybe people that we were more directly and more specifically responsible for, I felt, ah, morally responsible for, we would not be able to evacuate later. Because, as I said, we had only a finite period of time, I believed in order to run the evacuation. I felt that we had about ten days initially when I started, and as it turned out, coincidentally, it turned out to be ten days.

Another issue that had not been dealt with in terms of the criteria, that myself and the officers that eventually came to work for me, hum, a criteria that had not been dealt with adequately, and again I recognis—recognized this right from the start, was the question of high-risk Vietnamese. One of the primary reasons why I had ah, taken the initiative and maneuvered myself into this responsibility was to he in a position to help those people I felt that we as a country should be responsible for. Totally aside from Americans and their dependents which we were obviously responsible for was a whole legion of people out there, who had worked for us, depended on us and at this point, I felt, needed us and that we should fulfill that responsibility. Better cut right there. I'm trying to...

Go ahead.

The people that I described as high-risk Vietnamese were not high risk merely because they had a close association with us in the past, but because we believed that if they stayed behind and were captured that their lives would be in jeopardy. There was every evidence to indicate that retribution would be taken against them, first and foremost once the North Vietnamese took over.

As a consequence these people were mortally scared, and for us, for myself, and the officers worked with me attempting to process them under the incredible constraints of time that we were dealing with, the the fear that they transmitted to us made the job one of the most difficult that I've ever faced.

At this point in time we had not had clear instructions from the Embassy, and I was not able to obtain clear instructions, perhaps because they couldn't get it readily from Washington as to what to do about these cases, but I did believe that we should take action and because of my own personal feelings about it I began to process these people, with the exception of Vietnamese military personnel.

My own point on that was that aside from the fact that it would jeopardize our evacuation if the Vietnamese authorities discovered we were evacuating military commanders that they had more of a responsibility than anyone else to stay out on the battlefield and make it possible to have any evacuation. So I turned down a number of senior officers during that period—senior Vietnamese military officers who were attempting to leave the country. Even though I realized what fate I was leaving them to. Okay, cut it one second.

Nice. Very nice.

And wait just a moment. Go ahead.

In the incredible crush and pressure of attempting to process these people hour after hour in the heat and conditions under which we were operating, there were of course some unusual cases which I attempted to handle separately from, because they seemed to fall out of the normal framework of even the new criteria that I had devised and that my colleagues were working under at the time.

For example, we had several nuns that came to me almost as soon as we began the evacuation processing. And they wanted me to authorize them to evacuate their entire orphanages. Sometimes they were orphanages of ah, children of mixed descent which is to say the children of Vietnamese ah, ladies and American military personnel during the war. But in any event they wanted to evacuate the orphans.

Sometimes they were tied to ah, ah, religious organizations around the work, but in any event, they wanted out. They felt they were in jeopardy. And they were extremely persistent. I remember one nun in particular ah, who kept coming to me very persistently and very patiently and as if, on a divine mission, to tell me that it, we had to evacuate these children, that it was my responsibility to do that.

Unfortunately, because in our, the earlier phases of our bringing people out of the country some month or two before, we'd had, there'd been a disastrous air crash of a C5A and a number of orphans that had been on that plane had died. In fact the better part of the people on the aircraft had been killed in this unfortunate tragedy.

And as a consequence, of the government's then sensitivity, about evacuating orphans and our ah, our interest in not overriding them on this issue, it was not part of my mandate to to ah, be involved in evacuating nuns and orphanages. And we had several of our own US military officers that were in in part of the evacuation process to make sure that that didn't take place.

Cut. Going to have to grab...

Okay.

Finally, the divine persistence of this particular Irish nun wore me down. (clears throat) And in any event, I wanted to evacuate the orphans. I just...it took me several days to think of a plan.

So I asked her to take the various members of her staff and break them up into family units, such that there was at least one male and one female with three or four babies as if they were families, and to dress of course in everyday clothes. And using this method she was able to slip through the ranks of the ah, system of course with my ah, papers that I had documented back to the United States, and I think they all made it.

Okay.

