He met with Martin in the embassy on April 19 along with Major General Smith and air force lieutenant general John Burns, who commanded the Seventh Air Force from Thailand. The White House, Congress, and the Pentagon had been exerting pressure on all three officers to evacuate U.S. citizens from South Vietnam. One obstacle to accomplishing this had been Martin’s insistence that a large-scale evacuation of Americans would destroy morale and lead to revenge attacks against those who remained. Another had been the reluctance of American civilian contractors and government employees to leave South Vietnam. Many of them had invested years in the war, and like Bill Bell they wanted to see it through to the end. Those working for the U.S. government also feared that being designated “non-essential” would damage their careers. At a gathering of CIA agents at the Duc Hotel, the agency’s Saigon hostel, Polgar had stoked these fears by urging the agents to leave, followed by an admission that he could not guarantee that doing so would not become a black mark in their files.
A third of the approximately seven thousand Americans residing in South Vietnam at the beginning of April were civilian contractors who were filling jobs previously performed by the U.S. military. Martin dismissed them as “lotus eaters,” and Stuart Herrington thought they represented “the largest group of undisciplined and overindulgent foreigners to hit a foreign capital since the Red Army descended on Berlin in 1945.” Hanoi accused them of being America’s “secret army.” If so, they were a spectacularly unfit one, a hodgepodge of retired military men, long-term expatriates, and adventurers attracted by generous pay, the whiff of danger, and a chance to live a comfortable life on the cheap. Many had married Vietnamese women, fathered children, and become devoted to their Vietnamese families. They resisted going “home” because for many of them South Vietnam was home. In mid-April the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agreed that the embassy could “parole” certain categories of South Vietnamese, giving them U.S. entry visas, and that any American citizen in South Vietnam legally married to a Vietnamese woman could bring out his wife and her immediate family. But because the INS parole did not include common-law wives, grandparents, siblings, or draft-age brothers, few Americans accepted it, and even if they did, their families still needed South Vietnamese passports and exit visas.
On April 14, Smith had called together the heads of the DAO’s contracting firms and urged them to persuade their employees to leave. They complained that their people had been unable to get passports and exit visas for their Vietnamese families. Smith next summoned retired U.S. military personnel to the DAO auditorium. He had already suspended their PX and commissary privileges, but to no avail. They insisted that they would not leave without their wives’ and girlfriends’ families, and one man shouted, “What is it you don’t understand about loyalty to one’s family?”
Just before Gayler, Smith, Burns, and Martin met at the embassy on the morning of April 19 to decide how to persuade the contractors and other American civilians to leave South Vietnam, a cable arrived from the Justice Department’s Immigration and Naturalization Service offering a possible solution. The INS had previously insisted that an American relative seeking to sponsor a South Vietnamese citizen had to be physically present in South Vietnam. Its April 19 cable said that it would now permit an American living anywhere in the world to sponsor visas for their Vietnamese in-laws and relatives. Candidates for this immigration parole would have to appear at the embassy to be screened, and their American sponsors would have to agree, the cable said, to be “responsible for the cost of transportation, care, maintenance and resettlement.”
During the April 19 meeting at the embassy, Smith said that the INS cable meant “we can start to move people out of here in large numbers” and that “anyone in the States—any American anywhere, or his Vietnamese wife—can vouch for people here and the INS will let them in.” It also meant, he said, that an American citizen could evacuate his wife’s grandparents and second cousins, or anyone else he wanted, as long as he signed an affidavit promising to support them in the United States. Turning to Martin, he added, “I really think this might solve the problem with the contractors, Mr. Ambassador.”
Martin wanted to get Washington off his back and reluctantly agreed. Before the meeting ended, Gayler suggested that they compose an affidavit of support saying that the signatory promised to support the family members listed below after they arrived in the United States. Eva Kim typed it onto a stencil and mimeographed a sheaf of copies. She handed a stack to Smith. Each had the potential to change dozens of lives. Smith returned to the DAO and told his staff to sign them for whomever they wanted to evacuate, relatives or not, as long as none were military personnel.
The affidavits quickly circulated through the DAO and other U.S. mission agencies. Suddenly, any Vietnamese who could persuade an American to sign a legally unenforceable affidavit stating that they were family members—genuine or “adopted”—and promising to support them could leave on a U.S. Air Force plane. Within hours Americans began bringing Vietnamese whom they claimed to be their relatives or adopted children to the Evacuation Processing Center that the DAO had set up in its auditorium. Some Americans agreed to support dozens of bogus “adopted” children—adopting lovers, bar girls, maids, and friends. A few adopted anyone willing to pay for their signature. The evacuation became larger but no less capricious, favoring Vietnamese who could find an American to adopt them and sign their affidavit. Because any American could sign one, every American could play God, and because Vietnamese evacuees still needed to get past the MPs and into Tan Son Nhut, the number of South Vietnamese riding into Tan Son Nhut on the underground railroads doubled, tripled, and more each day, and the number of evacuees boarding U.S. military planes for the Philippines and Guam jumped from several hundred a day to several thousand.
