Shadow Warrior (74 page)

Somewhat paradoxically, Colby made it clear that the CIA was not going to be involved in an internal coup against the South Vietnamese president. The same day that the Special Actions Group was meeting in Washington, Polgar and Shackley went to see Thieu. The president was not amenable to the creation of a new broad-based government that might be able to negotiate a cease-fire with the North Vietnamese, Chief of Station Polgar subsequently reported to Colby. It was all a plot by Ky to take control of the government, Thieu had said. It was obvious that the North Vietnamese were going to pursue victory through military means as long as Thieu stayed in office, Polgar observed, adding that a different government
might be able to negotiate with the enemy while an evacuation proceeded. Colby immediately cabled back: “If there was any remote connection between US and such an event it would be an institutional and a national disaster. . . . Please make most clear to those you think it important to advise that they are to flatly reject even a hint that we would condone or participate in such action [a coup].”
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Colby was still haunted by the events surrounding the ouster and murder of the Ngo brothers. Moreover, with the family jewels issue front and center in the American press, and congressional investigations ongoing, CIA implication in the overthrow of a friendly government might sound the death knell for the Agency. But how to reconcile this with his willingness to sacrifice Thieu politically in order to save those Vietnamese who were tainted by contact with Americans? Colby thought that having Thieu resign to appease the communists was far different from ousting him through a coup. Following a resignation, while negotiations were ongoing with the North Vietnamese, Thieu could seek asylum in the United States. In a coup, there was a good chance that he would be killed, becoming in the process a monument to American hypocrisy in Vietnam.

If there were not enough angst in South Vietnam and the United States, on April 5 an American C-5 Galaxy aircraft crashed after taking off from Tan Son Nhut airport, killing 138 children and 35 Defense Attaché Office personnel who were on board. The children included war orphans as well as non-orphans whose parents just wanted their offspring out of a collapsing war zone. The flight was part of Operation Baby Lift, organized by a group of charitable organizations that included the Catholic Relief Fund. Eventually some 3,300 children would be evacuated, but the image that stuck in the world's collective mind was the horrific accident at Tan Son Nhut, to many the ultimate emblem of America's misguided idealism.

On April 8, a CIA agent in Tay Ninh reported that North Vietnam had decided to go for broke—even if Congress appropriated money for more aid to South Vietnam, even if the Thieu regime fell, there would be no negotiations or coalition government. “Communist forces will strike at Saigon at an appropriate time,” he wrote. “The war is lost,” Polgar declared. There were just four things to be done: accelerate the evacuation of US personnel, but not so precipitously as to generate a panic; persuade the Soviets or French to arrange a cease-fire; convince Thieu to step down, to be replaced
by a government of national unity; and arrange the “orderly evacuation of those South Vietnamese who cannot reasonably be expected to survive under the new regime.”
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By the second week in April, Colby's attention was increasingly focused on the evacuation of US personnel and their Vietnamese allies from South Vietnam. He had had to give up the idea of trading Thieu for safe passage. Colby wanted desperately to begin evacuation of at-risk Vietnamese; there would be grave difficulties even with the extraction of remaining American personnel. The Saigon station predicted that an ARVN collapse on any of the approaches to Saigon “could produce additional military disintegration as well as instability and social unrest in the capital that would make phased or orderly exfiltration impractical within two or three days.” Any attempted large-scale evacuation of Vietnamese would produce a general panic, and, moreover, there were indications that “there are those in the Army who would hold the U.S. civilians hostage to their own safety and to insure their own evacuation.” Indeed, Graham Martin reported to Kissinger via their backchannel line of communication that General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, the commander of South Vietnam's National Police, had told him that if the Americans tried to jump ship, the ARVN would turn its guns on them.
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By April 8, the nearest provincial capital east of Saigon, An Loc, was under siege. This time the embattled ARVN defenders put up fierce resistance, but the outcome was never in doubt. “The North Vietnamese now have 18 infantry divisions in South Vietnam supported by numerous armor, artillery, and air defense units,” Colby informed the National Security Council. By contrast, the South Vietnamese could count at most seven divisions. South Vietnam's “long-term prospects are bleak, no matter how well Saigon's forces and commanders acquit themselves in the fighting that lies ahead,” he said. Couldn't US forces execute a flanking movement and attack North Vietnam? Kissinger asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General George Brown. The War Powers Act (Congress in 1973 had passed legislation restricting the executive branch's authority to commit troops to foreign conflicts) aside, Brown replied, there were no North Vietnamese soldiers left in North Vietnam.
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At a Special Actions Group meeting on April 17, Kissinger and Defense Secretary Schlesinger clashed over the rate of evacuation, with the former increasingly defending his ambassador. “I think he's getting the people out, don't you?” Kissinger said. No, Schlesinger replied. A little over a hundred
a day were escaping, and there were still more than 5,000 US personnel in and around Saigon. Planes were flying in and out of Tan Son Nhut with only a handful of people on board. “Well, we have to leave some things to Graham's discretion,” Kissinger said.