On the morning after the the...Start over again, I'm trying, I'm losing my, the words I want to use there...I must be getting tired. I can just go at any point now?

Go right ahead.

Okay. On the morning after the aerial bombardment of the Air Force Base and the artillery attack on the city I went back out to discover if there was anything we could do more in the way of an evacuation. And I quickly discovered that for all ostensible purposes we could not bring any more people out of the country on fixed wing aircraft.

At that point ah, I was looking for something to do and I got together with ah, the Marine captain that was responsible at that point for organizing the convoys of busses that were to go into the city, pick up the American dependents that were left and bring them to the various ah, checkpoints where they were to be helio lifted out of ah, Saigon, and I discovered that he did not have a very good knowledge of where some of the pick up points wer—were in the city – where everyone had been ah, told to to form up, once the ah, notification had been given.

So I assisted him in ah, in getting some of the busses together, found a few drivers, in fact I even uh uh managed to get one ah, Vietnamese driver out of a ditch. I found him hiding there and discovered that he drove a bus and we were short of bus drivers. He became one of my ah, my most reliable bus drivers.

And we took off for the city. We spent the better part of the morning and the early afternoon running convoys back and forth from Saigon back out to Tan Son Nhut Air Force Base.

The...the feeling in the city was one of almost total chaos at this point. Cars were ricocheting around stuffed to the gills with baggages with the entire families, soldiers were milling around, the police were milling around, the traffic jams were incredible and extremely difficult as far getting the busses were concerned through.

I had on occasion ah, armed soldiers coming up to me ah, asking politely, but ah, emphatically, whether or not they could get on the convoy and it was mostly a day of confusion and confrontation. At one point in time we lost communication with our command control center out at the ah, Air Base and in any event, had already been turned back from the front gates of the Base by the security guards. They wouldn't let the convoys back in.

The Air Base at that point had been cordoned off, it was impossible to get through, and we didn't have the armed force to get through. In any event, I knew that there was an evacuation also taking place down at the Embassy itself. So I took off with my convoy, at this point three busses, completely full, headed for the Embassy.

Eventually we ran out of gas, all the gas stations were closed and had been converted into anti-aircraft batteries by this point, and ah, there was no source of gasoline. And finally after milling around, cir—cir—uh, approaching but not quite getting to the grounds of the Embassy, we finally ran out of gas and and set the buses down several blocks away.

By this point, uh, anarchy, virtual anarchy was beginning to break out in various streets that we'd attempted to go down. There were armed soldiers in half uniforms, uh, combined Air Force-Marine-Army types that ah, had obviously begun the task of uh, of looting and taking advantage of the disorder and confusion that prevailed at that point in time. You want to cut a second, I'm not sure where I want to go from there.

Okay, that's fine.

Uh, I've got to remove the Pepsi can. Move the Pepsi can out to the other end of the case please. Camera's ready.

Eventually I separated myself from the people that I'd been leading in this convoy as they made their way over one of the back walls of the Embassy, and I slipped in the, in the front gate. Uh, by this time the Embassy was completely surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of Vietnamese at the ah, at the three entrances trying to to get inside.

Many of them no doubt, in fact I talked to people through the gate, who had documentation that that would have permitted them to have been on the inside if they could have just gotten to it sooner, but it was impossible to open the gates. To open the gates was to let in a screaming ah, mob which we physically could not contain.

Uh, the only way I was able to get in through on of the gates was because well my face was recognizable but in addition to that I was obviously a foreigner. If I had been a Vietnamese there could have been people killed just trying to open that gate to let them in.

It was literally impossible even though they could show us their documa—documentation and maybe even their American passport. I mean we had people calling up from the outside who said I've got a passport, you've got to let me in – it was impossible if you were Oriental, ah, virtually, to get into the grounds of the Embassy at that point in time.

Now when I got into the Embassy the helicopter evacuation had not started yet. And it was basically calm. People were being ordered into ah, the various ah, units that ah, and their bags organized so that they could get on the helicopters.