Later on April 19, Martin received two cables from Deputy National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft that further expanded the evacuation. On April 16, Ken Quinn had concluded that Saigon might fall before his relatives and friends, and those of other Foreign Service officers, could escape. He waited until late that evening, when he knew Scowcroft would be alone, before going upstairs to his office to make his pitch. He told him that Martin was resisting a large-scale evacuation and informed him of the State Department cafeteria group and the similar one in Saigon involving Lacy Wright that was ready to facilitate the departure of the relatives of U.S. government personnel. Scowcroft presented Quinn’s case to Ford that same evening. Ford approved the evacuation of the relatives and decided to expand it to include high-risk Vietnamese who were not related to U.S. government employees. David Kennerly also played a role in Ford’s decision. After hearing that the Pentagon was urging Ford to evacuate Americans as quickly as possible, he had what he calls “a real heart-to-heart” with Ford during which he warned that the Communists might execute some of their South Vietnamese friends. Ford replied, “Goddamn it, we’re going to get as many Vietnamese nationals as we can out.”
Scowcroft’s first cable to Martin on April 19 had instructed him to evacuate the Vietnamese relatives of State Department employees and had included a preliminary list of their names and addresses. His second cable expanded the evacuation and said, “One thing left out of last cable we sent you was that Henry [Kissinger] said you can, at your own judgment, begin to move out Vietnamese in the high-risk category. He does not want to second guess you in this area. You must be the judge on when and how fast to move such high-risk elements and CIA assets.”
Until April 19, Lacy Wright, Shep Lowman, and the others who had met with Ken Quinn at a deserted office in the embassy in early April had been puttering along in first gear: identifying safe houses, collecting lists containing the names of endangered Vietnamese employed by the U.S. mission and politicians and intellectuals believed to be Communist targets, receiving the names of Vietnamese related to State Department personnel supplied by Quinn, and coordinating their activities wit
h the embassy’s fourth-floor Evacuation Control Center manned by Mel Chatman and Russell Mott. They and Chatman and Mott had arranged for the DAO buses to transport the embassy’s “special cases” to Tan Son Nhut; these included Brian Ellis’s U.S. news agency personnel. Scowcroft’s two April 19 cables expanded the scope of what Wright and Lowman could do. They now had permission to begin moving more of the Vietnamese on their lists to Tan Son Nhut for evacuation, using whatever buses Chatman and Mott could commandeer from the DAO.
Martin immediately complied with Scowcroft’s first cable, and Wright, Lowman, Don Hays, and others in the U.S. mission began collecting the State Department and other U.S. government relatives and bringing them to Tan Son Nhut. But Scowcroft’s second April 19 cable had given Martin the job of determining which Vietnamese qualified as “high-risk” and when they should be evacuated. Martin was slower and more cautious about moving out people in this category because he continued to believe that a large-scale evacuation would ignite panic, leading to the collapse of civil authority and the army, and that it was unnecessary because the Communists favored negotiations over a direct assault on Saigon.
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As Ken Moorefield was casting around for a way to include himself on the embassy’s list of “mission-essential” personnel who would be permitted to stay until the end, he had noticed that every day the line of Americans and Vietnamese outside the consulate stretched farther down the street. He approached his friend Consul General Walter Burke and proposed opening a branch of the consulate at Tan Son Nhut so that evacuees could be processed there before going directly to the flight line. Burke agreed and gave him an emergency consular commission and seal. On Friday, April 18, Moorefield opened his consular office at the Evacuation Processing Center inside the DAO auditorium.
The DAO already had a team there processing its American and Vietnamese evacuees. There was also a contingent of agents from South Vietnam’s Ministry of the Interior who were under orders to prevent the departure of military personnel, draft-age males, and security risks. During Moorefield’s first morning in the auditorium, he tried to follow the State Department’s guidelines, clearing only Vietnamese with papers showing them to be the dependents of an American citizen through marriage, birth, or adoption. He sent the others back downtown to obtain these documents from government ministries. They returned empty-handed and complaining of astronomical bribes. By afternoon he had decided to ignore the State Department guidelines. He told the secretaries he had brought from the embassy to type up forms saying, “I’ve lost my paperwork but I’m an American dependent,” “This is my legally adopted child,” “We are legally married but have lost our paperwork,” and “Those listed below are the family members of the following American citizen.” After an evacuee signed the appropriate form, Moorefield fixed his consular seal on it, making its holder and those named on it eligible for places on an evacuation flight.
The Ministry of the Interior agents questioned some of his evacuees, slowing the processing and sometimes refusing to issue laissez-passers. He counterattacked by setting up a maze of lines that wound back and forth inside the auditorium, making it difficult for the agents to know who had been processed. He channeled the easiest cases into a line that dead-ended at their desks, keeping them busy and distracted while he approved the more questionable individuals. By the end of his first day he had processed three hundred people.