The discussion turned to the mechanics of evacuation. “It's our opinion that if this thing goes to a military operation—use of U.S. forces to get people out—the odds of success are very remote,” General Brown remarked. Some members of the ARVN were going to resist the evacuation by force, and television footage of US Marines shooting down their erstwhile allies would be more than the nation could bear. He told the group that “certain South Vietnamese Airborne and Marine units” had offered to provide security for the extraction on the condition that the Americans took them with them. What about the at-risk South Vietnamese, Colby asked? Tan Son Nhut could come under North Vietnamese artillery fire anytime. Why not tell them to make the 60-mile trip to Vung Tau, where they could be evacuated by ship, someone suggested. There was but a single road for the estimated 93,000 South Vietnamese then in possession of identity cards entitling them to evacuation, Colby observed. There would be chaos, and anyway, the North Vietnamese Army was rapidly advancing on Vung Tau.
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In Saigon on April 18, Colonel Janos Toth, a Hungarian member of the International Control Commission Staff that had been put in place to monitor the 1973 cease-fire accords, came to see Polgar. The two had met at an embassy reception and were on friendly terms. Toth assured the station chief that Hanoi did not want to humiliate the United States. It preferred strangulation of Saigon rather than a full-scale assault. If Thieu could be gotten rid of, there was every possibility of a peaceful, negotiated settlement, which, among other things, would leave an American embassy—limited to normal diplomatic activities—to function in South Vietnam. The south had lost, he said, and the only question was whether the transfer of power would take place “under civilized circumstances,” like those accompanying the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm in 1918, or under conditions more like those associated with the fall of Berlin in 1945, when virtually the entire city was razed.
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As of April 21, there were still 2,000 Americans in Saigon. General Brown feared the imminent breakdown of law and order. He reminded members of the Special Actions Group that rebellious ARVN soldiers had
shot three of their generals while they were trying to escape Nha Trang by helicopter: “There is every likelihood of armed mobs, and no leadership,” he said. Colby continued to worry about the South Vietnamese. “If we don't make at least an attempt to get them out, you are going to have more bitterness than you can believe,” he told the group.
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At last, on April 21, Thieu resigned. Accompanied by members of the Joint General Staff and their families, he boarded a plane for the United States. In his departure statement, Thieu blamed Henry Kissinger for having “led the South Vietnamese people to death.”
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He was replaced by his vice president, the feeble septuagenarian Tran Van Huong, whose lifelong anticommunism made him no more an acceptable negotiating partner for the North Vietnamese than Thieu. In Washington, all eyes turned to evacuation, all except those of Kissinger, who reported that he had asked the Soviets to intervene and restrain their North Vietnamese allies.