And for several ah, hours I had a bit of relief in which time I was able to patrol oh at least the perimeter of the Embassy and ah, see how the the Marines were faring and talk to them and ah, generally attempt to assure them that ah, we were not about to face a major NVA Sapper assault on the grounds of the Embassy because I, you know, one possible problem at that point was that they might over react. I mean, all of these Orientals looking the same.

In any event, ah, at one point in the early afternoon we had some Vietnamese officials that ah, wanted to come through the police compound which was adja—adjacent to the Embassy – directly adjacent. And I went over to assist the Marines in that, uh and needless to say, it was a very tense moment because we were literally letting the Vietnamese police officials into the Embassy but we were keeping the rest of the police and their staff there, and it became a very tense confrontation.

We had to literally and ah, and ultimately brutally force a number of the policemen to stay back into their compound and not let them into the Embassy, even though we were letting their leadership in. Under uh, no doubt a previous agreement, but it was a pretty messy affair to say the least.

In the afternoon the helicopters began the evacuation – began landing in on the grounds of the Embassy initially, and then ah, ultimately off the roof. And I had no role to play in that, and in that sense at that point, I was a passive observer for the first time after ten frenetic days. And I had an opportunity to at least observe and and ah, and get a sense of what had happened, of what had actually befallen us.

I remember walking through the various offices of the Embassy which was then virtually deserted except...everyone was concentrated in just a few offices ah, waiting for information or ah, as to what to do next. And for most of them that meant they were leaving, they had no role left, I mean, people were were semi-comatose, in shock, demoralized, uh, trying to have a drink to forget about it all.

And it was virtually all over, and they had no role, most of them, to play any more. I had no role, I thought. At that point I walked through these offices seeing the refuse of what had been left behind of ah, our individual ah, commitments there, books, pipes, whatever, I had nothing left myself. I'd left everything.

I had ah...I eventually picked up ah, someone's book – I think it was Liddell Hart's book on strategy – I thought perhaps it might make some light reading on the plane, you know. But, uh, I say this only in irony, it was a terrible dispiriting moment to realize that it really was all over and we virtually were completely in the hands of our own military personnel at that point. That was all that was left to do.

As it turned out later in the evening, around ah, 1:00 in the morning, one of the Marines had fallen off the helio pad, off the roof of the Embassy and seriously injured himself. And since I had been involved in ah, in ah, helicopter work during my days as a soldier during the war, I went up in the roof and for the last four hours that I was there assisted the Marines bringing the helicopters, and making sure that people were properly organized in the stairwell and didn't get blown off by the prop blast of the helicopter as they made their way across the helio pad to the helicopter.

The last group that I in fact put on the aircraft were the Ambassador and his immediate staff, and as I recall, this was about 4:30 in the morning. I, the ah, helicopter pilot just before that helicopter had been told that on the next helicopter, uh the Ambassador and his staff were ordered, if you will, to leave the country and uh, on the next helicopter that came in assisted the Ambassador up into the airplane and the rest of his staff and they left.

At that point, it was certainly definitively over. My role, and I had no further role to play, ah, consisted in getting on the next helicopter and leaving the country. (sniff)

During the last three hours I was in Vietnam I was alone most of the time on the roof of the Embassy. The helicopters were coming in approximately, as I recall, every twenty or thirty minutes. And, on one side of the Embassy the ah looters had moved in on the PX ah commissary compound and were literally carrying everything away that wasn't bolted down.

People were playing bumper cars with the embassy vehicles that had been left there. Old mamasans were carrying away chairs from the restaurant and on the other side of the embassy I was hearing these loud, strident Vietnamese voices and what I could only conclude was some sort of a political rally, obviously anti-US (chuckles).

When I finally got on the helicopter that I left on in the midst of my exhaustion I looked down at ah at Saigon as we pulled away. The dawn seemed to be coming in the in the distance I could see the sun starting to come up and it was extremely quiet. The city was was almost unholy quiet and I had the sense that it was as if there was some sort of changing of the guard. As if, not only the government was changing, but perhaps, even well, and quite fundamentally, a way of life for Vietnam.

And, of course, I also knew that for me it was the final chapter in in the life that I had had there.

Cut.