News of his generosity spread, and Vietnamese began stopping Americans in the street and asking them to sign an affidavit of support. His adoption and marriage forms had anticipated Gayler and Smith’s affidavit by a day. After the crowds in the auditorium grew larger and more unruly, Smith moved the processing center to the gymnasium in the DAO annex, a nearby complex of recreation facilities known as Dodge City.
The air force began landing two transport planes an hour to accommodate the increased numbers of evacuees, and Moorefield began operating on a twenty-four-hour basis, keeping his evacuees overnight to avoid having any plane leave with empty seats. On April 21, the air force evacuated 249 Americans and 334 “others,” mostly Vietnamese. The next day it flew out 550 Americans and 2,781 others; the day after that, 190 Americans and 5,574 others; and on April 27, 219 Americans and 7,359 others. Moorefield, Martin, Ellis, and others spoke of “seats,” but the air force relaxed its post-Babylift crash insistence on physical seats and loaded evacuees on the planes’ steel floors, throwing cargo nets over everyone to prevent them from being hurled into the cockpit if a pilot slammed on the brakes.
The embassy believed it had sent Moorefield to Tan Son Nhut to expedite the evacuation of the Vietnamese family members of American citizens. He was soon processing Vietnamese who worked for private American companies and charities, or who had close American friends or any connection with the United States that might put them at risk. He called the embassy and asked for guidance. When none was forthcoming, he applied what he calls his own “remedies.”
The Saigon press corps was oblivious to Moorefield’s operation. A front-page article in The Washington Post on April 19 reported that “the most sober view is that if there is an emergency in Saigon, the United States will get out its own citizens and leave behind the Vietnamese,” and that “the specter is raised by well-placed observers of Americans climbing aboard helicopters and flying away while U.S. Marines push away and possibly gun down their frantic and enraged former allies.” Citing “many informed observers,” the article predicted that “as things stand now, a few thousand Vietnamese at most might be evacuated, and even that seems improbable.” Two days later, almost three thousand Vietnamese flew out of Tan Son Nhut, yet George McArthur, who had excellent sources at the embassy, reported, “It is hardly likely that more than a few thousand [Vietnamese] will be successfully evacuated.” Apparently, the underground railroads running to Tan Son Nhut really were underground, as was the scope of Moorefield’s operation.
On April 22 the U.S. Justice Department put a legal face on what Moorefield and others had been doing by announcing that with the approval of the Senate Judiciary Committee it was waiving immigration restrictions for 130,000 refugees from Indochina. It amounted to the largest exception to American immigration regulations since the Cuban exodus of the early 1960s. The Justice Department was responding to pressure from Ford and Kissinger and playing catch-up by giving ex post facto legal status to the thousands of evacuees and “adoptees” who were arriving at transit camps in the Philippines and Guam. Included in the 130,000 emergency immigration paroles were 50,000 for people in a so-called high-risk category. On April 26, former ambassador Dean Brown, whom Kissinger had had brought out of retirement and placed in charge of the evacuation and humanitarian assistance to South Vietnam, sent Martin a plaintive cable saying, “It is essential that we get a better grasp on how you are handling the high risk category.” Brown asked what Martin’s “ground rules” were for granting an immigration parole and requested that he estimate what percentages were “embassy and other USG [U.S. government] employees, political/intellectual, and the other categories of high risk under which you operate.” He asked for “a better understanding as to how you reach decisions,” adding, “I assume someone gives a parole document to the parolee and that there is a numerical count maintained.” He also requested that Martin “send me soonest cumulative total and a daily report.”
Martin ignored him. There was no breakdown of how many current or former U.S. government employees versus intellectuals were being evacuated, nor any “ground rules” for choosing high-risk people, largely because Martin had discouraged the kind of planning that would have required such rules. The U.S. Air Force was doing the evacuee count, and Moorefield and his team of young diplomats at Dodge City, as well as Americans in the Defense Attaché Office and on the Joint Military Team, were deciding on the spot who was “high risk.” At first, the DAO and the JMT had filled a disproportionately large number of seats because they were based
at Tan Son Nhut and could easily put their people onto planes. After other agencies in the U.S. mission complained, the embassy initiated a quota system that imposed some sporadic fairness.
Moorefield feared that if he flooded the system with too many people, it would collapse, and if he processed any South Vietnamese military personnel, the government would shut him down. Undercover government intelligence agents mingled with the evacuees and had already arrested a government minister. Immigration officials also boarded planes, questioned passengers, and had to be bribed with promises of evacuation for their families. Moorefield installed himself in an office adjacent to the gymnasium so he could interview the more problematic evacuees in private. He told an ARVN colonel who had commanded a unit that he had once advised, “I can’t send you out, because if I do, the police may shut us down and no one will get out.” (Moorefield returned to Vietnam in 1995 and learned that the colonel had died in a concentration camp.) The deputy commander of Military Region II appeared wearing civilian clothes and burst into tears and shouted, “They’ll kill me!” when Moorefield said it would be too risky to evacuate him.
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