The third week in April, Congress appropriated $300 million for the evacuation of Americans from South Vietnam and endorsed President Ford's request to use troops to facilitate the air/sea lift. On the 22nd, Colby reported to the Special Actions Group that the fall of Saigon was imminent. “They [the North Vietnamese] are not interested in any interim deals,” he said. “What they want is a full military victory and humiliation of the U.S. Tan Son Nhut is about to go.” The next day, he told the national security team that CIA operatives had learned that the Khmer Rouge had instructed their cadres to “secretly eliminate all senior enemy commanders and those who owe us a blood debt.” Would the North Vietnamese do no less? He also reported small arms firings on American planes but observed that it was unclear whether the fire was coming from the North or South Vietnamese. On the 24th, Colby informed the Saigon station that it was “safe to say that only Ambassador Martin, the COS, and to a lesser extent Dr. Kissinger” believed anything could come out of efforts at a negotiated settlement. He ordered Shackley to get with Polgar and see to the evacuation of all Vietnamese dependents of CIA officers. As far as other at-risk Vietnamese were concerned, the situation remained bleak. “We are amazed at the small number of Vietnamese being evacuated,” the State Department complained to Martin, “considering the substantial amount of aircraft available.
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On April 27, Huong was succeeded by General Duong Van “Big” Minh, whom the Americans hoped would be acceptable to the communists. As
of the 28th, Graham Martin was still holding out hope for a negotiated settlement, but the White House had had enough. The order was sent out that all Americans were to be out of Saigon by 3:45
A.M
. on April 30. Miraculously, Tan Son Nhut remained open, and Kissinger reported to Ford on the 28th that 35,000 to 40,000 Vietnamese had been airlifted out.
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Early on the morning of the 28th, Tom Polgar was awakened by the thump of exploding artillery rounds. He phoned the embassy and learned that US Marines on the roof had reported seeing flames and explosions at Tan Son Nhut. The station chief arrived at the embassy to find that Martin was home, ill with bronchial pneumonia. He called the ambassador and insisted that he come in, which he did, arriving around 6:00
A.M
. Polgar and Martin still wanted to talk about the Minh government and a negotiated settlement. At Langley, Colby would have none of it. Get your people ready to evacuate, he told the chief of station. The DCI was particularly insistent about destroying encryption equipment and CIA documents that would incriminate CIA informants. After the fall of South Vietnam, he expressed gratitude that “we have not been treated to the show trials that would have shamed us for the plight of our secret friends.” By this point, however, a number of Agency officers who had served in Vietnam had arrived back in-country to help Vietnamese friends and coworkers escape through private means. Gage McAfee, who aided the owners of the Duc Hotel in getting out, would survive the ordeal. Others, such as covert ops officer Tucker Gougelmann, would not. Gougelmann was captured by the North Vietnamese Army, imprisoned, and subsequently beaten to death.
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Meanwhile, Martin refused to admit that the runways at Tan Son Nhut were unusable. After a hair-raising inspection by automobile, however, he accepted the inevitable and ordered the helicopter airlift to begin. At 1200 hours Polgar reported to headquarters that “all files and sensitive equipment [are] being destroyed. . . . We have started [to] lift surplus personnel from Embassy rooftop to warships off coast.” By this time a large and anxious crowd had gathered outside the embassy gates; the crowd remained relatively calm, however, periodically parting to allow US personnel through. When he learned that Vietnamese were being mixed in with Americans during the by-now-continuous liftoff, Kissinger exploded: “Can someone explain to me what the hell is going on! The orders are that only Americans are to be evacuated. Now, what the hell is going on?” Colby explained that
humanitarian considerations aside, the South Vietnamese might not allow the US Marine helicopters to land and take off if only Americans were being evacuated.
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At 4:40
P.M
. Saigon time, Polgar radioed that “the die is cast. We are leaving. That means everybody, including Ambassador Martin.” Some of the Marine C-46 helicopters were taking ground fire, apparently from disgruntled ARVN soldiers. The embassy, he said, was now a “beleaguered fortress” with an uncontrollable crowd of Vietnamese blocking all entrances. “There is no pretty ending to this,” he said. While the last contingent of eight Americans, including Graham Martin, by then too sick to walk, waited to be ferried out, Polgar received a final message from DCI Colby: “The courage, integrity, dedication and high competence the Agency displayed in a variety of situations over these years has been fully matched and even surpassed by your performance during this difficult final phase. . . . Good luck and many thanks.” Shortly after the last helicopter lifted off, North Vietnamese tanks and troops entered Saigon.
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